River's blog

Author: Han Wen

  • Mixing and Delivering a Film

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    After reading the chapter “Mixing and Delivering a Film” in Tim Harrison’s Sound Design for Film, I gained a deeper understanding of the film sound mixing process. Mixing is not just a technical task — it’s a creative decision-making process about how a story should be heard. The director, producer, sound designer, and re-recording mixer…

  • Sound Design in 

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    Under the Skin Under the Skin is not just a visually interesting movie—its sound design is also very strong. The music is especially important. It doesn’t just set the mood; it shows the characters’ inner feelings and works with the images to tell the story. The movie uses ambient sounds, like city noise, office whispers,…

  • Broadcast Gymnastics and Foucault’s Discipline

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    During my exploration of broadcast gymnastics, I found that Michel Foucault’s theory of discipline can explain this well. Foucault says: “Power is exercised rather than possessed; it circulates through techniques, practices, and routines that organize everyday life” (Discipline and Punish, 1977). This means power is not just directly imposed, but works slowly through daily actions,…

  • Topic Selection

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    When I first started thinking about the topic for my audio paper, I wanted to explore “noise”—the everyday sounds that are ignored, chaotic, or harsh. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this topic was too abstract. It was hard to find a clear focus, and I couldn’t easily connect…

  • Ambience and Spatial Design: Sonic World of Mon Oncle

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    Although the rhythm of actions is central in this Mon Oncle clip, the ambience is equally important in shaping the overall atmosphere. Tati’s visual world is usually clean, structured, and uncluttered, and he avoids dense or noisy environmental layers. For this reason, my approach to the ambience needed to strike a balance between “being present”…

  • Maps as Sonic Fictions

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    ImaginationA giant tree-like space: the trunk is time, and the branches are your past, present, and future. You can travel to each moment of your life, listening to whispers of memory, the faint light of the future, and possible sounds. StructureTrunk: The flow of time, slow and deep, connecting all nodes.Branches: Childhood (laughter and cicadas),…

  • Reflection on Listening and Not Listening – Cathy Lane

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    Listening to Cathy Lane’s audio paper Listening and Not Listening to Voice gave me a deep understanding of the ideas of “listening” and “not listening.” Lane uses experimental sound collage to mix voices that appear and disappear, making the listener move between understanding and sensing. Her combination of narration and background sounds, along with distorted…

  • Foley Experience

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    While working on the Foley sound design for the film My Uncle, I realized that its sound language was much more complex than I had imagined. Jacques Tati’s films have very little dialogue — their emotion, rhythm, and humor all come from everyday sounds. So during the process, I wanted to use Foley to let…

  • Some notes on Pure Data

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    There is also a small chord generator, but using multiplication to calculate the frequency of each note is cumbersome and prone to some errors, so it still needs improvement.

  • Foley Design in 

    —

    by

    Han Wen
    in

    We Need to Talk About Kevin During the Foley session, we worked on designing Foley for clips from this film. During the process, I realized that for different types of clothing in the footage, it is important to consider whether the sounds they produce should be so pronounced, as well as the importance of organizing…