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Featuring a compilation celebrating Piers Plowright and his memorable contribution to the School of Sound, this section comprises recordings of presentations from our thirteen conferences. More recordings will be added in the coming months.

The Piers Plowright Lecture Series

Between 1999 and 2017, Piers Plowright’s lectures, opening the School of Sound conferences, grew to become a tradition. Delivered with charm and charisma, his much-anticipated talks gave the impression of apparently spontaneous, intimate chats with friends, even across the wide open spaces of the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank. There was, of course, much more to them than that, as students and teaching colleagues at academic institutions around the country would attest. Read More »

Carter Burwell: Composing for the Coen Brothers

6 April 2001

Best known for his work with the Coen Brothers, Burwell confronts the fundamental questions facing film composers: How does music affect the audience? What are the options open to filmmaker and composer? Why do we need music in movies?

Composing for the Coen Brothers

References:
Barton Fink (Coen Brothers)
Blood Simple (Coen Brothers 1984) 00:18:42 – 00:21:20 & 00:56:00 – 00:58:02
Raising Arizona (Coen Brothers 1987) 00:41:56 – 00:45:58
Miller’s Crossing (Coen Brothers 1990) 00:06:32 – 00:08:44 & 00:37:39 – 00:42:05
Hudsucker Proxy (Coen Brothers 1994) 01:31:51 – 01:33:52
Fargo (Coen Brothers 1996) 00:00:16 – 00:02:51 & 00:10:28 – 00:11:32

Excerpt: working on Barton Fink

Photo by Chiana Yen

Roger Crittenden: Sound and Memory

17 April 2009

We all have a reservoir of aural memory, some of which is likely to be shared by our fellow human beings but a part of that memory bank is unique to our experience. This will be a personal exploration of the complexities of emotional responses to sound and how filmmakers have to differentiate the personal and the universal in attempting to use sound and music to connect with the audience.

Sound and Memory

References:
Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas 2007) 00:00:27 – 00:05:30
Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir 1936) 00:26:19 – 00:29:12
Tous les matins du monde (Alain Corneau 1991) 01:16:35 – 01:20:21
Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard 1938) 00:14:31 – 00:22:35
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, Stewart McAllister 1942) 00:00:00 – 00:02:49

Julian Henriques: Thinking Through Sound – and Learning from Jamaican Bass/Base

19 April 2017

Culture explores the ways of knowing and the ways of making which Jamaican sound system engineers have pioneered over the last 50 years, looking at their understanding of how sound works both in electronic circuitry and on human anatomy. Henriques examines the ways of making the street technology of the sound system set as a musical instrument. He considers the critical influence the instrument of the sound system has on Jamaican music, principally riddim (rhythm), versioning and, of course, dub.

Thinking Through Sound – and Learning from Jamaican Bass/Base

Pat Jackson: The Discriminating Ear

5 April 2013

Pat Jackson, Supervising Sound Editor whose credits include Jarhead, The Talented Mr Ripley, A Bug’s Life, The Godfather Part II and The English Patient, presents The Discriminating Ear, focusing our attention on how we hear the real world and the level of audio detail needed for a film world. She is currently Professor for Cinema at San Francisco State University.

References with running time from DVD (where available)

The Discriminating Ear

Excerpt: Working on Jarhead

Abbas Kiarostami from Lumière and Company (1995)

References:
Jarhead (Sam Mendes 2005) 01:14:29 – 01:15:50
The Social Network (David Fincher 2010) 00:03:35 – 00:04:32
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami 2012) 00:05:20 – 00:07:35 (opening title sequence)
Blockade (Sergey Loznitsa 2006)
Hemingway and Gellhorn (Philip Kaufman 2012) 01:36:39 – 01:39:21
Titanic (James Cameron 1997) 01:16:36 – 01:19:04
Microcosmos (Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou 1996)
K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow 2002) 00:35:33 – 00:37:19

Mani Kaul: For and Against Music in Films

5 April 2001

Mani Kaul was one of the few filmmakers whose abiding passion was to reinvent an aesthetic of sound and image and the connections between the two. Here he presents “For and against music in films”.

For and Against Music in Films

Peter Middelton and James Spinney: Notes on Blindness

20 April 2017

Peter Middleton and James Spinney, directors of Notes on Blindness, present the thinking and research behind their acclaimed film. In addition to its arresting use of sound and image, the film delves into sometimes unnerving notions of human perception.

Notes on Blindness

Walter Murch: A Century of Synchrony Between Sound and Image

26 April 2003

Murch has been a film editor and sound designer since 1969, nominated eight times by the Academy of Motion Pictures. At this time in 2003, he was editing and mixing Anthony Minghella’s adaptation of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. Murch will show the 1894 Dickson/Edison film that he put in synch for the Library of Congress and analyse his methods of editing picture and dialogue in feature films.

A Century of Synchrony Between Sound and Image

The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (William Dickson 1894)

References: Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella 2003) 02:12:23 – 02:13:42

Peter Sellars:

10 April 2015

Sellars’ interest in sound stems from his time studying with Ivan Tcherepnin in Harvard’s Electronic Music Studio. After that, his first job was a sound recordist. In this talk, via videolink from Los Angeles, the iconoclastic theatre and opera director explains his very personal approach to sound, it’s basis in spiritual philosophy and classic theatre and his belief in breaking the slave/master relationship between sound and image.

Reaching Across the Horizon of Time

Phil Solomon: The Aesthetics of Sound in Poetic Cinema

15 April 2009

Solomon discusses the aesthetics and techniques of sound design in poetic cinema, featuring close analysis of his own films Remains to be Seen (1989/1994), Last Days in a Lonely Place (2007) and Rehearsals for Retirement (2007), and a discussion of the metaphorical use of sound. Via videolink from Boulder, Colorado

The Aesthetics of Sound in Poetic Cinema

Jim Webb: Multi-track Location Recording for Film

20 April 2007

At the start of a career that spanned 32 years, 60 feature films and 65,000 hours of recording, American sound recordist Jim Webb devised the multi-track location recording system on Nashville that helped define Robert Altman’s directorial style. Webb looks at the creative – rather than remedial – potential of multi-track recording through his work with some of the most innovative directors of the last thirty years including Altman, Coppola, Pakula and Wenders.

Multi-track Location Recording for Film

References:
California Split (Robert Altman 1994) 00:00:00 – 00:07:23 & 00:09:50 – 00:12:23
Nashville (Robert Altman 1975) 00:02:30 – 00:05:50 & 00:09:56 – 00:17:40
For the Boys (Mark Rydell 1991) All the President’s Men (Alan Pakula 1976) 00:45:35 – 00:51:15

Peter Wollen: Hybrid Energies, In Defense of the Mismatch

15 April 2000

Peter Wollen was a screenwriter, filmmaker, theorist and Prof. of Film at UCLA, when he presented “Hybrid Energies: In Defence of the Mismatch”, the relationship between voice and image in the avant-gardes

Hybrid Energies, In Defense of the Mismatch