Whump and whoosh

[imomus]

Okay, it's Journalism 2.0™ time again, friends! I'm writing my Wired column, and I've decided it's going to be about bombast. Here's a skeleton outline of my argument:

* We are living in "the age of stupid impact". Everything must be boombastic, everything must knock us upside the head with a big club or stick. My pal Brecht would have been appalled.



* Here, take a look at some of the movie trailers on the Apple website. No matter who the films are by (I saw some for new films by Werner Herzog and Luc Besson, not that you'd have known it) the trailers all seem to be by the same "director" -- one who loves the sounds "WHUMP!" and "WHOOSH!", whether or not any action onscreen justifies their presence, and inserts as many unmotivated white flashes and black spaces as possible. For "stupid impact", see?

* And so it has come to pass that the sound of violent physical impact has become -- at least in certain Hollywood minds -- synonymous with actual psychological impact. Yet the two are not the same thing at all. Some of the things that have affected me most are quiet things, things that go neither WHUMP nor WHOOSH, and yet have impact.

* Do all trailers have this shock-and-awe, set-to-stun feel because it works -- because, in other words, this rather alarming whump-whoosh stuff is the PT Barnum bull of an anxious age whose attention is reached principally via the adrenal glands -- or has this simply become a sort of punctuation, used as glibly as I use, for instance, these commas; this semi-colon? In other words, is the inevitable rhetorical inflation intentional? Does it merely signify "another Hollywood action movie" to a jaded, lazy audience?

* Or should we blame software presets? I've used the odd white flash myself, in videos I made recently for my songs. I used it because it was there in iMovie, a preset filter. So perhaps trailers use these things because they're there -- considered "state of the art"? What software do movie trailer-makers use, anyway? Anyone know? Are WHUMP and WHOOSH really called that? "Add 35% more whump, Dave."



* I want to relate this to the Field Recordings Festival currently going on in Berlin. I've noticed that people now "play" their field recordings -- turning them into music -- where once they would have "played them back". This is because software gives musicians so many more options for tinkering than tape recorders did; and where people can tinker, they will tinker, damn them! Tinkering turns raw sounds into cooked ones, and turns everything into a kind of music (without the kind of conceptual work John Cage, for instance, wanted his audience to make to effect that same transformation).

* So, again, could it be the fault of computers and software that we live in the age of "stupid impact", and over-egg the pudding so?

* But fine art film and video -- presumably made with pretty much the same software as movie trailers -- resolutely avoids "stupid impact". In fact, it goes to the opposite extreme: as few edits as possible, absolutely no unmotivated impacts. You'd almost call it "deliberately boring", like watching security camera footage. Andy Warhol's movies may have set the style; you know, eight hours of the Empire State Building or someone sleeping.

* So this impact culture isn't really a function of the software, but of -- well, you tell me! What?

Comments

[grahamshem.livejournal.com]

uh dude, this is nothing new at all. bombast and "stupid impact" can be found in cinema from say Intolerance onwards, probably peaking in the sandal epic period.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should be more clear: I'm talking about speed and frequency of edits, and also impact which seems to be free-floating -- that isn't in any way justified by the action onscreen. At least when Charlton Heston was stepping metal to the floor of his chariot, the sounds you heard corresponded to things you were seeing. Now they've gone all schizophonic -- audible punctuation? Something we no longer even hear? Something to raise the alert level in the cineplex to "orange"?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(By the way, I will be interviewing a professional trailer-maker, so I will have answers to some of these questions.)

YOU MIGHT CITE

[ex-mimic736.livejournal.com]

THE HORRIBLE "HOLIDAY MOVIE"
CAMERON DIAZ PLAYS A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE TRAILER MAKER

[(Anonymous)]

McLuhan’s 'hot and cool' - maybe it extends to content too? Hot seeking to complete the viewer/listener (Bollywood dazzle, rockisms, Kung Fu zoom-ins), while cool (‘peaceful’ Mark Rothkos, ‘relaxing’ pan-pipe music) invites completion. One is mental intrusion, the other an invitation to intrude into it. One seeks to control our own understanding of it, the other inspires control and definition. Two extremes, most culture falls between, but neither ‘higher’ or more ‘moral’. Maybe it’s hormones - kids, broadly speaking, like it hot. Whump might be adding hot into cool, white flash cool into hot? Which makes a movie a washing machine.

