When Bollywood films made with sync sound are raking in moolah from Kerala, it’s shameful to say our actors are not willing to learn their lines, said Resul Pookutty, addressing a workshop on Challenges on Sync Sound Recording on the sidelines of the 22nd IFFK on Saturday.
“Actors are expected to bare their soul when the light and sound goes on, to communicate with the camera. It’s shameful for an industry to say that they can’t use sync sound because the actors are not ready. Is it because they don’t want to move out of this cosy, comfortable zone where nobody will question them? The biggest challenge of sync sound recording today is the attitude of the people in the industry,” he said.
It was one single actor, Aamir Khan, who changed the sync sound scenario in Bollywood, he pointed out. “When he worked with Deepa Mehta, he understood the power of sync sound and employed it in Lagaan . Later, Sanjay Leela Bhansali used it in Black and so many films followed suit. Till then, it was good-looking people, good costumes and good locations, and for the first time, good sound made it to the list,” he said.
The Oscar-winner also lashed out at the exhibitors who install cheap and outdated sound systems that ruin all the work of a sound artist. “In my early days in Mumbai, I used to beg and bribe projection people to use a standardised system,” he said.
“Across the globe, unless you are working with a Tarantino or Nolan, sound artists face the same challenges. While every director in the industry has an understanding of what the cameraman does, they hardly have any idea about the role of a sound artist,” he added.
He explained that the job of a sound artist is to create an ‘immersive experience’, something that brings in the sense of time.
“The duty of sound artists like me is to give you an experience that you cannot get in your drawing rooms using DVD players. Picture has gone from two dimensional to three and cinema is a continuum of time and space where embedded images are created. That space is two dimensional, but the experience of that space, I must say, is immersive. The moment you put a sound with that image, the sensation of time comes, so it’s the temporal element of your experience that we put in. If you hear a cricket sound you assume it’s a summer night, when you hear a quail it becomes daytime, if I put the sound of rumbling thunder you feel rains are coming,” he said adding the presence of thick sound narratives is integral in many movies.
“When you watch the films of master filmmakers like Tarkovsky you feel you have been transported to another space. The sound takes you inside that experience.”
