Guitarist and producer Blake Mills can be categorized by his tasteful use of distorted and harmonic guitar tones alongside various instances of jazz and folk inspired music – whereas Oliver Tarney is known for developing emotive pillars in films through his sound design for directs such as Sam Mendes and Ridley Scott. Both artists represent the depth that is prevalent in sound that can still be promoted for commercial use and distribution. While I have been surrounded by the world of sound art, with a particular emphasis on underground varieties of non commercial use of noise that has propelled my personal practice into areas that I would have not explored, my experience working in live sound mainly for function bands (i.e. weddings, corporate events, and charity events) demands a very straightforward, understandable, and commercial use of sonic material. While both of these artist are inspiring to me, they do both lie in the relatively commercial landscape. I aspire to follow a similar sort of career to the combination of these two people (as an example) because I will maintain and grow my compositional and performative practice alongside working in audio post-production for film. Blake Mills performative presence, specifically in relation to the shows where he preformed his guitar parts for Notes With Attachments arranged by Pino Paladino, was very inspiring to me sonically and physically (in reference to his body language and minimal stage presence).
‘Once the film went to post, sound and music were the only tools that could have any effect on the rhythm and pace.‘ – Oliver Tarney, A Sound Effect interview on 1917.
1917 was the film that inspired me to get into film sound. It has a great score, done by Thomas Newman, and sound design, led by Oliver Tarney. The film is done in the style of a sigular continuous shots with disguised cuts between location sites (portrayed very close to each other, and entirely walkable – through the storyline). In an interview with A Sound Effect, Oliver Tarney highlights that because of this essentially POV style, sound and music were the only tools that could be used to change the pace of the film – and this is prevalent throughout the film. Aside from the performance of the actors, the sound acts as an integral part of the film’s sense of reality. The accessibility that the film maintained to expose audiences to the importance of sound in film was not only inspiring for my practice and potential career paths, however, it later cemented certain doubts I had on working in an industry that highlights projects on a larger scale than the short and independent films I had initially leaned towards focusing on. Now I feel more content with the idea of working as a part of a large mechanism that has the potential of producing a film such as 1917 with a large creative sonic impact, lead by Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate.
