To
watch without a
picture.
No,it's not ancient
Chinese philosophy. This idea was first suggested to me by my
prof in
audio production
class. You simply put on a
movie (or a
film depending on your personal
tastes) with something draped over the
TV set (or, for those of you with a
bitchin-ass home entertainment setup, turn off the television) and listen. High-quality
headphones are a
plus (especially for those of us with
ADD) since they provide a higher level of
immersion.
Even if you've seen it a hundred times, you'll probably notice new things about the audio track.
The idea here is, obviously, is to move your
focus from
the most dominant of the five senses (or six, depending on your
spiritual beliefs) to the
runner-up. Not only does it broaden your
aural observation, but also, if done enough, teaches you to focus more on sound in
everyday life, an essential for anyone involved with an audio profession, and a nice perk for anyone looking to improve their
powers of observation.
One of the first things I noticed through this
activity was how often
sounds from certain
sound libraries are used in various pieces of
media. If you play any
video games, you've
probably already discovered this. When playing a game, you're assaulted by the same sounds repeatedly, until they're so beaten into your subconscious that one
instant of recorded audio has become a part of your
soul. Then, you hear the sound on a TV show, or, in a movie that used the same sound library and you notice a sound because it's so
familiar to you. (This is a pretty
jarring experience, especially the first time, which might prompt you to spew
epithets or gesture frantically in the
general direction of the
TV set from whence the sound came.)
Among the sounds that seem to be most
popular are the mechanical
UFO doors used in
X-COM and various gun-handling noises from
Duke Nukem.
After a while of
listening you'll be able to discern between different
microphone types, recognize
subtle changes in
enivronment, and even notice
mistakes or
shoddy work, among a great many other things that influenced you before on a
subconscious level.