Sound and Editing at the BFI

Last Wednesday my Media Studies class and I went to visit the British Film Institution in order to watch a talk called 'Sound + Image' and Creating a Film around Sound. The talk was given by Andrew Boulton, Destiny Ekaragha, Rob Entwistle, Ed Hughes and Jonnie Robinson, all whom had different cinematic backgrounds are opinions to offer.

The talk was introduced by Andrew Boulton who gave a brief lecture on his career and difference aspects of sound and how they can be important sound can be in the creation of atmosphere and tension. Within his lecture he focused a lot on how simplicity is effective when it comes to using sound and how many directors use try to over-compensate and aren't subtle enough with sound.

Destiny Ekaragha and Rob Entwistle in my opinion gave the most interesting point of views on sound and its use. Destiny, who works mainly on short films, spoke about authenticity of accents within films and how recognisable for an example a fake Nigerian accent is for someone of real Nigerian ethnicity. Destiny went on to speak about movies where soundtrack as well as sound editing is vital to the movie such as Apocalypse Now and The Dark Knight. Destiny discussed how the absence of sound within The Dark Knight helped the audience get inside the Joker's head.

Rob Entwistle is a sound editor whom has most famously worked alongside upcoming British director Benjamin Wheatley. Entwistle showed us a scene from the upcoming Wheatley movie he is working on and used it for an example of how music can be used within cinema in order to set the tone of the scene as well as build up suspense, the particular scene that he showed us was used in order to make the viewer feel extremely uncomfortable.