[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. A new film asks viewers to do something that seems counterintuitive for a movie. It asks audiences to close their eyes. That's because it's a film all about sound and the power of audio to transport us and transform us. Oscar-nominated director Sam Green's new movie titled 32 Sounds, explores all different aspects of sound from nature to manmade harmony, dissonance From the science of how our ears work to the art of creating movie sound effects. in a variety review of the film critic, Peter Deruge wrote, "32 Sounds puts the entire act of listening in context, such that I doubt I will ever hear things quite the same way again."

The film is being released in theaters today, and if you go to a special one once a day version of the screening at Film Forum, you'll be treated to an unusual experience. You'll be given headphones, which Sam instructs you to take on and off throughout the film. It's a way to recreate the live experience. Sam and sound designer, Mark Mangini, designed where viewers are treated to live music, narration, and sound mixing during a screening. Since we here AT WNYC, of course, love and appreciate the power of audio, we're delighted to be joined now by Director, Sam Green, and sound designer, Mark Mangini, 32 Sounds is in theaters today. Mark, nice to meet you.

Sam Green: Thank you, Alison. Pleasure to meet you.

Alison Stewart: Sam--

Mark Mangini: Hi, Sam.

Sam Green: Hi, nice to meet you.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for coming in. Sam, why did you want to make a film about sound?

Sam Green: Well, right at the beginning of the pandemic, I came across a reference to a woman named Annea Lockwood, who I'd never heard of. It was in a book and there was a sentence that said, "Annea Lockwood has recorded the sound of Rivers for 50 years." That intrigued me so much, I just got obsessed with her. I got in touch with her. We started talking and the film came out of that. She's such a smart person about sound and listening.

Alison Stewart: What was something that she said to you about sound that made you think about sound differently and also set you off on, "This is what my movie couldn't and will be about?"

Sam Green: Well, it was a simple thing, and it's actually in the movie. She talks about listening with as opposed to listening to. That if you sit out there, and it sounds simple, but if you sit out there and listen to the sound of birds and crickets and bugs, you're listening with everything else. You're part of nature and other things are listening to you. It's much less you versus the world. It's you as part of the world. It's a simple idea, but it really revolutionized how I think about sound and myself and the world actually.

Alison Stewart: Well, let's hear a little clip from the film 32 Sounds about what you were just discussing and Annea Lockwood.

[movie - 32 Sounds]

Annea Lockwood: Oops, that's not the right one. We need F2.

Speaker 1: [laughs] This is rolling fast.

Sam Green: There's is really wild little fluttering sound going on down there and I can't--

Annea Lockwood: You'll never do.

[sounds in nature]

Speaker 2: You've ever heard that?

Sam Green: Yes.

Annea Lockwood: Does something I started writing about, about a year ago, listening with as opposed to listening to. It's my sense that if I'm standing here, I'm just one of many organisms that are listening with one another.

Alison Stewart: Mark, as we're listening to that, and those of us who have headphones on can tell that it's going from left side to the right side, right side to the left side. Tell us a little bit about the conversations you have had with Sam about how you wanted people to hear this movie.

Mark Mangini: It became obvious to me that Sam wanted to go pretty deep with sound. I found that compelling and refreshing because my experience with documentaries was such that it seemed okay to attempt to present some truth in a documentary visually with a wide screen. The process is generally captured with a single monaural microphone. Of course, we hear the world, our universe in 360 degrees. That was part of our early discussions, which were, let's try and break the mold. God, this is a project about sound. Let's present sound in as truthful hence and as immersive way as possible.

That meant Sam actually adopting and adapting some techniques as a documentary filmmaker that I don't think he had explored, and bless him, was deeply open to, and thus began a fruitful and creative relationship between the two of us.

Alison Stewart: What are some of the adaptations you had to make, Sam?

Sam Green: Oh, well, I had to learn a ton about sound [chuckles] and being sophisticated about sound, but, Mark, I learned a ton about binaural recording which is a technology that allows things to be spatial. I didn't know anything about that. Also, just a process of sound design. Mark is a master, he is been doing it for 40-some-odd years. He's done huge movies. I just learned a ton seeing how he works.

Alison Stewart: I was going to say, Mark, [laughs] you've worked for-- You've won two Oscars, by the way, for Best Sound for Dune and best sound editing for Mad Max Fury Road. As I say, those two films, I just think, big.

Sam Green: He had done Dune right before 32 sounds. Talk about whiplash.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about whiplash, Mark [laughs]. What did you have to readjust about your approach coming off of these big, majestic, grand projects and to something that's really intimate? I mean this in the best way, nerdy.

Sam Green: I'll take that.

Alison Stewart: A video Radiolab as I've been calling it [laughs].

Sam Green: Hey, that's good.

Alison Stewart: What did you have to adapt to and adjust?

Mark Mangini: Well, the first and foremost, the original incarnation of 32 sounds as you mentioned, was a theater presentation, but with headphones. Now, as many may know, in narrative filmmaking, when you go to a cinema, hopefully, you enjoy it in immersive audio with speakers all around the theater in front of you, behind you, to the sides of you, above you. This was a presentation that was originally, and still, Sam is touring, with a presentation that asks you to put on a set of headphones. I had to really rethink how I hear and technically how we would achieve that.

