As an independent form of expression in TV programs, the creation of sound is much more complicated than the creation of pictures. This is not only because of the complexity of sound components, but also because people pay more and more attention to sound. The sound components in the documentary mainly include: actual sound, natural sound, effect sound, explanation and music, which often cooperate and interact with each other in the works to form a comprehensive sound effect. The relationship between sound and painting has always been a controversial issue in the process of TV documentary creation, and this debate about the relationship between sound and painting is often manifested in the understanding of sound. For a long time in the past, there were two main deviations in the understanding of sound: one was to focus on the picture, and the sound was to supplement the lack of the picture, focusing on the impact and expressiveness of the picture; The other emphasizes the role of explanation, and the picture only means graphic explanation. It focuses on the expressive function of interpretation and the expression of the subjective feelings of the creator. Although these two understandings have their own reasons, in a sense, they all ignore the performance characteristics of TV itself.
Television is an intuitive audio-visual image system. Its picture and sound coexist, complement each other and are indispensable. Together, they form an active situation, but in different situations, their emphasis is different. For example, the TV documentary "Zhejiang Spirit" produced by Zhejiang Satellite TV focuses on the behavior of characters. Although there are sound effects and language in the film, these sound factors are only accompanied by activities. In another kind of TV documentary, such as Ballads of the Past, the main narrative is completed by the protagonist's own narrative, which accounts for a large proportion in the whole film, and its phonetic information becomes the main body. In the film, because the narration of the interviewed characters is natural and vivid, with actual content, it can still meet the needs of TV viewers to receive information, thus gaining the recognition of the audience. The pictures of the characters talking in the film, although sometimes there are not too many movements and scene changes, lack certain vivid characteristics, but the interviewee's expression, posture and content interact, vividly showing his cheerful and unrestrained personality characteristics. This composite structure of sound and painting is not more important or the difference between who supplements who, but only expresses a real material existence. For example, the use of live effect sound, the sound itself can not supplement the lack of expression in the picture. The reason why people use this method in large numbers is not to make up for the lack of pictures, but to use the potential ability of sound information to create a sense of reality and presence through the interaction of dual information. The practice of putting music at the bottom and spreading it to the end is not recognized by peers and audiences, not because it does not supplement the lack of pictures, but because it ignores the function of sound to spread information. Those additional sound components-explanation and the relationship between music and pictures are more complicated. As a direct form of information, pictures are mainly used to convey the atmosphere and image details of the scene. As an indirect form of information, sound is mainly used to express conceptual movement, abstract meaning and subjective feelings of creators. Here, visual information and auditory information perform different tasks and play different roles. They are not only a complementary relationship, but also an interactive and mutually promoting relationship. For example, in some TV documentaries with political, historical and cultural themes, such as Zhejiang TV series Tide Up in Zhejiang, Gansu TV Art Film Remodeling Kunlun, and Zhejiang Satellite TV's six-episode TV documentary Zhejiang Spirit, the commentary is important because it is to reason, express opinions and influence the audience. You can't achieve your goal if you don't say it. For another TV documentary with a sense of form, the formal beauty of the picture is far more important than the sound. For example, the exploratory TV documentary "Pan Tianshou" has no explanation. In the film, the author's thoughts and emotions are completely expressed through the rhythm change of editing between pictures, the scene change of the picture itself and the narration of the interviewee, while the sound in the film is just music, which serves as a foil for emotions.
Therefore, for the creation of TV documentaries, the requirements of the theme, the preference of the author's aesthetic taste and the style factors in the creation will all affect the understanding of the relationship between sound and painting. Similarly, it is difficult to use a quantitative analysis method to determine the best value of the combination of sound and picture. Sometimes, the two will interfere with each other and offset each other, while simply emphasizing one factor while ignoring the potential ability of the other will give people a sense of dissatisfaction. This requires creators to make effective use of programs according to their own requirements and pursue the best communication effect. The reason why I want to emphasize the role of sound in the creation of TV documentaries here is to give full play to the potential ability and expressive force of sound factors in our TV documentary creation and open up a broader creative space for TV documentaries, which is also the requirement of TV itself.
The first life of documentary is truth. The authenticity of documentary depends not only on the real picture, but also on the real sound. Documentary should not only pay attention to the use of picture language, but also pay attention to the expression of sound language. Movies are different from movies. Movies have a development process from silent movies to talking movies, and the sound of TV is innate. TV is an art combining sound and picture. As a documentary with the most TV characteristics, it is of course an "audio-visual" art, and its auditory part can not be ignored or ignored. While you feel the impact of screen language, the elements of sound language also play an important role.
The relationship between sound and picture has always been a controversial issue in the process of TV documentary creation. In my opinion, the debate about the relationship between sound and painting is often manifested as misunderstanding of sound. One is that the picture is the main part, and the sound is the supplement of the picture, paying attention to the expressive force of the picture; Another way of thinking is to emphasize the role of explanation, which can deepen the picture and express the meaning that the picture can't express. It focuses on the ideographic function of comments. These two understandings should be said to have their own reasons, but in a sense, they all ignore the characteristics of TV itself and the art of combining sound and picture.
