It’s a film directed by a friend of mine who asked me to be in charge of the sound post-production. The film is called Huele a Azufre (Smells like Sulfur), a post-apocalyptical scenario where there is no information about what happened and what is happening on the planet. The film also questions itself about the state of things by presenting an ambiguous and hopeless perspective over the two main characters: two young men (Emilio and José) that don’t seem to be lost. Still, at the same time, they resemble Vladimir and Estragon from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. There is also a huge reference to Pude ver un Puma (Could see a Puma) by the Argentinian Eduardo Williams (https://vimeo.com/404428912).
Visual References, Motifs and Inspiration
Eventually, Emilio and José run away as soon as they hear an eerie sound coming from the woods that seems to haunt them everywhere they go. However, the film doesn’t give the spectator the answers for what could be that noise. While at talks in pre-production with the director and writer, Mario Alejandro Arias, he described the sound as a susurro (a whisper) similar to the biblical one: 1 Kings 19:12 – After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, there was a voice, a soft whisper.
I don’t have any complicated deadlines for this film, which is perfect for this assessment because I’ll be able to experiment and be creative. Nevertheless, the film is 8 minutes long, with a part in it that has great interest for this unit – a long wide shot of the woods with a bull approaching the camera very subtly and slowly at the same time we hear the sound of the susurro coming closer towards the camera (duration: 2 minutes). Apart from general sound editing, there’s a potentially interesting spatialization, sound design, and foley. In terms of format, I was requested to edit in 5.1, but I assume there will be no problems with downmixing it to stereo. In terms of available resources, I will be working with the material given by the sound recordist and the script for the intentionality guidance.