Soundwalkers - Raquel Castro

Soundwalkers was not quite what I expected. Rather than a documentary about sound recording it was a documentary simply about sound and noise. I found this pretty refreshing and parts were definitely eye (or ear) opening. It was essentially a collection of clips from interviews with people involved with sound. Some of them involved in fairly expected ways (sound artists or recordists) and some in more abstract ways (sound physicists and a sound advisor for the Mayor of London). I definitely found the more abstract interviews to be more interesting simply because I had not thought about these people and what they might have to say on the subject of sound before. The man who acts as a sort of noise pollution advisor for the Mayor of London was particularly interesting. What he had to say wasn't perhaps the most interesting, but I found his perspective and job title to be wonderful. He essentially works to attempt to make the constant flow of noise generated in the city more "harmonious" to the inhabitants.

The documentary was not perfect. To me it felt a little over the top in places. Particularly its use of sound effects. I understand that it's a documentary about sound and opening our ears a little more, but the use of sound recordings was excessive and bordered on parody to me. I get that sound recordists want to show off these wonderful recordings they've made, but in a lot of cases they felt out of context with the images on screen and it didn't create a desirable effect to me as a viewer. I also thought some of the excessive editing was a little silly. Random colour changes and quick cuts. That said a few sequences in the film were extremely effective. There's a section around the middle where a man is describing how society and its sound is becoming more machine-like and as he speaks faster and faster the images and sounds build up in a really interesting way that I thought was very effective.

In the end though it is what these people actually had to say that left the biggest impression on me. I am definitely a person who sometimes just loves to stop and listen to the world and produce sounds, but perhaps I don't do it or think about it enough. I particularly liked one man's statement: "Sound is everything I hear. Noise is also everything I hear, but a bit more disorganized. Silence is everything I want to hear, but I can't."