Courtesy: Filmways Pictures
Students interested in film might want to take a look at a classic that focuses on one of the more overlooked aspects of movie making.
The 1981 motion picture Blow Out is a deep dive into the world of sound. It is the story of a B-movie sound technician and his relationships with audio: analyzing, acquiring, following, and implementing.
The viewer is purposely made overtly aware of the process of hearing in the first scene. A masked slasher stalks around a girl’s dorm. He is breathing, stepping into, and sampling the vignettes of sorority life window by window.
As a first time viewer, one is ready to turn this trite trash off, but soon discovers the goings on are being observed by two sound men working on a film: Co-ed Frenzy. Elements of sound engineering are seen in the opening credits as analog level indicators are used as a wipe between names of folks in the film.
Our protagonist, Jack, played by John Travolta, needs to find the perfect scream to complete a project. Now starts the most interesting part of the movie for this viewer: seeing all the tape, the reel-to-reels spinning, cutting/splicing, and just remembering how the world of sound manipulation used to look before the most disappointing offering of sound throughout this film: the dialogue.
This is a good example of a movie resonating with one of its elements of production. The telephone scenes are filmed with care and make use of several Hollywood conventions: A to B cuts with the conversation, dialogue overlaps in a shot/reverse style, and picture by picture sharing both parties’ conversation. One scene uses what is now called autonomous sensory meridian response or ASMR. While Jack is trying to compile evidence he peruses the pages of a magazine. While doing so his hands are touching and turning the pages, making one cringingly aware of the texture. Then in a classic ASMR move, he cuts the pages with scissors slowly and loudly, creating tension through sound.
Another fun point is that Jack’s antagonist is also a sound man of sorts. Burke, played by John Lithgow, can be observed wearing a telephone service man’s uniform. He also uses sound against Jack by erasing all of his tapes and manipulating the sound of phone conversations.
[SPOILER AHEAD] Music is used efficiently to move the action along during car scenes and to transition between scenes. In the final act our hero attaches a “wire” to Sally, only to discover that unbeknownst to her the killer is there. Jack uses the transmitted audio to determine her whereabouts: hearing the turnstile, train whistle, and fireworks. Ultimately Jack does not save the girl. He does, however, save the audio created from her fatal encounter with Burke. He languishes over this sound-bite in a snow-covered cemetery, internalizing every plea for help and each frantic attempt to appeal to her killer. The last scene of the film echos the start: with two sound-guys engineering audio for a movie.
This time Jack got his great scream and is tortured by it, and rightfully so. One can only assume that the ending has something to do with how the film making process requires a creator to use sometimes painful personal elements of their real life to complete a project.