Cyrus is a young man not too willing to disclose his Chinese name. A graduate of the School of Film and Television at the Hong Kong Academy of the Performing Arts with a major in Sound Design, he has an academic air about him. During his studies, he traveled to Beijing and Taiwan to take part in internships, which gave him an understanding of the developments in soundtrack post-production in greater China. Since he has participated in and been concerned with many works related to social issues, he eagerly decided to further his studies in 2012 in the Master degree program in Visual Culture Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he will endeavor to integrate social issues into sound production.

“While at school, I already leaned towards doing post-production stuff. At first I wanted to do film editing and action animation. I had the interest but didn’t have the patience; once I had edited things half way I had already lost patience or else just wrapped things up sloppily! I chose my major without really having a clear idea, just wanting to try things out, unselfconsciously getting into this profession for a year or so. Then I started taking on freelance work while studying. People in the arts seem to have less interest in sound. Most people are attracted by visuality first, but I have found that with many things related to the emotions, sound can really influence or color people’s feelings, no less than visuals can.”

-Cyrus

The Work of a Foley Artist
Cyrus: The last part of sound post-production is the final stage in film production. Sound post-production mainly includes the dialogue, ambient sounds, sound effects, Foley (“special sound effects” in HK Chinese) and the music soundtrack. In Hong Kong, “Foley” is about using props to express the sound of consecutive actions — in mainland China this is called “action effects” — normally this covers footsteps, the rustling of clothes, people sitting down, putting down the phone, and so forth…really any sound that results from an action. “Sound effects” are ordinary sounds. In Hollywood or abroad, they can define anything as Foley; they have the resources and the capital to produce all the sounds in a film from start to finish, using a new sound each time to express a different rhythm or sound quality.

Sound is a Low Profile Profession
Cyrus: Dramas place dialogue at the forefront, so the greatest chance of using Foley is in action movies. Relatively harder are comedies, which require many unusual sounds to create the atmosphere. For instance, the ringing of the phone or the pace of a character’s steps all requires sound to fabricate this “comedic effect”; something similar happens in horror movies. What I mean is that the core of what we do isn’t to highlight the sound but to make the sound serve the visuals. A successful creation of sound production for a film makes the audience not notice the sound, since you’ve made it appear so natural and comfortable that others basically don’t even notice it. Sound is a very low profile profession.

But recently the field of sound post-production has undergone many changes. All of this has to do with CEPA (Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, the agreement to forge closer economic ties between the mainland and Hong Kong). The moment there are co-productions, Hong Kong cinema has changed dramatically. Aside from the themes in movies, a more practical problem technically speaking is that all films now need to have a Mandarin version and film ratings version. The difficulty really lies in the fact that all the dialogue needs to have the sound redone, while the sound recorded on set cannot be used at all. Since the ambient sounds and the dialogue of the actors are “linked” together, when we do the Mandarin version, practically all the sound and Foley effects have to be redone. Basically, the Mandarin version does not have a single bit of sound recorded on set.

The Practice and Imagination of Sound

< Four Steps to the Foley Effect of a Bottle Breaking>
(1) The sound of an empty bottle breaking
(2) The sound of water swishing around in a bottle
(3) The sound of a bottle (with water) breaking
(4) The different sound quality of glass shards falling on the ground, like the sounds of glass hitting concrete, the floor, or the tabletop
The mix of four different timbres and layers of sound makes up what we recognize as the sound of a “bottle breaking” in cinema.

Cyrus: Often times you don’t necessarily have the experience when you create the sound. When I was working at my old company, I was in charge of the sound post-production of Floating City. In the film, many scenes depicted the life of boat people walking back and forth on the deck, under which is hollow space. We continually collected wood planks of different quality and held them up at different heights to get the most desirable result. Sometimes when we get to the side of the boat, the thickness changes again, so we had to try over and over again. Floating City had scenes from several different periods of time — first with small sailboats, then came larger sailboats, hand-cranked motor boats, and then diesel ships…. How do you express the forward movement of boats without a motor?

On the other hand, I got an inspiration from Pirates of the Caribbean: on a boat without motors, I cannot hear the sound of the oars but only the sound of rushing water. The sound of the wind plus the sound of water rushing by makes the sound of a larger sailboat. At certain points we would consult some scientific or technical reference material in order to understand the principle of ship movement, but at other times we also wanted to leave ourselves some creative space. We didn’t always have to aim for reality consciously but instead try out other ways: to use the sound of factory motors to pull off this effect could be like an act of creation — to use our own means to express sounds which do not exist any more.

Creation is also about [creating] sounds that do not exist in reality. The sounds of Transformers changing shapes and walking around involve the combination of different mechanical sounds. Sci-Fi sounds like lasers, spaceships, and warp speed are about the feeling of time and quality, while alien sounds are in fact created by the combination of different animal sounds like lions, leopards, tigers and so on. If we need some mechanical sounds, we could go look in a car factory. Large-scale factories like Audi, for instance, usually have their own recording studios. Each time they make a new car, they will record each sound, like the car sound, the brakes, the steering wheel, the inside and the outside, the car speeding up or slowing down — and then sell these sounds to film and video game companies.

