STORIES OF SOUND, AND SILENCE: TAPAS NAYAK

When given an opportunity, Tapas Nayak likes to tell stories with sound.

Even while making films completely intended for the mass-market– this high-on-demand Sound Technician based in South of India loves to put in his delicate ‘aural’ touches that enhances the cine-viewing experience manifold.

Problem is, not many people usually discuss ‘sound’ when they brainstorm films.

Or understand its importance, for that matter.

That problem is universal for Sound Technicians in India. Mostly, the ‘audio’ aspect of the audio-visuals is taken for granted by the viewers – and sometimes even the makers of the films. Yes, the dialogue has to be recorded properly and the scene should have the right kind of ambiance and we need some ‘stock’ music, a violin or two when the mother cries and three violins when the son dies – but that’s all.

Let’s imagine a conversation…

“So do you want to use sound as a storytelling tool?”

“What’s that?? Come again???”

“Should we get a sound-designer on board at the scripting stage and see if he can contribute anything to the storyline…?”

“Duh. Are you crazy or what? We just give them the film after the first cut…and they will place the missing sounds…and some music..”

I can go on cribbing, but I believe that should be enough to give you a general idea of the status of most Sound Designers in Indian Cinema.

Nobody knows what they do; or what they can do.

The situation is changing though, with new directors coming in with alternate ideas and updated aesthetics; but I believe it will still take our industry time to warm up to the fact that Sound Designers can add a whole lot to the storytelling of a film.

It’s as much their job to tell the story as cinematographers and editors.

To start with, that’s what I asked Tapas – what is your job?

“ADD A POINT-OF-VIEW TO THE SOUND”

“For me, the job of a Sound Designer is not just putting sounds together.

Of course, first of all, you are creating an environment around the audience. It’s a spatial co-relation. Say it’s a marketplace – so I should be feeling the market around. Suppose it’s a traffic area, so I need to feel the traffic around. So I have to faithfully create the ambience of the market or the traffic so that it seems real to the audience.

That is first part; but more than that, I think the job of the Sound Designer is to make the soundscape part of the storytelling.

For example, suppose the character is in a very depressing state, and he is staying in a very traffic-heavy area, so on those days when he is very depressed, the same traffic sounds could be modified – since those sounds ‘feel’ very treacherous to him. It can be more screechy, for instance.

This means, we are adding a point-of-view to the sound. On the basis of the character’s state of mind, we modify the sound to make it part of the story – underlying something from the point of view of the character.

Not just that. Sometimes the Sound Designer’s job could be not doing anything. For example, ‘TO LET’ was that kind of a film where if we had done too much, or cramped too many things together, it would have really nullified the effect on the audience.

So understanding that bit of ‘silence’ is also important from the character’s point of view – and that’s also part of Sound Design.”

Tapas Nayak field recording sound during Mani Ratnam's film Raavanan. — *That’s a working still of Tapas Nayak, during location recordings near Adiraapali waterfalls,*
*for Mani Ratnam’s film ‘Ravaanan’ – image courtesy Kumar C Dev.*

I feel in order to understand how to give this ‘point-of-view’ to sound one has to learn how to watch movies from a sound perspective. We often get so engrossed with the visuals, that we do not (critically) hear the sound. That has to change.

While building an ‘eye’ for cinema, Tapas insists on building an ‘ear’ for it as well; more so if you are in the business of making films – you need to train yourself to ‘hear’ cinema while watching it. Or else, you end up with half-baked stuff.

“SOUND TAKES YOU INTO A 3D ZONE”

“I believe on Robert Bresson’s philosophy that visuals are confined while sound is limitless. Sound nurtures your imagination; it takes you into a 3D zone, where you can interpret in different ways.

So it’s very important to think in terms of ‘sound’ while watching a film – say a film like Apocalypse Now. The beginning of the film is a wonderfully treated sequence. The pace that the audience should expect from the film is set in the first five minutes of the film.

It’s a dream sequence where this guy is caught in a hotel and he’s still not come out of the war – he is hallucinating about war and the chopper blades are almost matching with the fan-blades running in the hotel room – so all of these things set you up for the larger context of the film. So there the sound designer Walter Murch is really guiding you to think or expect something from the film which will be unique.

That’s the opening scene from Apocalypse Now, featuring Martin Sheen.
He’s Charlie Sheen’s father, by the way – just to spike your interest a bit more.

‘The End’, that Doors song by Jim Morrison (used in the intro of Apocalypse Now) has been sort of an anthem for me since my childhood – but I never related it to the film till I saw it much later in my life. And yes, that co-relation between the fan-blades and the chopper-blades is something I spotted only after Tapas told me last week; so much for my claim of having a ‘sound’ mind.