Alison Stewart: When did you always know this was going to be part of the process? Sam, The headphones?

Sam Green: No, it was only halfway through. I was thinking, how am I going to make a documentary about sound, show it in all sorts of theaters, some of which have terrible sound systems, and make a good sonic experience? My producer, Josh Penn, said, "I have a terrible idea for you." I said, "What?" He said, "What if everybody wears headphones?" I thought, "That's actually brilliant."

Mark Mangini: It's crazy.

Sam Green: It allows you to have a consistent audio-sonic experience and you can use binaural recording technology. I thought it was great. We did it. It's a huge pain in the, but still.

Alison Stewart: Another thing which is counterintuitive but is also really fun, I found, watching the film was you ask us to close our eyes. Being a journalist, I opened one eye to make sure there wasn't something going on the screen. Just make sure you weren't doing something shady [laughs].

Sam Green: Is that where I had the text saying, really close your eyes?

Alison Stewart: I was like, "Oh, he sees me." Yes, that's an interesting idea to just decide, "I'm going to forego any visual stimuli."

Sam Green: Well, it's hard with movies. Cinema is predominantly a visual medium. People pay attention with their eyes, they're dazzled by their eyes. Sorry, Mark, I hope this doesn't break your heart, but people think about sound.

Mark Mangini: If you don't perpetuate that myth, Sam. It is a myth.

Sam Green: Trying to get people to listen in a movie in an engaged way is a challenge. I tried to think of ways to playfully scramble the way people listen. Closing your eyes is a easy ask, and it does do that. You listen in a different way, so it's effective

Alison Stewart: Whenever, if I'm really concentrating on something on the show or if somebody's talking to me and it's very emotional, I often close my eyes.

Sam Green: 100%.

Alison Stewart: Even if a person's in the room. Don't take offense if that happens during this conversation. [laughs] My guests are Sam Green and Mark Mangini. We are talking about 32 sounds, which opens in New York today. One of those moments, Mark, when you, I mean, Sam, excuse me. When you ask us to close our eyes, is this recording of a bird. It's a very bittersweet song about this bird, we're going to play it. People heard a little bit before accidentally, but now they'll understand why it's so important to listen to this bird song. Can you set up this clip for us?

Sam Green: Yes. It's a recording of a species of bird called the Moho braccatus. It was a bird that was decimated by development, it lived in Hawaii and there were two left, a male and a female. The female was killed in a hurricane. There was one Moho braccatus left, and somebody recorded its mating call, and that's what this recording is.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen.

[Moho braccatus sound]

Mark, what emotions does that bring up for you?

Mark Mangini: I can almost cry because it's such a bittersweet idea. Sure, it's a bird, not a human, but we can all empathize with a call that'll never be answered. Perhaps some of us have felt that way in our mating dance, [laughs] a call that will never be answered. It's deeply moving, and without the context, it's just the sound of a bird, but within that context, it's a powerful sonic moment, I think. I love that Sam, with this clip and with many other moments in the film, asks us to think about what we're hearing and maybe even imagine, create our own context.

Alison Stewart: I laughed out loud at one point, when we see the tree fall in the forest [laughs]. Yes. Up top, a tree falls in the forest. Going back to the saying, if nobody hears it, does it actually make a sound? You make us wait to find out if it had a sound. I was curious about that choice, that first choice to just have it silent.

Sam Green: [laughs] It just seemed right to put that idea out there and just not answer it but make it unsettled, and then later in the film come back with a real answer for that.

Alison Stewart: How do you feel, Mark, about capturing sounds in nature as someone who, or what is a natural sound that you really admire as someone whose job, and I mean this in not a negative way in some ways to manipulate sound, to craft sound. I'm curious about a natural sound that you admire.

Mark Mangini: Oh. Well, I'm endlessly fascinated with the sounds of wildlife, in fact. I've spent a great deal of time, 46 years with a portable recorder and a microphone at zoos and wild animal parks and professional training facilities going into cages, and sometimes out of the cages as well, capturing the sounds of wildlife. I'm just fascinated by that range of emotions and expressions that animals have.

I recently saw a fantastic exhibit at the Peabody Museum in Massachusetts by Bernie Krause. Bernie is a well-known wildlife documentarian with sound, and he's been on a project for decades where he goes to a particular site somewhere, I think. in New York. He's captured that nature over the course of 50 years, and you hear the progression and hence the encroachment of humanity into that environment. Not only how the environment changes, but how the calls of that wildlife change as well, it's a beautiful and thought-provoking exhibit. Those are the kinds of things I think of and listen for.

Alison Stewart: What's changed about the way you think about sound and nature whilst working on this, Sam?

Sam Green: Making this film profoundly changed me, and it's just, I think, my ears are open more. Even walking around the city John Cage was sort of a central figure in the film, said a million times, he said his favorite sound was the sound of traffic outside his window on Sixth Avenue. He found pleasure in all kinds of sounds, and I think that is true, that if you open your ears, for myself at least, open your ears and really listen, there's all kinds of pleasure out there.

