Weekly Geekly Rundown for March 8, 2024

Sound from Top to Bottom

Mit Out Sound — Don’t Forget the Sound Techs

During her first year of graduate study in USC’s School of Cinema and Television, my wife took a course in sound design from the creator of THX (Tomlinson “Tom” Holman)¹ and it forever changed the way she and I look at films. We’d always known that sound was an important element of the film making process, but we had under appreciated just how much it mattered.

One of the first things that Tom did in the class was to share the opening scene from Star Wars when Darth Vader boards the Rebel Ship. The clip he showed used only the production sound, that is the sound recorded on the set. The movie was not filmed MOS, but not a lot of that production sound was used either. As we watched (Yep, I got to sit in), we heard the echoes of every footstep, the flatness of those steps, the voices of the actors bounce of of the set walls in a manner that muted the performances, and we heard David Prowse’s interpretation of Vader. Had that been the sound that I heard the first time I saw Star Wars, it would not have been among my favorite films. It would have been a forgotten film.

For all that Denis Villeneuve has talked about the power of visual storytelling and his desire to make films that de-emphasizes dialogue, he made these comments because of his desire to advocate for other elements of film making. His point that dialogue “is for Theatre and Television” may be in some ways historically inaccurate and be a point that many will pick nits to debunk. After all The Awful Truth, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, and early Hitchcock films are very dialogue driven and the television may have been being tinkered on by a fellow in Rigby Idaho, but the “Tube” wasn’t in living rooms across the country yet. That critique of Villeneuve is fine as far as it goes, but it misses his point entirely.

For film makers like Villeneuve, film is a Gesamtkunstwerk, it is a work of total art. Films contain not one craft, but all artistic crafts. To make a truly great film, you must have great visual art, great narrative art, great music, great sound design, great acting, and great sculpting (editing), all within the Aristotelian constraints of the Unities (interpreted loosely). Wagner thought that the Opera was Gesamtkunstwerk, in particular his own, and it is closer to it than a regular stage play, but film is where this combination truly manifests in magnificent fashion. This overwhelming quality of film is why many rush to see films in IMAX. It allows for a unique artistic experience.

Villeneuve’s philosophy is one that I share in many ways. I love films with great dialogue, but I often wince when I read a film critic who only focuses on one or two aspects of film making. I get most irritated when the two aspects they focus on are narrative and dialogue. Yes, these are vital parts of a whole, but they are only a part of the whole and sometimes a film can fail in these areas while contributing greatly in others. I may despise Ulysses Gaze with a rage that burns as hot as the flames of Gehenna, but even I must acknowledge that it has phenomenal cinematography. So too, a film like Cool as Ice starring Vanilla Ice, may be a mind numbingly dumb movie while having some of the most stellar cinematography ever projected.

But there is a ton of discussion of cinematography on the internet. Any half-assed cineaste knows that Janusz Kamiński was the cinematographer of Cool as Ice. Cinematography is widely appreciated and rightly so.

Sadly, sound doesn’t get the same love. Even though one of the greatest films ever made is about how Sound changed the industry (Singin’ in the Rain), Sound is still the red-headed stepchild of film. It’s down to one Oscar category, from two, because no one could understand the difference between Sound Design and Sound Editing. I mean Don Hall could tell you, but after he did most of us would still be a little fuzzy on how exactly to award them as separate things even as we could separate cinematography, visual effects, and film editing in our minds.

One of my old film studies professors used to say, “Believing is Seeing.” It was a nice twist on “seeing is believing” that highlighted the way in which film makes you believe you have seen things you haven’t actually seen and great sound is one of the ways they accomplish it.

Anyway, this is all a long set up for a funny short film that a sound editor I know shared on the Book of Faces. It’s about capturing Room Tone and how little most people, even those working in film, think about it. Capturing the “silent” sound of a space is vital if you want to have a production sound good and for edits to appear seamless, and yet…

Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse

Stan!

has long been one of my favorite cartoonists (Jody is still #1). His work has featured in Dragon Magazine and a number of TSR products, and other companies too. He’s a generous soul and has a great sense of humor. I was happy to see that he launched a Substack celebrating D&D’s 50 years and that he’s featuring interviews with RPG creators and creating homage illustrations of works throughout the history of gaming. Check his site

50 Years in the Dungeon

out now!