Anyways, let’s focus on the task at hand.

I asked Tapas for a step-by-step delineation of what he does when he is approached with the task of designing ‘sound’ for a film; in other words, how he does what he does.

“FIRST DETERMINE WHAT NOT TO DO”

“Most of the times we tend to overdo stuff.

We try to pack in sound to impress the audience – and let’s admit, some films do require that kind of approach.

Contrary to that, there are films that really don’t need that – they want minimal stuff, they want to give the audience breathing space to think over, or to create stories in their minds rather than us holding their hands and pushing them to think in a certain way.

For me, how I start is – I first determine what not to do in a film.

I feel that’s very important. Once you know what you don’t want to do in a film, then it becomes much simpler to do what you want to do. It’s like the Zen philosophy – first un-clutter.

It all depends on the nature of the film. Say you are doing an action kind of a film, a Rajinikanth film – there you can’t say that I don’t want to have music, I don’t want to have this and that!! No!! That’s made for people – so then the treatment becomes different. But when you are doing something like ‘To Let’ or ‘Super Deluxe’ – you really can’t go overboard.

Second step is – spatially you want to create the environment around the characters. See most of the time we visualize, but we don’t ‘auralize’; auralization is a practice that is very important – like what the character is hearing in a place. Is he near a factory, or near a noisy market – where is he?

And then – after you put in all things together, you need to create a focus through ‘elimination’.

Suppose you have 500 tracks – that means 500 layers of sound put together; but you need the audience to concentrate on a few things – so the other stuff has to either be eliminated, or send to back-foot. So by doing that, you are creating a focus for the audience to think in a certain way.

So by the time you reach the final-mix stage – you know how the focus should be, this is the place where the music really takes over so the other stuff has to be minimal, and there will be areas which needs nothing, which needs emptiness – that’s also a conscious decision. What I am trying to say here is – doing nothing and letting the visual do its job is also a thought – which is very important.”

In Rajeev Ravi’s Malayalam film Annayum Rasoolum Tapas has illustrated what he means by letting the visuals do its work.
We will talk about that later, in our next post.

That ‘elimination’ methodology reminds me of Robert Bresson, again.

Of whatever little I have read of him, I still treasure a skinny little book of his from my ‘Nandan’ library days (no, I didn’t lift it from the library, but bought it from Golepark after reading it first at the library). It’s called ‘Notes on the Cinematograph’, and it’s (literally) a collection of rough, scattered ‘notes’ that gives us a glimpse into the mind of this great auteur director.

That book is loaded with ‘gems’.

I quote, “The noises must become music. Reorganize the unorganized noises (what you think you hear is not what you hear) of a street, a railroad station, an airport…play them back one by one in silence and adjust the blend.”

Can’t help but quote another reflection,

“Images and sounds are like people who make acquaintance on a journey and afterwards cannot separate.”

With You Without You (2012) is the first film in which Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanange worked with Tapas.
Their teamwork has continued since then, till the latest yet to release film ‘Gaadi’

After all this at-length discussion about ‘realism’ in building a soundscape, I had to ask Tapas about ‘sync-sound’ (sound recorded in location), and whether he prefers it over dubbing; at least in terms of imbibing ‘realism’.

“THE DIRT IN SYNC-SOUND ADDS TO REALISM”

“Look earlier all our films used to be sync sound. It’s only after the lightweight Arri and Mitchell cameras came in – we started dubbing – since it was much easier doing that. Now again, sync sound is coming back to our films. Especially in Mumbai and Kerala, lots of films are coming with sync-sound.

I would say Sync sound any day helps in creating realism that sometimes we fail to create artificially; but after saying that, there are films that absolutely work wonderfully without it.

For example, a film like Prasanna Vithanange’s ‘With You Without You’ is not sync-sound; it’s a dubbed film, totally. Neither is Kumararaja’s ‘Super Deluxe’.

But there the directors themselves have taken care that all the dubbed tracks, the way the characters speak, is almost like very real – it’s not over-the-top, or it’s not sounding ‘dubbish’.

But yes, Sync Sound is always much more preferable because it adds the ‘dirt’. Life is all about imperfections. So the ‘dirt’ that you get from the locations really adds into the realism. In contrast, whenever you are dubbing, you are dubbing in a perfect environment – which is very clean and nice, but can never be that ‘realistic’.”

But then, he already shared with us, even a film like ‘To Let’ which has been widely appreciated for its realistic soundscape was not sync-sound.

Noises did become the music there.

