Reflecting on Jennifer Ralston’s Explanation of Sound Editing

Listen to the interview below:

Simply watching a show does not do the full design of the work (that is, the show) justice. When you put yourself into the role of a viewer, you tend to only view the outer layer of the show and wonder: What’s happening in the episode? What’s going on with the characters? What’s going to happen next? Little do you watch a show and think about why the writer included certain dialogue, scenery, and sounds. Listening to this interview with Sound Editor for The Wire, Jennifer Ralston, really opened my eyes (or more so, my ears) to the complex world of sounds.

Firstly, I was impressed with Jennifer Ralston’s professional work history and her dedication to the job. Working in New York City, I can only imagine how difficult it was to travel to Baltimore to meet regularly with David Simons. Although Jennifer’s job was mainly behind-the-scenes, she mentioned that there were times that she visited the set. Being able to see the set probably helped greatly in planning the sounds that would occur on that set for certain scenes. I thought it was very cool that Jennifer recorded and used in the show real sounds from Baltimore, such as background sounds from the docks to be used in Season 2.

I was surprised when I was cruising the IMDB page for The Wire, and found out that the actor who plays Jimmy McNulty, Dominic West, is actually English. Being familiar with Idris Elba’s work, I had known that he was also English. I thought it was interesting when Jennifer mentioned that some actors would have to come in to re-record dialogue, so as to correct any accents. I then realized that accents are an essential part to conveying a character. Although it’s on the part of the actor to execute the accent, the accent was planned by the Director and Sound Editor.

Although the sounds are in a sense “fictional” the sound clips are broken down and built back up to bring realism to a scene. Jennifer’s explanation of how directional microphones were used for some of the surveillance scenes made me think about how important sounds are in conveying perspective. All dialogue in a show should never always sound clear. By using directional microphones and intentionally making conversations sound unclear, a “outside listening in” effect is created. The detectives on surveillance can only hear that much also. The idea that not all sounds should be clear was reiterated when Jennifer explained that to replicate the sound of a wiretap, digital fuzz had to be added. Below are a few quotes from Jennifer that really stood out to me:

“You don’t convey silence by making things quieter, you convey silence by bringing out details you couldn’t hear unless it was really quiet.”

“In real life your soundtrack is never playing what you want it to play in the moment.”

The sound clip analysis that was most interesting to me was from the climactic point of Season 1, when Kima and Orlando are ambushed by some of the Barksdale crew. There are so many different levels of sound in this scene which I realize required lots of planning. The sound had to convey what Kima was hearing/saying, but also what the detectives could hear from the car. The sound effect from Kima’s wire is very different to the sounds of the radio used between the detectives when they are searching for Kima. At the same time you have the sounds of the car going through the alleys and the music playing on top of everything. This explanation of how complex an arrangement of sounds can get makes me listen to episodes in an entirely different way now.