I have very little knowledge about audio prior to this class. I mostly think of audio as the volume at which its heard and whether its diegetic or non-diegetic. So I found that listening to the interview with Jennifer Ralston very informative and enlightening. Listening to scenes from The Wire as part of the interview also changed how I considered and understood the show.

Now I understand that audio in shows, to be realistic, requires you not to just think about how loud it is or if its diegetic, but what sounds you would hear and how you would hear them if it were something happening in real life, and not for film. Of course, this doesn’t work for all creative projects, as they aren’t all reality based, but The Wire has a documentary feel to it, so the realness of the soundscape are very important.

I think it was really cool that crisp, intelligible sounds weren’t the top priority, nor was having the picture match the sounds. The importance of surveillance in the show seems to have really affected how those decisions were made, especially in determining how much of what is going on is the audience privy to. I think this really shows how different The Wire is from other television shows.

I was pleased to hear that the background sounds were taken from recordings in Baltimore to keep the realness of it. Likewise, I thought it was interesting that noisy scenes weren’t fixed by removing the noise, but by balancing the noise.

I think the most important idea presented in this interview was considering not the volume of the sound, but the type of sounds you’d be able to hear in a scene depending on what is going on. The kind of sounds that you’d hear are also a way of setting the tone of the scene, such as the serenity of the opening scene with Bubbles in episode 10 of season 1. Similarly, the sounds of footsteps, paper rustling, and the car starting that you hear with McNulty’s kids make the scene quiet and realistic, without it being completely devoid of sound.

Sounds as cues or symbols is also another interesting thing that I’d never thought about. The baby crying and dogs barking always seemed like generic neighborhood noises, just like the cat yowl when something is thrown over a fence or out of sight in a cartoon. In this series, though, the dog barking was a way of indicating that someone was where they weren’t supposed to be. Similarly, the baby crying was used not only to signify being in a bad neighborhood where the kids don’t sleep easily, but also to represent the innocence of a character, such as Kima or Wallace.

Ultimately, the hardest part about sound is that it never blinks like a picture does; sound is a continuum. That being said, listening to this interview really helped to provide tips and insight into well done soundscapes and the important things to consider.