For a long time, the traditional feature film creation style of China TV industry without ENG and live microphone has continued for many years. It can be said that the progress of shooting equipment has restored the authenticity of the documentary, and recording the original sound state has almost become a revolution in documentary creation. The large-scale TV documentary "Looking at the Great Wall" is the pioneer of this kind of recording exploration. "Looking at the Great Wall" attaches great importance to pre-shooting, breaking the previous documentary mode of emphasizing picture composition and light processing, grasping the basic point of documentary shooting, and adopting a large number of ways of one machine with multiple sound sources and multiple machines with multiple sound sources to make a fuss at the shooting scene and capture the simple beauty of life. Its pictures and sounds have a strong sense of scene.
As the basic materialization element of audio-visual media, sound, together with pictures, constitutes a specific aesthetic time and space. TV documentaries use a large number of simultaneous interviews with characters, which can be said to be a major technological leap to break through the traditional film documentaries. Television recording equipment provides us with a means to record the real time and space of sound and picture synchronously. The omni-directional spread of sound extends the connotation of the picture and fully shows the emotions of the characters. At the beginning of "Paper Mourning", the sound effects from ancient paper-making machines are synchronized with the multi-lens pictures, which makes us feel the weight of the original paper-making technology in modern civilization.
At present, various types of live sound effects and real voices of characters have gradually replaced unnecessary lengthy explanations, which has become a new fashion of TV documentaries. At the same time, interviews and conversations interspersed between live documentary pictures are directly narrated to the audience, which not only provides background materials and comments, but also avoids the director's subjective intermediary, making the work more objective, fair and credible.
After careful observation, we can find that micro wireless microphones and boom microphones are widely used in documentary interviews. The micro wireless microphones on the shirts of the host and interviewee replace the boring "stick" microphones, so that every interview (more or less people) is like a relaxed and natural heart-to-heart in spring, showing the real and rich humanistic atmosphere in life. The use of this wireless microphone and boom microphone completely dismantled the invisible wall between the interviewer and the interviewee in front of the camera lens. The interviewer is no longer a rigid microphone shelf, but an object who can communicate equally. The interpersonal communication on the screen is closer to the natural communication in life, and the effect is good.
In addition to the recording of actual sound, the documentary uses multi-track tuning recording technology to record the background sound of life, and uses multi-channel digital integrated camera to record the sound effect of downtown interview, which greatly enriches the artistic expression of sound in the works and opens up a real life atmosphere for the audience.
In fact, the sound components in the documentary are quite complex, including not only the commentary, but also the actual sound of the characters, natural sound, effect sound and music, which often cooperate and interact with the pictures in the works.
People have noticed that the voice of commentary in documentary creation is decreasing, and the creator did not write the commentary in advance, and then took pictures according to the commentary. The proportion of commentary in the film has shrunk, and many of them have become actual voices and subtitles. Commentary writing and "broadcast reading" no longer publicize the creator's subjective feelings and attitudes, but as an objective narrator, explain the background and connect the content for the audience. Therefore, the voiceover narration of most documentaries is no longer a "propaganda cavity" or a "broadcast cavity", but a plain, objective and calm style.
We have also seen some documentaries without explanations. I'm not arguing that documentaries don't need comments. Comments are written for listening. Commentary can not be used to express the abstract content of the concept and the subjective feelings of the creator, nor can it be used to integrate the visual information of the picture. However, the commentary and picture of documentary are inseparable. They are not only complementary, but also interactive and complementary. In some TV documentaries with political, historical and cultural themes, such as the TV series Echo of the Oath of Quanzhou TV, the TV series The Gate of China of CCTV and the documentary Sun Yat-sen, we should emphasize the importance of comments on pictures bearing a lot of information, because such programs aim at reasoning, expressing opinions and influencing the audience. If you don't say it, you won't achieve your goal. However, in the language expression of comprehensive sound effects, actual sound, natural sound, effect sound and music are also indispensable. We often say that traditional feature films "have two skins: picture and sound". Traditional feature films are not silent, but they are often accompanied by commentary and music or the sound of the late announcer. It sounds perfect, but it's too perfect to be true. Is it possible to record a person's life without hearing his voice or the voice of nature? A person who has no voice may be mute. All of them are based on "music", and their authenticity is greatly reduced. From feature film production to documentary film creation, a very important change is that "sound" is valued by people.
The real voice is probably the most important and complicated voice language in the documentary.
Actual sound: you can see the sound of its sound source in the picture, or the live sound recorded synchronously by video and audio. The actual sound actually includes human voice (that is, the actual sound of characters), living animals and background natural sounds.
