Norman Wanstall Guest Lecture

Today we had a guest lecture from Norman Wanstall about his sound work in James Bond films, which he won an Oscar for Goldfinger in 1964. He described his experiences with working in sound and he mentioned how video editing is completely different today in the digital age but he said the principles have all remained the same. From a historical point of view in post production this is interesting information because of how it has changed from physical film to digital, but we still use the same theories and techniques for creating good edits.

During he spoke about recent James Bond films and he seemed to dislike them, he mentioned Quantum of Solace (2008) and he mentioned that the film has too many quick cuts and it didn't build up tension. I found that this was interesting of him to mention because during Post Production Lecture we have looked at tension building and we learnt that slow cuts are the best way to create tension. He talked about how he would record sounds and this is still very similar to how we would record them today, he would record the sounds with a microphone and the sounds would be put onto a physical film containing the audio which would run alongside the actual film. Today, we just need to record the sounds and then import them to software. Again this is showing how post production has changed but the principles are kept the same.

Oddjob Throws at Statue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXZL2fmptkU

This is one scene which Norman mentioned during his lecture. He described how he created all the sounds for this and he created them from objects which you wouldn't expect. He mentioned that the sound for the hat being thrown came from a toy he had as a child, he described it as a metal disc with strings that could be spun around and it makes the noise you hear in the Oddjob scene. This proves how you would need to be creative to make good sounds for films.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) - Ski chase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrkerh77MYY

This was another scene which Norman talked about. He mentioned how he created the sounds for the skis and snow, he would take a scrubber and rub it against a jacket to create the noise and they would do it continuously until they had enough sounds to cover the entire scene. To create sounds for snow they would throw sand at pieces of paper and record the sound of the sand hitting the paper. This again proves how sound design for films is a creative job.