In the past few days, I’ve been working on a film called The River Woman, directed by Beatriz Santos, a former LCC student. This is her major project. However, she was unhappy with her first cuts and decided to go back into postproduction to fix the mistakes she sought to be reversible. In this film, I’ve a team of people working for and with me to accomplish a good mix. They are Jack Centro, who works as Foley Artist; Dereck de Abreu Coelho, who mixes the foley; and Harry Charlton, who composes music.
This project is way more demanding than Entre las Rocas, which will most probably be one of the pieces for my portfolio. The reasons why rely on the outcomes they have. The River Woman is not a micro-production – it lies between small and medium-sized production. It had 4 shooting days on location outside of the UK; during the pandemic in 2021, it had about 20 people working and about 4 actors; it has 3 composers working for the film (a famous fadista Beatriz Silva, her producer, a Catalan film composer, and my partner Harry Charlton); it was crowdfunded and funded by institutions inside and outside of the UK, and its most likely to hit the 2022 Film Festival Season, including the Berlin Film Festival, Malaga, Donosti, Curtas, Estoril and many others. Entre Las Rocas is an arthouse film shot by the film director with the help of a DoP, edited by him and co-edited by Miguel Frieiros; the main character is played by Javier Fleitas, his uncle and a non-actor; the other co-actor is played by himself; there’s no location sound. However, the sound team for ELR is more significant than any other team that worked on the film. Again, the people working on this film are the same partners working on TRW, besides Iñaki Romero Martinez, the music composer and designer.
What is the difference between TRW and ELR, and why did I pick ELR for my portfolio piece?
I’m a sound supervisor in both films, requiring the same attention. TRW requires a different type of concern, considering I’m being paid for that one. What that entails is the sort of approach the Director wants me to have towards the film – the final decision is always hers. In terms of creativity TWR is less creative. It doesn’t mean there’s no creativity, but it lacks artistry. The creativity TWR is more related to problem-solving. ELR, however, gets me to write sound onto the film. I get to decide what will sound, how it will sound and how that affects the narrative. All these ideas will be presented in a dossier to Jesus F. Cruz. It would be as if I was part of the screenplay writing process.
In my opinion, and no matter how good the sound designer is, the best sound is always the one that is written in the screenplay.
The more I work on this format, the more I understand that the best role to decide stuff related to sound, apart from being a sound designer, sound editor, or supervisor, is to be the Director itself. Directing, obviously screenwriting. So, having the chance to participate in sound writing is more valuable for me as an artist.
The influence of sound design on Lucretia Martel’s films is credited to her and not the sound designer. Not to say that in La Ciénaga, for example, the work of Hervé Guyader, Emmanuel Croset, Guido Berenblum, and Adrián De Michele didn’t have value at all. In fact, they were the ones who were awarded for best sound at Havana Film Festival in 2001. They indeed mixed and edited the film really well. However, who wrote and thought about the sound was Lucretia. Same case scenario for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria – a film that I will later read about.
With ELR, my portfolio would be complete in two ways:
- Technical Sound Design: everything that concerns editing, designing, recording, mixing, and supervising, will be covered in this film.
- Conceptual Sound Design: everything that concerns the planning, pre-production, screenplay, and narrative sound will also be covered.
What would be The River Woman for?
Besides my demands from the Director, TRW will also allow me to practice and experiment. Many aspects are being put onto practice with this film:
- All technical sound design.
- How to supervise a team of artists.
- How to deal with clients and satisfy the Director.
- How to adapt.
For these reasons and many more, I will consider TRW as my tool to practice my skills before I start working seriously on ELR.
ELR / TRW screenplay and genre comparison.
Entre Las Rocas (trad. Inbetween the Rocks).
In terms of style, Entre Las Rocas resembles a retro psychedelic horror film from the 70s, such as House (1977) by Nobuhiko Obayashi, Suspiria (1977) by Dario Argento or The Holy Mountain (1973) by Alejandro Jodorowsky. When talking with Jesus F. Cruz, he also mentioned films such as Mandy (2018) by Panos Cosmatos, which is a referent of this style. In terms of acting, it resembles a lot of the overacting usually found in Argento’s films – exacerbated emotions and reactions. The film is shot 100% with a VHS camera, a format that is being brought back to the mainstream cinema – i.e. No (2012) by Pablo Larraín. It also counts with countless colourful imagery overlapping when conveying dreams and nightmares.
In terms of plot, it reminds me a lot of films like Alien (1979) by Riddley Scott or The Thing (1982) by John Carpenter in the sense that he touches a lot on the mythical story of Icarus. In both films, the character’s ambition leads them to disaster. Entre las Rocas is an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft – a story about a disastrous expedition to Antarctica, where two explorers find more than they had expected to find and handle. ELR is about a middle-aged male named Javi, who dreams of the mountains he lives next to and a supposed creature named Deu that lives inside a monastery – meaning God in Catalan. When he wakes up from that dream, his only goal is to find those mountains and meet Deu. Once he finds the monastery, Javi is possessed by Deu, and the film ends without opening more windows or giving more information.
In terms of sound, as previously mentioned, the film has no location sound, but it also hasn’t any dialogue. Dialogue is meant to be treated as texture or a hermetic form of communication unknown to the spectator. In fact, dialogue is treated as a sound effect. This will be perfect for contextualising with Michel Chion’s The Voice in Cinema. Additionally, it depends massively on sound design, music and foley. Without it, there will be no way of bringing the characters to life.
The River Woman
The River Woman is antagonistic in terms of genre. It’s a slow drama in Northern Portugal about a young woman, Sofia, who just lost her grandmother, Salomé, and is going through complicated grief at her house. While there, Sofia reflected on specific memories and recalled her grandmother’s first dive in the river, as she had been scared of swimming before. This works as a leitmotif for overcoming one’s fears and struggles in life, as the main character also suffers from insecurity.
The way the film was shot resembles films like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), but the genre connects more with films such as Guadagnino’s Call me by your name (2017), with a ruralist twist that could be related to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005). It also showcases some interest in traditional Portuguese revivalism.
This film, however, doesn’t have much sound writing. I would say its approach is more “Academy friendly” – sound is used as a prop, and sound design is not evaluated in terms of scriptwriting but by the quality and mixing of it.