Sunday, April 8

Sound Meeting on the Bridge

On its third day Meetings on the Bridge discussed sound, perhaps one of the most difficult and complicated field in cinema. Director and film editor Ayris Alptekin , director and Istanbul Film Festival’s director Kerem Ayan , one of the co-founders of the Post Production Company, Posbıyık, Yalın Özgencil and one of the co-founders of Melodika, Taylan Oğuz all shared their personal experiences and talked about the commonly made mistakes in the sound design and sound editing processes at the panel which took place at Soho House. Producer Nadir Öperli moderated the talk.

At the panel, it was pointed out that it is important to think about the sound design of a film right from the preparation process and stay in touch with the sound design professionals during the pre-production and production processes. Taylan Oğuz explained: “The ideal situation doesn’t happen. Generally people come to us to finalize the sound design once the work has been done, while they need to come to us when the screenplay is being written.” Ayris Alptekin said that sound should be seen as another storyteller: “Sometimes the sound you take out serves more to create the universe you want than the sound you add.” He also added: “I wish there were a field called sound dramaturgy. I wish there were people working on this from the scriptwriting process, following up the sound through the entire process and checking to see if it fits to the universe the director wants to create…”

Nadir Öperli said that the follow-up of sound and post-production goes smoother when the project has a sound supervisor: “I don’t remember even going out to location scouting without the sound technician before, but now they are not included in the process because of budget issues. Yalın Özgencil said that one person shouldn’t have to do the whole sound work and explained: “It’s important to separate into steps the processes of dialogue, sound design and final mix, and that each crew work in their area of specialization. Taylan Oğuz pointed out that the infrastructure, equipment and technical crew are no worse than the ones in Hollywood and added: “The issue here is time and budget.”