Open AccessI am Sitting in a Room, Listening to Mank
Author(s) -
Cormac Donnelly
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
screenworks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2514-3123
DOI - 10.37186/swrks/12.1/1
Subject(s) - active listening , mediation , sound (geography) , exhibition , space (punctuation) , sitting , visual arts , art , sociology , acoustics , computer science , communication , medicine , social science , physics , pathology , operating system
The soundtrack for Mank (David Fincher, 2020) raises interesting questions about the reception of film sound in the domestic viewing/listening space. The ‘spatialisation’ of the film’s soundtrack through a process of re-recording on the Skywalker Scoring Stage introduces a ‘mediation’ of the soundtrack which is incompatible with recognised post-production sound practice. This research suggests that through this practise Mank’s soundtrack is rendered as a sonic installation, inextricably tied to the time, place, and sonic characteristics of the re-recording space. It also questions whether this re-recording method might not benefit those films released directly into the domestic market, retaining the reverberant sonic signature of cinematic exhibition.