Cryus， 一個不太願意透露中文全名的青年。畢業於香港演藝學院電影電視學院；主修音響設計的他總予人濃厚的學院派氣息。在學期間曾先後到北京及台灣進行實習，對於兩岸三地的電影聲音後期製作及發展頗具了解。由於過往曾參與不少關注社會議題的製作，2012年銳意於香港中文大學視覺文化研究系攻讀碩士課程，嘗試把社會議題融入聲音創作。

「讀書時我已經偏向喜歡做後期的東西，開始時我是想做剪接和動態影像的，有興趣但卻沒有耐性，剪片剪到一半已經沒心機或草草收尾！選科時一無所知地試試看，不自覺入行差不多一年半，現在邊讀書邊接自由工作。讀藝術的人好像對聲音的興趣比較少。前設是大部份人都以視覺行先，但我發現，許多情感上的東西，聲音能夠感染或影響人的能力不比畫面低。」

-Cyrus

特殊音效師的工作
Cyrus : 聲音的後期是一套電影的最後工序。後期製作的聲音主要包括對白、環境、聲效、特殊音效及音樂。在香港「特殊音效」是用道具去表達連串的動作；大陸稱為「動作效果」，常見有腳步、衣服的磨擦、坐下、放下電話……等所有因動作而發出的聲音。「聲效」是一般的聲音，在荷里活或外國的層面，他們可以把任何東西都定義為特殊音效。他們擁有資源、資本，整齣電影中所有聲音都可以從頭到尾做一次，每一次都用一個新的聲音去表達不同的節奏與質感。

聲音是一個很低調的行業
Cyrus：文戲以對白為主，因此最多機會用到特殊音效是動作電影。比較難做的是喜劇，喜劇需要好多古怪的聲音去營造氣氛！比如演員用什麼電話鈴聲，走路時的節奏，都是靠聲音去營造那個「喜感」，恐怖片的處理是一樣的。而我想說，最核心的東西是我們的工作不是為了突出聲音，而是要讓聲音去服侍畫面。一部成功的電影聲音創作，是令到一般觀眾注意不到聲音。因為你做得很自然，很舒服，舒服到別人根本察覺不到。聲音是一個很低調的行業。

但近年聲音後期製作這一行發生了許多變化，一切可以從CEPA（內地與香港關於建立更緊密經貿關係的安排）說起。自從有了合拍片，香港的電影開始產生了很大的變化。除了電影題材以外，技術上更實際的問題是所有電影都要做國語版和電檢版。箇中難度在於所有對白需要重新配音，而現場所錄的聲音都用不著。因為環境聲與演員的對白「黏」在一起，當做國語版時，幾乎所有聲效與特殊音效都要重新做一次。原則上國語版沒有一粒聲音是現場戲。

聲音的實踐與想像
〈爆樽音效四步曲〉
（一）空樽破爆的聲音
（二） 水在樽內流動的聲音
（三） 載有水的樽爆破時的聲音
（四） 玻璃碎片掉在不同質地：如石屎地、地板或桌面的聲音
四個不同質感與層次的聲音混合，就是我們在電影裡所認知的「爆樽」的聲音了。

Cyrus：很多時候你創作的聲音你不一定有所經歷。我在舊公司工作時， 負責電影《浮城》的聲音後期製作。《浮城》有許多場戲講述水上人的生活，在甲板上走來走去，甲板中間是空心的；我們不斷地拾不同質地的木板，架起不同的高度去試最理想的效果。有時跨過船邊，厚實又不同，所以要不斷去試。浮城有好幾個不同時代的場景。先是帆船，然後是三帆船，手拉動的摩打船，到最後的柴油船…那些沒摩打的船可以用什麼聲音來表達它的前進？反而我在《魔盜王》裡得到啓發。那是一艘沒摩打的船，我聽不到人划槳的聲音，只有往前驅動的流水聲。風聲加上水流動的聲音就等於一架三帆船的聲音。有時我們會參考一些科學文獻，了解船的驅動原理，但有時候我們亦想給自己留一點空間。不一定要刻意去像真，反而是嘗試用其他方法：工廠的摩打聲去拼湊那個效果，這可能就是創作，用自己的方式去表現那些已經不再有的聲音。

創意同樣包括創作現實裡頭沒有的聲音。變型金剛變身和走路的聲音，其實是用不同的機械聲混合而成的。科幻的聲音如激光、太空船、音速，是一種時間與速度的感覺；異型其實是用獅子、豹、老虎…不同的動物聲合成的。如果需要一些機械聲，我們可以去找車廠。像Audi這類大型的車廠，通常會有自己的錄音室，每一次出新車他們都會把所有部位，例如門聲、拉掣、軚盤、室內室外、行車快慢…全部能發聲的部位錄音，再賣給電影公司，電腦遊戲公司。