Expertease Experts on: Silent Cinema

So it's the impact of sound coming into your ears that's causing this great modern day malaise. Is that what you're saying? Because if that's what you're saying, I feel like that's a really bad message for us to be putting out on a podcast. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Clare Sera, our audience tonight is composed mostly of silent movie buffs, and that's your Expertise. Spelled wrong?

Naturally. Welcome, welcome one and all to the podcast called Expertise. I'm your host Danno Sullivan. Clare, welcome. A lot of our listeners may not even be familiar with the experience of sitting through an actual silent movie. Yes. What's that like? It's a little bit like this. You see what I did there? I gave you the silent treatment. For just a second, I was in a magical realm, Clare. I see why people must enjoy going to the silent movies now. When people think of silent movies, they are not really thinking of silent movies. They're thinking of movies in black and white where people run around in fast motion to music, which is a sound.

Music is not silence. It is not silence. I have listened to a lot of music and I've listened to a lot of silence, and it never occurred to me that they were two different things. As soon as something hits a sound wave, you have noise. I didn't realize there was so much science behind the silent cinema. Oh my goodness. It's all science. Do you ever get those mixed up, your silence and your science? I have not yet, but I'm an expert. It's like if the ground broke in the forest, would it make a noise? If a movie was made in a forest, would it be called The Blair Witch Project?

Yes, but that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about movies that are filmed. They are filmed silently. It's not that the sound is removed after the filming. So, they must put up a ton of drapery, baffling. We have increased the baffling industry by a hundredfold, and they are, if I may say, baffled by this entire new wave of no sound waves. Now, what's the advantage of making a movie without sound, a silent movie? Cinema, in my opinion, is a visual art. Yes, it is. It's called a movie because things move. Do your eyeballs make noise, Dano? Claire, I've got kind of a sickness when I blink.

There's kind of a squelch. Can I say squelch, or is that a sound that offends the silent sensibilities of your tender ears? That's a very offensive sound, and one that we would certainly, if that was to happen, perhaps you couldn't be a crew member on a silent film. No, I don't think I could because I blink so loudly. Well, and it's something, it's why it's hard to crew up sometimes for some of our films. Everyone has to be tested for, do they have creaky bones? Do they have loud blinks, smacking lips? Velcro closures. Velcro closures. So, you're sort of like the Amish in that way.

In a sense, yes. Although we do not believe the camera will steal your soul. Yeah, so, it's quite an event to set up for a scene in a silent film. What goes into it? If you're filming in a forest, for instance. So, you have to go into the forest, find the area that you found a gorgeous sequoia grove. Now, I know this is not a hypothetical. I've seen sequoia and sequoia too. So, I kind of know where you're going with this, but go ahead. So, definitely have to clear the ground beforehand. A lot of twigs and leaves and mulch. All those are such noisemakers. Is your crew allowed to go in with leaf blowers and mowers?

Those are awfully noisy. Yeah, yeah. You're not against sound. No, no, of course. Dano, I'm talking to you. I'm breaking the sound waves as- I didn't even think about that, Claire. Right. So, we have brought in the leaf blowers and a few tractors to move us. We've got our hunting gear just in case if there's any animals nearby. Yeah, those nice loud guns. Sometimes the sound of the explosion of a gun can scare off wildlife for miles around. Yeah. So, that would be invaluable, I'd think. Oh, absolutely. And then we cover the ground in layers of memory foam. Memory foam.

Memory foam. Memory foam. I'm just trying to remember what you said there. All of the actors will be walking on memory foam. Now, I read something about sponge shoes. The crew will wear sponge shoes because they need to move the camera. And the boom mic operator has to be silent as he goes around. It might sound contradictory, but this is a full movie set. And we have a mic operator to make sure. Oh, so you're recording the silence. We record the specific silence. Elsewise, how would you know that it was a silent movie? That's right. You almost need that silent soundtrack to prove the fact that you've created this beautiful piece of art.

I am just asking us to step back and experience an experience without our ear holes telling us what to experience. I am tired of being terrorized by my ear balls saying, think this, hear that, listen to this, listen to that. You shut up, you canals of noise. You're sounding a little bit like a Herodin, a fanatic about this noise thing, Claire. And it's got me a little worried that there must have been some dark episode in your past that put you down this path to be so anti-sound. You're right. There was a dark episode early in my career when I did talkies.

I've flipped through some back issues of film fanatic. And your name pops up in the annual index, 1978 and 1979. There's Three Big Explosions was one of the movies you worked on. There's The Overload World of Jacques Cousteau, which I really, just from the title, I can't work out what that is. I can tell you that the Jacques Cousteau episode was absolutely, it is what put me on this path. I don't know if you are aware of this. He certainly tries to hide it, but his first films, he added so much sound. You know, when you are underwater, you don't hear the fish talking and the octopus laughing like you do in a movie by Jacques Cousteau.

They don't actually speak French underwater. Undersea creatures are not fluent en Francais. No, or really any language. All of that dialogue was added afterwards. The sounds of the water swishing about, that was done in a foley room in the back alleys of Burbank. Claire, I wasn't going to bring this up, but you really seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder. And I feel like if I can knock that off, you might benefit. I know that in a lot of your early films, you indeed were the foley operator. You were the one creating the sounds for the movies. Dano, I completely, I own that.

I admit that. It sometimes takes going into the belly of the noisy beast. I feel like Mr. Cousteau is a heretic to cinema. He had me in waders up to my wahoos, making ocean noises. Could we sidetrack for just a minute? Because you are credited with innovating some of the great sound effect techniques. I know that you came up with sound of refrigerator door closing. Yes. Heavy boots on snow. Yes. But that's the kind of creative work that you don't want to take credit for now. And yet it's changed the industry. For the worst. For the worst. We've got sounds in a movie now where there wouldn't normally be sounds in real life.

Right. There's literally the sounds of silence in some modern movies. The sounds of silence. Can you hear how ridiculous a phrase that is? It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Silence has no sound. Right. I'm also being sued by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Oh, oh, what's the sound of that? Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Which you can achieve by if you get the sleigh bells from like a Walmart at Christmas time. Oh, you can't stop yourself. You love the sound, but you don't want to accept that you love the sound. It's not authentic. I'm trying to get back to an authentic soundless world.

Like why add, you know? How can you say it's not authentic when you're talking about something natural, like a set of sleigh bells that you can buy at Walmart? How can something exist in our world and not be of our world? But Danno, it's not a sound that organically happens. And I'm just adding to the noise of the world. We have enough sounds that happen organically. Just think about, Danno, when you first wake up in the morning, how many sounds come out of you organically? That's what I'm trying to get back to with cinema. Only organic sounds that happen in the moment.

And so, sure, I'm pushing back. Why did I shoot in the sequoias? You couldn't see any of the trees. They were covered with baffle. Yeah. But I'm trying to make a point. How are ticket sales for sequoia? Did you hear that silence, Danno? Oh, that is the silence that speaks volumes. I'm thinking the sound we need right there is sad trombone. And unfortunately, that's a sound we don't have. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been talking with Claire Coffany, Sarah, an expert in the modern day silent cinema. Claire, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Danno.

Please do put a link to Sequoia in the show notes.