It has to be a tough task to do that level of dubbing without recording most of the actual sound on the set. I had to ask him what would be his core ‘principle’ while he is doing that. What is that one ‘tagline’ that he sets for himself?

“MAKE EVERY SOUND PART OF THE CHARACTER’S WORLD”

“In sound design the step that we take is make each and every sound fabricated and modified to make it a part of the world of the character.

For example, I could be recording a train sound from somewhere, maybe I recorded it five years back – but when I put that into this story – I have to color it and change its tone to make it part of this story.

That stands true for each and every sound – not only the train sound, it’s the dialogues, it’s the dub-tracks – everything has to be changed and molded in accordance to the character’s world. That’s very important.”

Finally, we come to that all important question – of technology.

How critical is it to understand the latest advancements in technology to become a ‘sound designer’ in cinema?

The ‘ear’ of the audience is also evolving -isn’t it?

“TECHNOLOGY WILL NEVER REPLACE CONTENT”

” It’s very important to know the technology – because those are the tools which you are using to make that story.

But having said that, I always feel that during those 30-40 years when dubbing was the norm, from the sixties onward to the eighties, in spite of the technology not being that great – all the artists were pushing themselves much beyond their limits.

I could be feeling nostalgic in terms of the recordings that you get to hear now – like if you listen to Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin or Beatles and all these bands – it’s all fantastic.

Even when Walter Murch was doing Apocalypse now – the technology was not that advanced. He had to record each and everything in studio, put it together and make it elaborate. So the limitations in technology were really pushing them to achieve more.

Now we have much more advanced technology – where we can put two thousand tracks together, make it as elaborate as possible, and all that.

But beyond all that, there’s something called content.

You can’t sell anything merely on technology – that would be momentary. When you are creating that ‘moment’ for the audience – it’s synergy has to be correct and match the ethos of the film, only then it will work well.

In spite of everything, it’s the content and the storytelling which matters – if the soul is in place then the body will come together – that’s what I think.”

That’s what I think too Tapas; the soul has to be in place, and at the right place – for any work of art to reach its intended audiences. And not just for so-called art-house films – I mean every film, meant for all audience types.

I also asked Tapas Nayak about some of the toughest challenges and trickiest assignments that he might have faced in his now about two decades old career – first as an assistant to the renowned Sound Technician H Sridhar, and then independently as a Sound Designer and Mixer.

I wanted at least five of those ‘challenges’ – and we are yet to decide on which films to cover. Balki’s ‘Paa’ will be there for sure, and a couple of films of Prasanna Vithanange, and ‘Super Deluxe’ – that’s one caper that I am crazy about myself – especially due to its pulpy colours and irreverent space-time approach that reminds me of my first love – magic realism.

But all that will take some time. I also have a shoot coming, so let’s see.

*I would love to do a stand-alone post on Super Deluxe …*
*especially on its totally kick-ass Color Scheme…let’s see…*

I would like to mention here about a blog post I did a couple of weeks back on ‘TO LET’ – an award winning Tamil Film by Director/ Cinematographer Chezhiyan. Tapas designed the realistic sound for that film, and spoke extensively about that experience.

CRAFTING REALISM: THE ‘TO LET’ SOUNDSCAPE

Let me also mention here, that feature image up there has been taken by young photographer Vincent Paul, in the studio of Tapas Nayak.

Before I take your leave, I have a personal ‘insight’ of sorts.

I am planning to do a blog post on documentary editing and sound-design, and the best crew that came to my mind for that included a former mentor and colleague of mine – Debashish Ghoshal from SRFTI.

While in the process of contacting him, I went to the SRFTI website. I don’t know why, but I started browsing its alumni list, to see if I could spot some familiar names.

I spotted Tapas Nayak – he is from the first batch of SRFTI.

I didn’t know that. Obviously, I had no reason to tell Tapas that I applied for and got a seat in the same department – to study Sound Engineering under Debashish Sir. That was for the second batch, I think in early 1997.

I drifted away without entering the course for some personal claptrap – but that’s another story. Fact is, if I had joined the course, Tapas would have been a year senior to me, and I would have met him then, 22 years back, and maybe learnt a few tricks of the trade from him.

Funny ‘What If’ feeling, that one!!

All I can say is – destiny does have peculiar ways to make people meet (and not meet) each other; but it’s never too late to meet; or to learn.

Better late than never, eh, Tapas!!!

For the over enthusiastic among us, this video clip of an Walter Murch interview explains
how he managed to cut the phenomenal Apocalypse Now opening scene.
It was four layers of images, cross-dissolved in physical film, in a linear set-up. ..oops.
I think that’s what Tapas meant when he said ‘”Their limitations in technology was pushing them to achieve more.”

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