APOCALYPSE NOW (REDUX) AND FILM SOUND

1.    Apocalypse Now (AN) represents one of the most famous, critically acclaimed examples of the creative use of sound in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. Walter Murch, quite possibly the most well-respected modern Hollywood film sound designer, worked on this film with a team that included many, if not most, of the other future luminaries in this field to put the sound together over the course of eight months.

2.    AN was the first major feature-length Hollywood film produced with a 5.1 channel mix sound track, and, in fact, the first film to make full use of stereo surrounds together with low-frequency enhancement.  It was also the first Hollywood film in which an automated mixing board was used in preparation of the sound mix and the first to use 24 track recorders synced up to the picture.  Director Francis Ford Coppola himself made the innovative decision to produce the film using quintaphonic sound (three channels in the front, two in the rear, plus the addition of a subwoofer).  Coppola believed that this arrangement was necessary to correspond to the movement of the helicopters that he conceived to be not only a dominant visual, but also, especially, aural presence throughout the film.  As a result, many film historians credit AN as the first major Hollywood film to be genuinely attuned to the full possibilities involved in reproducing sound over three dimensions.  Certainly AN is notable for the intricacies of the deliberate planning invested, in preparing the soundtrack, of which–along with how many–channels to exploit at any one point in the film as well as when and how to vary the density and layering of sounds we hear at any given point and across specific passages in the film.  AN is often credited as one of the first films to contribute to THE development of the film production field that Hollywood today identifies as film ‘sound design’.

3.    In preparing the soundtrack, the AN sound team engaged in a meticulous breakdown of a huge array of thousands of potential included effects, including selecting and designing different sounds for the same raindrops hitting different kinds of materials and for the different parts of the helicopter rotor blades as well as for the sounds corresponding to different sizes and numbers of helicopters in flight.  In a division of labor unusual for a Hollywood film at that time, different members of the team maintained responsibility for particular effects rather than particular reels (or scenes or portions of the film) [the latter was conventional in Hollywood sound production prior to AN).  And, in working on effects, they divided these between “vertical effects,” or one-off effects, effects that occur only once or a very few times in the film, and “horizontal effects,” or repeated effects, effects that occur repeatedly over the course of the film such as those associated with helicopters, backgrounds, patrol boats, and the river.  The helicopter sounds were recorded at a Coast Guard station in Washington, D.C.  The sound team here recorded three different kinds of sounds, corresponding to three different sizes of helicopters, and approached these three kinds of sounds as the equivalent of three different kinds of string instruments (such as violins, violas, and cellos) in orchestrating this specific contribution to the film’s overall soundtrack.

4.    Not only does much of the sound we hear when we listen to AN come from recordings and compositions not at the actual film production site, but also the film makes extensive use of ADR (or automatic dialogue replacement) involving the actors re-recording their lines later in a sound booth to subsequently sync up with their performances in the recorded film.  Up to 85% of the dialogue included in the original AN is ADR, while close to 50% of that in the material added to create ANR (Apocalypse Now Redux) is ADR.  

5.    It is worth noting here that the sound crew worked meticulously to compensate for the shortcomings of ADR, which film directors most often prefer to use less as opposed to more often because it is hard to capture and convey exactly the same vocal expression subsequent to the initial performance, especially when the actor must speak in abstraction from the physical performance he or she actually initially carried out when speaking the same lines.  At the same time, you should keep well in mind that most speech we hear on almost all films has to be post-synchronized, even when working with tapes recorded at the actual shoot as the initial source, so the correspondence between the image of an actor speaking and the sound of her voice is almost always fabricated (is almost always, in short, a constructed illusion).  Most Hollywood film sound is not recorded in the same way as sound is recorded on a videocamcorder; instead one set of apparatuses records the images, and another set of apparatuses records the sounds.  Subsequently, the two must be matched to each other (in other words, “post-synchronized”).  And it also worth noting well too that most other film cultures, and cinemas (other than Hollywood that is), do not fetishize the degree of perfection in synchronization between lip movement and voice sound the way that Hollywood does (for many this is not a significant concern, and for others a degree of noticeable separation is even desirable, is deliberately sought by the filmmakers).

6.    Returning to AN though, I’d like next to discuss further some of the most famous uses of sound in this film.  Let’s return, first, to the helicopters.  Not only is this sound deliberately central as well as recurrent within this film, but also it is deliberately conceived and reproduced as an hallucinatory, psychedelic sound per Coppola’s own conception. As a result of this, the roaring, buzzing, and whirling sounds of helicopters remain indelibly associated with AN long after the end of one’s direct experience with the film.  As Coppola saw it, drawing upon extensive interviews with Vietnam Veterans, the Vietnam War was a helicopter war; this was the omnipresent technology at work in this conflict and an overwhelmingly predominant sound surrounding and penetrating into the unconscious of these soldiers.  Coppola conceived of the helicopters as the “horses of ths sky” in this war, and in this film he also associates these “horses” with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (from The Book of Revelation), most notably in the famous scene where Colonel Kilgore orders his squadron to play Wagner’s “Ride of the Valykries”as they swarm in to attack the Vietnamese village.