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't find a complete version online, but the trailer for Welles' F for Fake always makes me smile.
Abridged version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n52q_BywGuY

As for impact culture, I blame cars.

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

N -

You're reacting to the production style of the trailers... which are all made by the same few people and edited in a similar style. People in charge of distribution do it that way because they hold all the cards. It's why the same annoying husky-voiced man does all the narration, which usually starts with the words 'In a world...'

bad haiku

[(Anonymous)]

shock and awe.
americans love violence.
(so do other people).

michael

whomp & whoosh

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favorite things to hate about modern movies. It's not just in trailers either. I just saw "Pan's Labyrinth" -something which should have been a quiet and thoughtful art movie, but which managed to have a lot of whomp, whoosh and silly egregious sound effects with which to alarm the theater goers.

Another over-used sound; ringing or grating metallic sounds, when the gleaming, glinty, preposterous title is presented to us in all its shabby splendor. As if the title were carved of pure gleaming sharp steel, rather than the masturbatory scribblings of some adenoid case in a Hollyweird basement.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

I think of Dr. Tran!!!!!! (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ea7oIraV2Q0)

My generation is totally tired of all those quick cuts. They were effective around 1999 so the movie execs are using them more because they think "quick cut=more eye-catching."

The same thing happens in television animation. Something new comes out, it's popular and successful, so the networks try to recreate the effect 50 times.

This quiet introspection is becoming really fashionable. Calm, free-floating Asian films (even horror) are very hip.

Actually....digression. Even calm, free-floating Asian films hae commercials with quick-cut editing. False advertising!

Anyway, calm things. Your record, and Kahimi's, were both so soft and delicate. Zen has come back over here in Northern California. Go to a concert, you're not likely to find aggressive dancing or big moshes, mostly just twenty-somethings standing around with appletinis.

I don't mean to judge people who like a little physicality when they go out, but I think there's been a reaction to "aggressive media."

Re: whomp & whoosh

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Oh, Pan's Labyrinth was very moving! I think it was supposed to incite anxiety, so all the "whomp, whoosh" was appropriate. It's not appropriate when you're SELLING ME APPLES AT A FRUIT STAND!!!! *WHOOSH WHOOSH BAM*

[freesurfboards.livejournal.com]

ive always blamed it on media over-saturation - hollywood had its shining moment when people would make a night of going out to see media, but now its everywhere. and it's impact culture is it's screams for attention, like last ditch attempts to grab our attention before the industry starts losing money to video games. Or maybe like a baby screaming just to get his mother to pay attention.

It seems like creative cultures are on either end of the spectrum, like you said between andy warhol-ish or hollywood-ish (isn't the movie irreverisble like some bastard combination of the two?) - by the rules of capitilism you have the freedom of choice to choose between these presets. I'm kinda sitting this one out though.

[freesurfboards.livejournal.com]

editing in trailers have really influenced the editing in movies

A Balance of sorts

[(Anonymous)]

It seems that as more technology and random data permeate our lives, the more escape we need. In this sense, film trailers seem to mirror our minds. They are nothing less than assaults, in a sense. Maybe, like Ritalin, they speed us up so as to leave us exhausted, and entranced. In this sense, they might be so over-the-top precisely because a majority of U.S. citizens are on prescribed medication, which dulls the overall experience of life. Are french movie trailers like this? Godard didn't need it.

[giggomachine.livejournal.com]

Your bullet point on 'fine art film and video' is a gross generalization that says more about your ideas about art and culture than about the state of 'fine art film and video.' The first problem I see in that statement is the use of the term 'fine art film and video,' a somewhat pretentious way of putting things and one that isn't really in use. Based on your definition of 'fine art film and video' and your reference to Wahol, a more appropriate, less petit-bourgeoisie term would be either Avant Garde Film or Video or Experimental Film or Video, or plain Art Film, Video Art. The qualifier 'fine' is really snooty. It sounds like you're only referring to films and videos about opera, or the ballet.

The comment on editing style is also incorrect and also says more about your personal preferences than the current state of art film and video. While there is a large coterie of 'deliberatley boring' film and video makers, particularly in Germany and Austria, this style is far from the norm. Artists like Peter Tscherkasky, Gerard Holthuis, Ryan Trecartin or Luther Price, to name just four, are responsible for some really frenetic editing. While people like Joeroen Offerman, James Fotopoulos, Kurt Kren or even David Lynch often (ab)use 'stupid impact.'

