R3 Reading Response

            Sound can often be overlooked in films. I myself do not really have much experience with it and have mostly gone by the idea that if you do not notice the sound, then it’s good sound. The article “The Father of Acoustic Ecology” was extremely interesting to me because it was something that I have noticed in my daily life but have not thought about as in-depth as this article did. My friend is taking a city planning class and a lot of the terms she brings up are over my head but she has mentioned the way sound plays a huge role in their discussions. Audiences’ only notice bad sound in films, otherwise it fades into the background. Similarly with city planning, being close to a huge highway or train track is extremely noticeable, while other sounds are less intrusive.

More often than not, the absence of sound is a lot more noticeable than movies with heavy sound effects. I recently saw “Moonlight” and it’s generally a very quiet movie and I could tell it was making the people in the theatre a little uncomfortable because they were trying to eat quieter and not move around as much. I personally prefer movies more on the quiet side because they feel more serene. On the complete opposite side, when I was younger I used to be obsessed with this gymnastics movie called “Stick It” and there was one scene in particular that had this loud music that was abruptly cut off when the coach unzipped his jacket and I thought it was the coolest use of sound even though I did not really understand films at the time.