„Welles loved to move the camera. He loved that wide angle lens, 18 millimeter. You’re on some sort of amusement park ride with the motion and psychological impact, like in Kane or in Ambersons or in The Lady from Shanghai. He does an extraordinary sequence in the hall of mirrors at the end of that film.
But, for me, it has to come from music and the lack thereof. In other words, silence is important. In Raging Bull, we never really thought too much about the sound effects until Frank Warner and I worked on it with Thelma Schoonmaker. Frank Warner, a great sound effects editor and creator, came up with ideas of how these punches would sound and tried to imagine what it would sound like to a fighter in the ring. Imagine being in a ring, being pummeled, and you do it once a day, twice a day, sometimes with sparring. I couldn’t believe it when I saw what these men do. And what does it sound like to them?
We tried so many different things. Then, at one point, Frank looked at us and says, there is no sound. I said, you’re right. Take it all out. Take it out. You go into a whole meditative state and then, wham, the sound comes back in. What is it like to pass out in that ring? What is it like to be knocked down and all of a sudden... what does «all of a sudden» mean? How do you interpret «all of a sudden» visually and orally, because there’s a referee over you saying you’re out?
You say, what happened? What are you talking about I’m out? You’re on the floor. You’re on the mat. You see, that’s why you’re out. There is too much sound today in movies. Because of this remarkable technology now, the digital, we can do anything. But do we really need all that? Now the audience expects a certain kind of ambient sound; otherwise, they think something is wrong. That’s what they’ve been taught to expect. But ambient sound can cover your dialog, if you’re not careful. The whole thing becomes so technically oriented, because so many different kinds of refinements have become possible, that you can lose sight of the basics that need to happen.
When my wonderful sound crew did this beautiful job on the sound in Hugo, I didn’t go in that mixing room for two days, well, because they’re playing it back and forth until they get it right. Do you know what that’s like, back and forth eight hours a day? And very often, I try to strip away. I say, well, do we really need that sound? What’s this sound? What’s that sound? And I’ve found that over the years with the digital we have more of that.
Silence is so important. It makes a big difference. And I’m afraid that audiences in America unfortunately expect sound from first frame to last frame, and I think they expect music, too. And music in the past twenty years has been used to let people know what to feel.” (via)