Shabby By Design: How to sound hokey-dokey

If nations have their own flavours of comedy, NZ has only found one that really works for us.

At least in the English-speaking worlds, humour seems to depend on political and social mores from the societies in which they are born. The UK, particularly English, humour leans heavily on the obsolete class system. Subverting the socio-economic standings of people with particular accents is staple. For some reason, “class” is still a recognised thing in the UK (and Europe) even though there is now next to no distinction between the amount of money, prestige or opportunity a titled person has against a “commoner”. A cockney accent can be heard alongside an Eton one, as Monty Python has shown for decades. Blackadder, Peep Show, Ab-Fab and the plethora of panel shows have continually reinforced this.

If it can be generalised, American humour has perfected the “situational”: observation on the curiosities and absurdities of everyday life in such a varied and troubled country. Aussies have made it a key part of their national identity to celebrate and accentuate their casual, even vulgar, nature. (Remember they seriously considered foregoing the archaic titles of knight- and dame-hoods to something arguably as absurd, “matehoods”.)

New Zealand seems to have settled in a happy place of its own. An ex-colony, reckoning with its own economic and social history, our brand of comedy (and drama in many cases) is that of the lovable failure. Never quite hitting the heights of greatness that we think we deserve, we content ourselves by revelling in our shortcomings. Think of comedians like John Clarke, Billy T James, Taika Waititi, Madeleine Sami, Rose Matafeo. Their ostensible low-status, can-do, she’ll-be-right casuality makes them indispensable national heroes. Seminal films like Boy, Goodbye Pork Pie, Sione’s Wedding, and shows like Wellington Paranormal, Find Me a Māori Bride, Meke My Waka all depend on characters with varying degrees of (in)competence who nevertheless succeed in their own humble ways. This is brilliantly perfected in the Flight of the Concords episode featuring “New Zealand Town”: a poorly resourced, shonkily constructed, tiny, even pathetic, expo of NZ culture (contrasted with the wealthy and glitzy Aussie pavilion).

Our task in the sound department is to carry this lo-fi, low-budget, aesthetic through to the soundtrack. Sounds simple right? Throw out the rules on sound design, slap the on-set-recorded dialogue in as is, chuck a couple of generic sound effects at it and be in the pub by 11am? Not so fast. Not fast at all actually. To make something sound hokey, but not actually be hokey, is a much trickier job. A poorly and hastily worked soundtrack is a bore, a slog, to listen to. It’s tiring. Gets annoying. Eventually you disengage with it and switch it off. It’s entertainment after all, you shouldn’t be the one doing the work to be entertained.

Think of some of the most successful musicians and musical performances. A machine can transcribe a written composition into sounds, but can it add the musicality, the art? Can it feel the tension in the room and provide just the right amount of rubato to move the audience? This kind of sophisticated performance takes years of careful training and experience. While machines can pack years’ worth of training data into their learning algorithms, can they sense and experience that human-to-human connection? I would argue no, by definition. For instance, AI can only get its data from the internet; and despite what the Zuck-Musk-o-sphere would have us believe, the internet is NOT the world. In some of the most skanking reggae tracks, not a single musician plays directly on the beat. Some of the grooviest jazz musicians deliberately never quite hit the implied note. There is an understanding reached between the performer and the listener of what is meant, but not necessarily what is said (or played).

Similarly, sound designers need to tap that suspension of disbelief. The audience buys into the simulated hoke, without having to suffer the fatigue-inducing actual hoke. A whole thesis can be written on the techniques we use to do this, from introducing breadcrumbs of lo-fi material that establish the feeling, to the imperceptible increasing of fidelity throughout the scene, to the obscuring of high-fidelity material with other sound effects and during attention-grabbing moments. Like with any soundtrack, this process needs much careful attention, but as crucially, someone with a fresh ear to assess weather the ratio of lo- to hi-fi is appropriate at any moment. It the finding this sweet-spot of connection between sound and audience that is key to the whole illusion. The magic.