We are filming a documentary, and the microphone of the camera must be turned on all the time, even if some actual sounds are useless during the later editing? What role does documentary play in actual sound? First of all, it can enhance the realism of the scene, bring the audience into the environment and atmosphere represented by the documentary, and realize the complete restoration of the real world. Secondly, it can enhance the sense of participation and popularity of the program, so that the program is no longer a unilateral explanation by the announcer. The documentary charm of the documentary "Looking at the Great Wall" lies in the extensive use of actual sounds. Today's TV viewers are not satisfied with seeing the picture of their mouths moving without hearing the sound. Why can the host say what the announcer has to say? Real voice is not the background, but also the explanation, which is an important means to show people and deeds.
In the application of documentary in actual sound, it is necessary to keep the sound and picture synchronized as much as possible in technology in order to obtain real effects. But when editing a documentary, we sometimes have such a situation that the sound appears earlier than the picture, which is the sound of progress. There is also a delayed sound: that is, after the picture is changed, the sound of the sound source continues. In order to prevent the actual sound from being too verbose and increase the sense of rhythm and information of the picture, we should pay attention to the use of pre-delay sound and pre-delay sound when editing movies.
At the same time, we should also pay attention to such a tendency. Interviews with people's real voices should not be abused. There are many documentaries that pay too much attention to the real voice of the characters, one head after another, and one interview after another, which always makes the interviewee say that the interview time of the real voice of the characters is too long, which affects the role of the picture as the language of TV. The main function of documentary should be the picture, which can convey information and let the picture "speak" by itself. If the picture can be clearly expressed, the facts can be said, and the real lens can be shown, don't deliberately arrange an interview with actual voice. It's just that the picture can't be taken, and the interview of the actual voice of the characters can't be expressed.
For example, Sun Zengtian's documentary "The Last Mountain God", which won the Asian Broadcasting Federation Award, is mainly based on real picture records with objective and limited background explanations. The life of an Oroqen family in Daxing 'anling, northern China, is shown through the pictures of characters' actions and scenes. Meng in the film is the last shaman of Oroqen nationality, who goes to the forest to hunt, pray and worship mountain gods every year. This documentary includes natural sound, sound effects, music and actual sound, but these sound factors are only companions of the characters' activities and play different roles in different scenes. Meng said to him, "It's comfortable in the mountains, but uncomfortable at home. You catch a cold every three days, but you don't catch a cold outside. " There are not many actual voices with personality like this, but this is Meng's own words. In another recent TV documentary by Sun Zengtian, Click on the Yellow River, the main narrative is completed by the protagonist himself, which accounts for a large proportion of the whole film, and its sound information becomes the main body. Sun Zengtian said that this is about history. In the film, because the interviewee is a witness of historical events, his narrative is natural and vivid, with actual content and details, which can still meet the needs of TV viewers to receive information, thus gaining the recognition of the audience. The pictures of the characters talking in the film, although sometimes there are not too many movements and scene changes, lack some vivid features, but the expressions, postures and contents of the interviewees interact with each other, vividly showing the characters' personality characteristics and telling the true story.
Documentary music is actually a post-match. If used well, you can of course express your feelings. Documentary music can never be poured into the end, because the rhythm of the picture is changing, and the music out of the picture is invalid or counterproductive, which will also affect the authenticity of the work. The music of a good documentary has a sound source, that is, the beginning sound is explained on the screen. For example, a lot of music in the documentary "English White" is not added later, but is naturally expressed by explaining the opening sound on the screen to express the emotional color of the work. Documentary music should be used with caution, because music expresses subjective feelings, while documentary pursues objective truth.
In the composite structure of documentary audio-visual integration, there is often no difference between sound and picture, and they are both expressing a real material existence. For example, the picture is a field mountain village, with dogs barking, running water or natural sounds in special scenes. These live sound effects themselves can't supplement the lack of meaning expressed in mountain village pictures. The reason why people use these sounds a lot is to make use of the potential ability of sound information and the interaction between sound and picture information to create a sense of reality and presence. The traditional practice of putting music at the bottom and spreading it to the end is not recognized by peers and audiences, not because it does not supplement the lack of pictures, but because it ignores the function of sound to spread information. At the end of Companionship, the picture shows the old man picking up pig food with crutches in the early morning. People may be worried that the old man can't walk fast. She fell down and the pig that has been raised for seven years can't live. If the pig dies first, the old woman will not live. At this time, the voice of the old man leaning on crutches seems to be getting louder and louder, which has aggravated people's worries.
Undoubtedly, people should not only "watch" but also "listen" when watching TV. ?
In my opinion, the sound effect of documentary is much more complicated than the shooting of pictures. The sound language of documentary constitutes the "sound image" of TV screen. Like screen language, it is an important means of documentary creation, but its emphasis is different in different situations. Sometimes the picture language is working, and sometimes the sound language is working. The sound language of documentary should be paid attention to and studied deeply.