7.    The helicopter sounds throughout this film do not simply reproduce actual combat sounds; they are not, in other words, included for strictly naturalistic purposes.  Instead, the deliberate aim, right from the beginning of the film, is to use these sounds to conjure up a sense of an existential prison, a virtual jail enveloping Captain Willard.  At the beginning of the film the initial helicopter sound we hear corresponds to Willard’s nightmare recollection of this sound, and thereby, right from the beginning, the film sutures us into an identification with Captain Willard as the psychic center, the center of consciousness, in the film’s story world, and in the unfolding of the narrative yet to come.  In the opening sequence we see explosions but don’t hear them, and, right after that, we hear acoustically altered helicopter sounds that don’t match the visual images in either perspective or rhythm: these sounds represent Willard’s nightmare memory state of mind at that time.  Famously, this sound of chopper propellers transforms into the blades of a Saigon hotel-room fan as Willard starts to wake up (temporarily) from his nightmare memories, and then eventually further into the sound of a real (as opposed to ‘ghost’) helicopter outside of his window that does finally fully wake him up.  Murch and crew seamlessly move us through these three sounds: 1.) ghost helicopter, 2.) ceiling fan, 3.) real helicopter.

8.    Many of the helicopter sounds in AN, including the aforementioned opening ‘remembered sounds’, were  reworked with a synthesizer, and this most often first involved breaking down the sound into minimal subsidiary constituents.  Murch believed that this technique of using isolated sounds enhanced the dream-like and hyper-real qualities of the film.  Besides helicopter sounds, frequently throughout AN many other isolated sounds are employed in various places to convey exactly this kind of (dream-like and hyper-real) sensibility.

9.    Murch has often described the helicopters in this film as functioning like his string section.  He identifies the small arms fire as functioning like his woodwind section.  Insertions likes “The Ride of the Valkyries” function as his brass section.  And, in many places, such as in the prelude to the tiger attack scene and the initial drifting of Willard’s boat into shore through the amassed white-painted wave of ‘Kurtz’s children’, we confront the equivalent of a percussion section, where, for instance, we hear a sound that is both like that of a timpani and a heartbeat.

10.    The bookend use of the Doors’ “The End” toward the opening and the closing of the film is also quite deliberate and is obviously meant to be commentative on the situation and atmosphere portrayed in the film, as well as to contribute toward establishing this very sense for us.  Originally much more Doors music was planned, but eventually the filmmakers decided that this tended to be too heavy-handed with the lyrics of these songs doing too much of the work all by themselves in communicating the meaning of the scenes, and especially too directly.  Yet, since Coppola, following many others, conceived the Vietnam War as the first ‘rock and roll war’, enough of this kind of music was included within the film soundtrack to give us a strong feeling for its connection with the experience.  

11.    The “Satisfaction” sequence in AN is an interesting illustration of another point in analyzing film music: the sound here starts at a level appropriate for reproduction by a small-transistor radio, but then quickly becomes much more powerful and predominant, representing the subjective sound perception of the crew, as the song brings them back home, in memory and in longing, to the USA.  This sound abruptly switches off though when we move to focus in on Willard.  At this point, the Rolling Stones is replaced with virtual silence, and this silence even includes the elimination of ambient sound effects, to correspond to Willard’s complete absorption in the dossier on Kurtz which he is once again carefully perusing.

12.    Also notable in this film is a.) repeated use of original music composed by Carmine and Francis Coppola that takes a form akin to that of “musique concrete,” in other words music “that is made from sound,” made from the actual sounds of natural objects; b.) at Do Lung Bridge the use of aural reduction to eliminate all sounds other than those which correspond to the narrowly concentrated state of aural consciousness of the character Roach when he is zeroing in on his specific task–and target; and c.) the artificial creation of the Napalm sound--derived from reworking a Swiss army recording.

13.    Randy Thom, another leading contemporary Hollywood sound designer, and one who worked on this film under Murch, suggests AN represents a breakthrough film insofar as this is one example in which sound is allowed to shape the picture as much as the picture shapes the sound–i.e., where sound and image play co-equal roles in expression of meaning and exertion of impact.  Thom praises Coppola for planning the inclusion of sufficient space in his film to show his characters listening to the world around them, to accommodate their aural vantage points.  Thom argues that too many films today do not do this, and, especially problematically, include far too much virtually non-stop dialogue, not allowing enough room for the characters, and, thereby, for us, to listen.  As Thom indicates, we need to hear the places characters inhabit; if we don’t, the film  cheats us out of a full perception of where their stories are taking place and under what precise conditions.  

14.    Thom further contends that too often today so-called “great film sound” amounts only to loud sound, and that, in fact, truly “great film sound” must change over time, in multiple ways, including but not limited to volume, and must demonstrate complexity and subtlety as well as variety.

15.    Both Much and Thom, along with other leading film sound designers, conceive film sound as powerfully seductive, and even more so than film image, because sound appeals more directly to the emotions than it does to the intellect.  Sound works especially well when film makers keep in mind the need to suggest rather than declare, and thereby it succeeds by insinuating its way into our thinking.  In sum, as Thom suggests, sound in film can do all of the following, and much more, often at the same time: a.) suggest a mood or evoke a feeling; b.) set a pace; c.) indicate a geographical locale; d.) indicate a historical period; e.) clarify the plot; f.) define a character; g.) connect otherwise unconnected ideas, images, or moments; h.) heighten or diminish the perception of realism; i.) heighten or diminish the perception of ambiguity; j.) draw attention to or away from a detail; k.) indicate changes in time; l.) smooth otherwise abrupt changes between shots or scenes; m.) emphasize a transition for dramatic effect; n.) describe an acoustic space; o.) startle or smooth; and p.) exaggerate or mediate an action.

16.    I recommend using Thom’s criteria (as discussed in points 13-15 above) for evaluating film sound, that is for assessing whether or not a film makes ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ use of sound.