Sound as an instrument of storytelling

https://www.ted.com/talks/tasos_frantzolas_everything_you_hear_on_film_is_a_lie

In this talk, the speaker makes the point that sound is a beautiful yet deceiving lie, and in that there is power. His talk pertains specifically to film, and throughout his talk he demonstrates multiple examples. His message is understood within the first three minutes, everything you hear in film is not that actual noise, such as a punch really being the audio of sticking a knife in vegetables. Another tool used to prove his point his talking about the technique of reverberation. During this he demonstrates to the audience how a sound changes in different sized areas and how a sound designer can manipulate their sounds to fit that expectation. Another powerful tool he addresses is silence, and then goes on to explain the inaccuracy of that term. He stresses how there is sound in any space, and that is reflected in films with ambient sound. In addition he talks about how sounds that seemingly would occur naturally are often linked in our minds with certain situations, such as the sound of glass breaking indicating the end of a relationship. Finally he describes the power of off screen sounds, in which the audience does not see the object/situation making the sound but only hears it. To prove the power of this point he played a video of a close up of a baby moving around, with multiple different sounds each time he replayed it. It went from the baby to appearing to be playing with a toy to the baby seeming to be playing ping pong. Overall he teaches the audience about multiple tools utilized in the film industry that are used to make sound.

To understand this TED talk it is important to analyze the speaker and what he utilizes to achieve his purpose. One important area to consider is how the speaker establishes ethos in his talk. He is best known as the founder of Soundsnap.com, a sound effects and music library and this appears to be the reason he is given this talk. Viewing it from an online standpoint created a lack of ethos in this way as he did not explicitly say this in his talk. I had to read his biography on a different page in order to find out this information, where as it can be assumed that the audience had received some sort of introduction to his background. Also in his talk he causally mentions "our library" which confused me due to my lack of knowledge at that point about his background. After acknowledging that problem, his ethos is strong. He proves this in his talk in subtle ways, such as having vast knowledge about the topic. This knowledge is proved throughout the talk, such as when he addressed the importance of reverberation in films and then played an example for the audience. Logos also has a strong presence in his talk. As previously discussed, he uses multiple examples to back up the claims he makes. This allows an avenue for people who are very unfamiliar with film to agree with him through his example choices. Also the frequency of evidence, being after every point he makes, allows for further establishment of ethos in his talk. To me, the strongest point of ethos he makes is towards the end when he addressed the power of off-screen sounds. After making his point, he went on the demonstrate eight examples and proving to the audience the statement he had made. Ethos does not make a strong appearance in this talk, as the subject matter would be weakened. Ethos does appear in his examples, using the sound to influence the audiences emotions, yet that is utilized only to further expand on his use of logos.

I first clicked on this TED talk because it was centered around film, one of my favorite classes (along with English of course). We had actually recently filmed a movie and just started post production, which included sound production (shout out to Rosie, our sound designer). In addition, I had a small amount of prior knowledge on the topic, so I figured it would be interesting to watch. As I watched and listened, a theme relating to topics we have discussed in class arose. The idea that things are not as they seem, moreover the idea that someone is putting on a façade. In the talk, it pertained to how sounds in films are deceiving, more often than not being a straight up lie. This also can be a connection to sense perception, and how senses can be easily tricked or persuaded with the right tools. This idea has been present in class through the concept of the duality of humans, and the maintaining of reputation. Often people put forth a lie about themselves in order to achieve a certain purpose or reputation.