Alison Stewart: We often talk around here at WNYC and Public Radio about the intimacy of audio, and our listeners tell us this too.

Sam Green: It's true.

Alison Stewart: That it's wide. Why do you think that's true?

Sam Green: Well, sound is mysterious. I mean, a painting on the wall, we understand it's there. We go look at it tomorrow, it'll be there. Sound is ephemeral, it's just here and gone, and it works on us in this mysterious way. You know more about this than me probably, but this is my own impression that it's just murky and odd and mysterious, and that gives it a kind of intimacy.

Alison Stewart: What do you think, Mark? What is it about sound and audio that recreates intimacy?

Mark Mangini: There's a couple of things. First, the nerdy part of it.

[laughter]

Sorry, Sam, you knew I'd go there [laughter]. Sound from a scientific standpoint is actually the bonus sense because you actually get two for the price of one. Your ears hear, and they translate sound waves into information that your brain decodes, but sound is also felt. Sound isn't just heard because sound is waves, not particles. The intimacy part is that sense that there's a huge difference between somebody whispering in your ear and maybe whispering 10 feet away the physical sensation of somebody proximate to you.

Back to our film for a little bit, we have a beautiful binaural recording that presents that feeling of intimacy only in the way that binaural can do, because we bring sound right up to the audience's ear. You can't do that in traditional cinema because you have speakers on walls around you, but not near you, and you can't get that intimacy, that sense of proximity, like somebody's right up on your microphone.

[laughter]

That's just beautiful.

Alison Stewart: I'm interested, could you explain how binaural sound is? Well, explain to us in the film, 32 Sounds.

Sam Green: It's a way of recording. It's like a 360-degree recording, and so it preserves the relationship of the things around the microphone. If something is behind the microphone, when you listen, it'll sound like it's behind you. Normal microphones are just left-right, or even mono. They're just in front of you. It's an odd sensation and in one part of the movie, we have somebody walking around shaking a matchbook of matches, and you can really feel it. It's the way we hear things in normal life, but we very rarely hear that way in recorded media so it's odd and uncanny almost, the realness of it.

Alison Stewart: My guest was Sam Green.

Mark Mangini: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Go ahead.

Mark Mangini: Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to put one little tag on that.

Alison Stewart: I'm listening.

[laughter]

Mark Mangini: Sorry. Back to Sam had mentioned, and you had mentioned this idea that we go to cinema and cinema is a visual medium. I want to argue that idea for a moment only because I and friends of mine often take polls, and this is not scientific, this is totally empirical. When I ask my friends, "If you had a choice between having a photograph or a sound recording of a deceased loved one," guess which gets the most votes?

That speaks to this idea of intimacy. There's something about the aliveness that a photograph or maybe even a moving image can never contain. I've been doing that with my family knowingly and unknowingly for decades, capturing family dinners and gatherings and things like that.

Alison Stewart: In the film, 32 Sounds, we learn how sound works, how the ear works. We learn about Foley artists manipulating different items to get different kinds of sounds. The one sound I wanted to get to, because I think a lot of New Yorkers know this sound, it's the In The Air Tonight, guy [laughter] Don Garcia. You may have experienced him on the streets of New York.

MUSIC - Phil-Collins: In The Air Tonight

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord. Oh lord

Don Garcia: Some people like it, some people give me the finger, so I just keep going. I like it.

Sam Green: How's your hearing? Is your hearing okay?

Don Garcia: Say that again. [laughter]. No, hearing is good.

MUSIC - Phil-Collins: In The Air Tonight

I can feel it coming in the air tonight--

Alison Stewart: Sam, why was it important to include Don Garcia, the In the Air Tonight guy?

Sam Green: It's so funny. I have a six-year-old, and about five years ago, when the child was one, we'd put him to bed, and in the middle of the night, this guy would drive by blasting In the Air Tonight and wake my kid up. I was so mad about it and I saw on Green Pointers the Instagram at some point, somebody did a video of Don Garcia, and hundreds, if not thousands of people commented.

I thought it was just me being angry at this one guy, but tons of people knew him as the, In the Air Tonight Guy. Then I flipped my thought of him and and realized there's something really interesting about that phenomenon of people projecting their sound into other people's worlds. Making them say, "Here's my music, and you got to hear it." There's a interesting power dynamic, and it's also just funny. We filmed with him and he's a great character.

Alison Stewart: That is a song you feel the vibration, especially when the beat drops. The film, 32 Sounds, opens in New York today. I've been speaking with its director, Sam Green and sound designer, Mark Mangini. Thank you both for joining us. Really appreciate your time today.

Sam Green: Thank You so much, Alison.

Mark Mangini: Thank you, Alison. Pleasure.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It for this week. All Of It is produced by Andrea Duncan-Mao, Kate Hinds, Jordan Lauf, Simon Close, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, L. Malik Anderson, and Luke Green. Our intern is Katherine St. Martin. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Jason Isaac. Luscious Jackson does our music. If you miss any segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your podcast platform of choice. If you like what you hear, leave us a great rating. It helps people find the show. I'm Allison Stewart, I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

[music]

 

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