Sound proofing in movies
Jun. 13th, 2011 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatAs I was lying in bed last night, listening to the distant thumping of the Isle of Wight Festival some five miles away, I reflected that people in movies don't have this problem. In movies, you can get someone sitting there in silence in their chamber, right next to a badly-sealed pair of shutters over a glassless window. Then they move to the window, throw open the shutters... and realise that 100,000 barbarians are standing in their garden going RAHRRR! The second they close the shutters, all is silence again.
Now, it could just be that said barbarians have been standing there in patient silence, indulging in crochet, charades and silent games of cat's cradle, and have saved their RAHRRR for the moment their audience appears, but barbarians are generally portrayed as people whose default setting involves going RAHRRR, and, besides, I don't think that even the best-organised barbarian army could cut off their RAHRRS mid-RAHRR, at the exact moment that some distant observer closed their shutters. At the very best, you'd get a diminuendoing RAHrrr effect. Therefore, it must be that the RAHRRRs continue, but the closing of the shutters means that the person inside can no longer hear them.
What is the explanation of this? At first, I theorised that windows, doors and shutters in movieland are made of some incredibly soundproof material of which modern science knows not. This is supported by numerous sitcoms and romantic comedies, in which the entire cast can stand just inside a door having a frenzied and loud conversation about how they're pretending they're not in, and the person standing just outside never hears a word.
However, further consideration reminded me that it's not just windows. In those same sitcoms and romantic comedies, people can take two steps away from someone and carry out of conversation in loud stage whispers, and the other person never hears a word. Clearly the very air can become soundproof if needed. It can also hide things from view. In the last few days, I have watched several films in which characters are travelling along, showing every sign of being reasonably alert, only to stop in horror when they realise they're three feet away from an ENORMOUS FOREST, a blood-stained battlefield strewn with corpses, or a towering inferno that fills half the WORLD, none of which they'd noticed hide nor hair of until they were on top of it.
This is almost enough for me to conclude that, in movieland, the tree in the quad only exists when there is a camera there to observe it, were it not for the fact that very occasionally, when the script demands it, that same sitcom cast whose argument couldn't penetrate a single door are able to hear an entire conversation that takes place across a corridor, through two doors, and down a flight of stairs.
Now, it could just be that said barbarians have been standing there in patient silence, indulging in crochet, charades and silent games of cat's cradle, and have saved their RAHRRR for the moment their audience appears, but barbarians are generally portrayed as people whose default setting involves going RAHRRR, and, besides, I don't think that even the best-organised barbarian army could cut off their RAHRRS mid-RAHRR, at the exact moment that some distant observer closed their shutters. At the very best, you'd get a diminuendoing RAHrrr effect. Therefore, it must be that the RAHRRRs continue, but the closing of the shutters means that the person inside can no longer hear them.
What is the explanation of this? At first, I theorised that windows, doors and shutters in movieland are made of some incredibly soundproof material of which modern science knows not. This is supported by numerous sitcoms and romantic comedies, in which the entire cast can stand just inside a door having a frenzied and loud conversation about how they're pretending they're not in, and the person standing just outside never hears a word.
However, further consideration reminded me that it's not just windows. In those same sitcoms and romantic comedies, people can take two steps away from someone and carry out of conversation in loud stage whispers, and the other person never hears a word. Clearly the very air can become soundproof if needed. It can also hide things from view. In the last few days, I have watched several films in which characters are travelling along, showing every sign of being reasonably alert, only to stop in horror when they realise they're three feet away from an ENORMOUS FOREST, a blood-stained battlefield strewn with corpses, or a towering inferno that fills half the WORLD, none of which they'd noticed hide nor hair of until they were on top of it.
This is almost enough for me to conclude that, in movieland, the tree in the quad only exists when there is a camera there to observe it, were it not for the fact that very occasionally, when the script demands it, that same sitcom cast whose argument couldn't penetrate a single door are able to hear an entire conversation that takes place across a corridor, through two doors, and down a flight of stairs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 04:59 pm (UTC)I wonder if it's actually some cunningly secret military cloaking device, and the US military decided to test it on the Grand Canyon first?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-13 06:16 pm (UTC)