Homage 1979

Colleen Doran

has a wonderful discussion of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in her most recent post about her illustrations in Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry. She highlights a number of the non-obvious works and goes into detail describing the symbolism of many of the paintings. Colleen is a phenomenal comic book illustrator, who has worked long and hard to prove herself in a very difficult industry. Sometimes she writes about those challenges, but today she writes about the art.

The Secret Language of a Page of Chivalry: The Pre-Raphaelite Connection.

Lyn Perry

’s latest Sword & Sorcery roundup will have you going down a very fun rabbit hole regarding the history and current state of the genre. I know it inspired me to return to an old draft related to Sword & Sorcery that I’ll be publishing this weekend or Monday. I’ll also be reviewing the new The Savage Sword of Conan magazine from Titan Books, but you’ll have to wait for that.

S&S Roundup #34

Weekly Film Article Cavalcade

The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson

Luke Y Thompson has two reviews this week, neither of which is a strong recommendation. He was relatively critical of Peter Farrelly’s latest film Ricky Stanicky in his review for A.V. Club. A big part of Luke’s critique is that Farrelly seems to have lost the meanness necessary for the kind of broad comedy he used to do. One might ask though if it isn’t that audiences have left that kind of mean comedy behind and that Farrelly has a hard time being funny without it. Comedy is hard. It’s even harder when you constrain yourself. I doubt Farrelly suddenly lost his acerbic nature. I’d guess that he’s afraid to use it without self-censoring. All I know is that if Luke has a hard time finding something to like in a film starring John Cena, it’s probably not a good film.

Luke’s review of Damsel at SuperHeroHype is more positive, though not as positive as the article’s headline might imply. Normally when something is “cranked to 11” it scores more than a 3/5. Sure, that’s better than mid, but it’s not exactly a glowing review. That aside, Luke thinks that the film will be enjoyed by its intended (younger) audience and that it has enough fun that I’ll be watching it.

Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat

I’ll be watching it even though Courtney Howard’s very well thought out review of Damsel over at FreshFictionTV is far more critical. Where Luke thought that the action of the film was entertaining, Courtney argues that Damsel “would rather stay in its comfort zone as rote, stagnant commentary on feminine subjugation by way of girlboss slaying” rather than be something original.

Courtney’s review highlights on exactly what my chief concern with the film is. While the recent comic adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, Briar, manages to channel something interesting into a reimagining of Briar Rose as kickass princess, the post-Whedon mirror-Whedon girlboss is a kind of dull trope. Speaking of which, I do need to finally get around to giving Briar a full review. I grew tired of Whedon’s version of the empowered woman with Dollhouse and the scene between Loki and Black Widow in Avengers only cemented my sense that all was not right in the Whedonverse. I like to watch women kick ass as much as the next person, as my collection of Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock DVDs can attest, but I am bored with the implied requirement of “traumatic backstory” that seems to accompany so many modern tellings. Not all, certainly, Prey was awesome, but many.

I also admire film makers when they dare to have a female character be strong, and powerful, without the need to be “PG-13 action heroine in a tank top by act 2",” to borrow another phrase from Courtney.

I had hoped that the creators of Damsel would follow in the footsteps of Dragonslayer, the best Live Action Disney film ever made. There are three incredibly strong women in that movie. Two of them meet a bad end, none are the protagonist, but all are deep and fully developed characters. Damsel’s premise is lifted from Dragonslayer except that it asks, “what if she saved herself instead of her being ‘rescued’ by the hero?” Sadly, they forgot that the “hero” doesn’t really rescue anyone in Dragonslayer. That movie deconstructs the heroic myth and contains interesting commentary on the death of magic and the rise of faith that is worthy of conversation. The princess in Dragonslayer who volunteers herself when she finds that her father has rigged the lottery to never select her isn’t a kickass chick, but she’s one of the most heroic characters in fantasy films.

Sometimes I like my heroic women to kill the baddies. Take for example the wife in the original The Man Who Knew Too Much whose sniper duels with Peter Lorre bookend the film. Edna Best is the Best. Sometimes I like my heroic women to save others using their wits like Lucille Ball did in last week’s film recommendation Lured. What I don’t want is a stereotype, no matter which audience that stereotype is pandering to.

I’ll watch Damsel because I watch all the fantasy I can get. I grew up in a world where the average fantasy movie was terrible. That makes me a very forgiving viewing, but I am prepared for disappointment.

Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings

Scott Mendelson

’s latest podcast is all about Dune. The first and second film have exceeded financial expectations and Scott and crew chat about what that means for the franchise and for the industry in general.

Ep 05: Dune, Nothing but Dune, Give Me That Dune... Don't Let It End!

Music Recommendation

I’ve done Classic Rock, Classical, Punk, and Alternative for a lot of the Weekly Geekly music recommendations. I haven’t though done Country. I think one reason for that is that I never really liked Country as a kid, or at least the crossover Country calling itself Country. My sentiments regarding Country Music could largely be described by this video mashing up several Country songs to demonstrate how they are all the same song.

As I’ve gotten older, and listened to more Country music, my mind has changed a little and I realized that a lot of the music that I did like could technically be classified as Country, or at least Country adjacent.

I mean Johnny Cash kicks ass so much that a punk band did a remake of Ring of Fire.

Zach Bryan’s song “I Remember Everything” has all the drinking and sorrow one expects from a Country song, but it evokes an older era of the genre before it became (like Donnie Osmond) a little bit Rock-n-Roll. The haunting melody makes for a good listen while reading books and drinking your favorite Bourbon (mine’s 7 Devils Caldwell Night Rodeo from Koenig Distillery if you’re wondering).

Film Recommendation

A couple of years ago, one of my wife’s former professors Sound Editor Midge Costin (Crimson Tide, The Rock, Dead Again, Swing Kids) launched a Kickstarter for a documentary called Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound. We immediately backed the project and awaited the results. When we got our DVD copy, we watched it immediately and found it to be a wonderful celebration of Sound in film.

I think it’s an important film and thankfully it’s available for free on the official channel on YouTube.

Before you watch it, I wanted to take a moment to do something that probably won’t get noticed, but needs to be done. I doubt Midge Costin or Don Hall will ever read my Geekerati Website. The world is too busy and filled with important and entertaining thing to experience. I know this, but I still wanted to take a moment to thank them publicly for everything they did for Jody and for me.

When Jody started film school, we moved from the “big city” (to her) of Reno, Nevada to the vast metropolis that is Los Angeles. How vast? Let’s just say that in my mind “Los Angeles” stretches from Santa Barbara to Riverside and from Valencia to San Clemente. It’s a beautiful, rich, and diverse place with much to offer, but it is HUGE. I consider that whole geographic region to be “Los Angeles” because culturally it is. Yes, there are subcultures and bigotry based on area code, I’m 323 for what it’s worth, but it’s all a single amazing and intimidating place. My favorite films capture both the beauty and terror that is Los Angeles.

All of that is to say that when a young newly married couple arrived in the metro area, we felt lost. We had no anchor. The nearest thing we had was the USC campus, but we lived a few miles West in Crenshaw and in our first semester were adrift. This is where Don Hall, Midge Costin, David Bondelevitch, and others, really stepped up. As mentors, they reached out to Jody in ways that transformed Los Angeles from a whirlpool of chaos with a calm center at USC’s campus, into a vibrant living place that felt like a “home.” Our first Christmas there, we had no idea where to go to shop. The Crenshaw mall was okay, but many of the stores were closing down, so we checked out Universal City Walk. That was a mistake. It was, at the time, the least Christmassy place in America. Now, it’s got the Grinch set up and decorations everywhere. Then? Just a Santa hat on King Kong.

For people from the West, used to snow and cuddly nights due to cold weather, it was a shock. Oh, and Los Angeles never really gets dark. It gets dim. There’s “Day” and “Dim.” It was a hard first semester, as I wrote, but then Don, Midge, and/or David would say “have you checked out x or y?” They would talk about their very normal lives; it was here that I learned how working class in mentality Hollywood really is. They didn’t make Los Angeles feel “small,” that’s impossible, but they made it feel cozy and friendly. Don in particular made it feel like we were part of a family. My God did he do so much for our morale. His kindness as a person and consideration as a mentor are something we still are in awe of. He is the kind of mentor I aspire to be.

He had that impact on me and he wasn’t MY mentor. He was Jody’s mentor. Same for Midge. She provided grounded and solid advice for Jody and helped guide her through the entire process. Film school is hard. Making films, even student films, is a difficult task. Supporting Midge’s documentary was the least we could do. The fact that it is also good, makes it easy to recommend.

1. How’s that for like fifteen humble brags in a single sentence? Sorry, but I really couldn’t introduce the topic without the anecdote.