Sometimes it’s tricky to get my two wee ones to bed at the same time. If I put them in bed and walk away they are soon up and about again, conversing and playing and keeping each other from sleep. So some nights I stay in their room for a while. With the dark and the silence…it can be pretty boring just sitting around waiting for kids to sleep. So I put a film on my phone, but put the phone in my pocket so the screen doesn’t distract them and I just listen.
It’s enlightening. Only the music and the dialogue without the images to distract or inform you of what is happening. Turns out, good writing doesn’t even need visuals you can see it all without the pictures, you can feel the emotion and imagine the scene.
I think good audio is a sign of good writing. Well, multiple forms of good writing, both dialogue and music.
For example, one night I was listening in to Jurassic World. Awful. Grandiose music without nuance that didn’t seem to pre-empt what was coming. The dialogue was basic. The value of Jurassic world is all in the imagery.
Meanwhile, the television show Community is gold. So much of character development and humour and narrative arc is conveyed through the dialogue. More than that, the delivery of the dialogue is flawless. Aside from the odd visual joke, watching this without visuals was a delight and I needed to muffle my laughter so the kids didn’t catch on.
To be fair, I’ve over-simplified the role of sound in cinema here as if it should be something that stands independent of the visuals. As if that is the measure of ‘good cinema sound’. Of course that’s not true. But on those quiet dark moments in the kids’ room it is interesting to see what remains entertaining in audio only and what cannot have the audio teased out.
It might also be a genre issue. Community is a comedy, Jurassic World is action. Action relies on visuals more than comedy and usually has more simplistic dialogue. I also watched some of the 2020 television version of The Stand which definitely isn’t comedy, not quite action, more like a horror drama show. How did it rate with the no visuals test? Definitely entertaining. It was fun to imagine the visuals on this one and there was enough hints in the dialogue to indicate what is being seen without explicitly describing the visuals.
Anyway, I’m going to keep it up and might have some deeper thoughts to share on watching without visuals at a later date. Meanwhile, let me know if you’ve ever tried this and suggestions for what to watch/listen to!