And, as someone who knows a fair amount about commercial film and art film/video, yes, the same software is usually used, either AVID or Final Cut Pro. But almost no 'fine art film'maker will admit to using software. Most of them still do it without computers.

boomtastic

[(Anonymous)]

the cheesy you-don't-know-what'll-hit-ya trailer productions only exhibit the majority of americans' inability to savor anything. i stand on no ivory tower; i think we can all agree that nowadays, everything's just gotta be big mac'd into a big pile of stupid, and thanks to schizophrenic editing, the meals keep on getting easier to swallow. if it isnt fast, its boring. if it isnt hip on tech, its outdated. if it isnt surprising, it isnt engaging. this is what art in america (for the most part) has come to.

ill totally be looking forward to your piece on wired! love the site.

hugo

Interface Is Destiny

[minimalrobot.livejournal.com]

Well, I have to side with Eno and Markus Popp on this one. If you consider that just about all entertainment is built via computer software, and that most software is designed by tech dorks lacking in imagination, then you can start to understand, at least in part, why we get the product we do.

http://absoluteclassicmasterpieces.blogspot.com/2007/01/interface-is-destiny.html

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

...could it be the fault of computers and software...

The computer did for film/video editing what it did for word processing. It made them non-linear, easier and cheaper. I use a computer to edit video. Cuts only, fades and super-impositions and the occasional image correction.

As for the whizz bang factor of movie trailers it's sort of a mystery. Obviously they're trying to wow us and that's getting harder to do. I say it's a mystery because I put it in the same category as cable news graphics. Lower thirds are creeping up the screen and picture flips and spins, backgrounds are distracting. I don't know any one who likes these effects. Maybe they're just there to distract you from that fact that they're not giving you any real news.

We whoomp because the whoomp is there.

[basilwhite.livejournal.com]

Edward Tufte talks about Powerpoint tardness because the tardness is so easy to wield. Plus you can't blame directors for whoomp and whoosh in the trailer. Directors don't direct their trailers. There's a lot of effective neuroscience in the whoomp and whoosh - people respond with fear to an expanding dark figure, etc.

[maybeimdead.livejournal.com]

Or should we blame software presets?

As tasteless as this may seem, I'm rather intrigued by the possibility of using a computer to detect the boombastic moments in a film and auto-magically render it with some boom-boom beats. Forget about the art of editing, the art's in the algorithm! (On second thought maybe that's why these trailers make us feel like machines)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Let them fill the theaters. As far as I'm concerned, the less of them tromping about orchid bogs and museums, the better.

Re: boomtastic

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

The West is full of novelty addicts; if it isn't shiny and new, it lacks value. Things don't stay around long enough to be refined and improved.

Re: boomtastic

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

...which is another way of saying that the newer it looks, the more boring it usually proves to be. No context, no resonance, no history. Flat, flat, flat.

Compare this to trailers of the 1950s

[pop--kandy.livejournal.com]

YouTube is great visual research for this sort of thing. It's striking, when you look at 1960s film trailers (the Bond series is a good mainstream example) how how chock-full of narration and superimposed splash titles they are. In a sense they are dumber than contemporary trailers, because they feel the need to explain the whole thing to you with the sort of earnest exposition you used to hear in old newsreels.

Today's "whoosh-flash" edit trailers might all seem alike, but in another sense they are now using a visual shorthand finely tuned to a visually literate audience. Fast montage of action that fades to black? Something bad may (or may not) have happened. Montage of boy-meets-girl, romantic-misunderstanding clips that fade to white? Implies a happy ending, or a passage of time. Warlike drums? Well, obviously it means Jet Li is going to kick some butt...

It is funny, as another poster commented, that there does seem to be a visual onomatopoeia in motion graphics; we expect metallic looking titles to "sound" metallic and sharp when they fly by, and for pixie-dust sparkles to make a glistening bell-tree sound, and so on. I don't think this is a bad thing, because it fulfills the viewer's expectation, it helps them lose themselves in the world on the screen, to suspend disbelief, by creating a world that "sounds" real (even if it is actually sort of hyper-real).

[(Anonymous)]

You spend alot of time watching trailers Nick? I never watch them as they are simply commercials...as you may also find: most products aren't experienced through viewing a commercial for it. Adds for toothpaste don't clean your teeth nor do millions of adds for cheap lite beers get sports fans drunk. The same is true of cinema.
love,
John Flesh