It's behind you! Designing sound for off-screen action

There’s a point where those deluded denizens who have crossed over to the dark side to skulk away in their rooms for hours, staring at lights, pressing buttons, bouncing air molecules to fill the foetid voids in their wayward souls (people otherwise known as sound editors) become proficient, even impressive, in their abilities. A few years into the job, they’ve learnt many a trick and convention and figured out how to manipulate a sonic palette so skilfully that they can shock even a wearied, cantankerous fader-chucker, who thinks they’ve heard it all (a senior sound editor), with their bold new ideas. I love it when I hear some of the younger editors reach this stage: leaning in to an approach so much that even the most mundane sound truly sings. Naturally we seniors will congratulate the junior fully and heartily, then watch their frozen reaction as we steal the credit by making the same old gag: “well it’s really because you had such a good teacher, ha ha, (joking-not-joking)”.

Ah, young editor, enjoy that warm glow while you can. You deserve it. The revelation of the next step can wait until tomorrow. And what a step it is. For you see, even though you know it instinctively, you haven’t really admitted to yourself that there is a whole sonic world just off the screen… actually, completely off the screen. No no, not your beautiful surround ambiences, or that car you panned hard left, but action. REAL action. Things moving, interacting, performing… ‘acting’.

That creature you just painstakingly brought to life, marrying the perfect sound to every movement you see on screen? It still lives, off the screen. Why no, you can’t see what it’s doing now. Who knows where and how those footsteps land? Don’t ask ME how exactly it would continue to behave given its state of mind, and how that would translate sonically. Sorry, the director is much too busy now, she can’t give you any suggestions that might inspire you. The creature has a life to live, and visible or not, that has to continue. Why, you said yourself that sound “brings the thing to life'“; that sound was 50% – no, 70%! – of the movie; that ALL the emotion comes from the sound!! And now that sound must do 100% of the work for that creature to survive. All of its moves, breaths, state-of-mind, hopes/dreams, intent, the action and the storytelling, must now be preserved and communicated through sound alone. And in fact, it must be better than what you designed for the on-screen action, because the audience now has no picture to guide them. The sound has Total Power, and all associated Responsibility, for the life of that creature (or vehicle, or location, or object, or whatever).

“B-but…” the young editor asks, eyes widening with a dread sense of realisation, heart dropping with the massive responsibility, stomach tightening with the impending blank slate of possibilities without so much as a syllable of script to cue from. No matter how big the screen is, it is only a tiny fraction of the 3D space. The umbilical has been cut, the universe stretches out before them. The creature must exist, and exist well, and truly. It must live its life in such a manner as to cause no debate that what the audience hears is the only possible action it could have made. “B-but… what is the action? What is the creature doing off-screen? What should I…? How should I…? Where does it…? How long should it…? Why would it…?”

The senior editor smiles in a sympathetic, resigned way. We’re not monsters, after all; there is still a spirit in here somewhere, albeit bruised by the years of compromise, impossible deadlines, crappy playback systems, deleted scenes. “Someone has to preserve that creature’s life with their brilliant skills,” the senior says, with just the right emphasis on the second-person-singular. The penny drops even further. The young editor’s face turns ashen. They hear, as if an echo, far away: “Yes, you.” They are now utterly responsible for the very existence of an off-screen entity, solely and wholly. They are the director, performer, critic, audience, parent and Creator to the being they’ve so successfully brought forth on-screen. They now are the character, and must inhabit its whole back story, its state of mind, its desires and regrets; and must express this entirely through the power of the art-form they so enthusiastically pursued. The yang to the yin of Lord Krishna’s statement “Now I am become death” is of course ‘now I am become life’. The young editor is the sole guardian to this weighty onus. And they realise, just like the early gods surely did, they must do it all in the dark.

Back to their editing room they stagger, reeling with the weight of the moment. They barely even hear the voice of the senior editor calling out over their shoulder idly, almost flippantly, “Oh and we need it by tomorrow.” As they close the the door with shaking hands, they wonder if they hear another, half-whispered comment, as if the senior were almost speaking it to themself.

“And it better be right!”

Sound editor taking on more than expected