The Narrative Use of Sound and Music in Apocalypse Now

Rob Harrison

Leeds Metropolitan University

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Murch’s sound design treatment of Apocalypse Now [2]. The paper covers topics such as; the use of acousmatic sound, looking at Chion’s theories on the subject and how this ties in with Flueckiger’s unidentified sound objects, point of audition, and how this technique is used to show how the characters in the story hear the war. The creative uses of diegetic and non-diegetic music are covered along with vectorization and pre-lapping of sound. Sound and music are used to score the tension and anticipate action in many scenes throughout the film, selected scenes are examined for these functions and analysis is made. An investigation is also made into Murch’s law of 2.5 and his theories on encoded and embodied sound and how this can be placed on a spectrum dividing and categorising sound between music and speech. And the paper concludes by rounding up the investigated points showing how they are used for narrative effect.

Keywords

Apocalypse Now  Walter Murch  Acousmatic  Chion  Flueckiger  Sound Design  Point of Audition  Diegetic  Non-Diegetic  Vectorization  Pre-lapping  Encoded  Embodied  Murch’s Law of 2.5

Introduction

This paper aims to investigate the use of sound and music in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now [2]. The film is set in the Vietnam War where Cpt. Willard (Martin Sheen) has been set a top secret mission that officially  'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission involves him travelling up the Nung River into Cambodia to find and kill a renegade Colonel Kurtz who has gone insane and is commanding his army and carrying out rogue missions without direction from the U.S. Forces. The film features large sound and music departments and great detail was put into the post production process which broke records taking twenty six months to be completed. Walter Murch headed up the sound department and was also the film editor giving him chance to shape the picture and sound editing into a cohesive whole winning the film a host of awards including best picture and best sound.

This paper will analyse specific scenes from the film looking at how sound and music have been used to push the narrative of the storyline forward and how an immersive filmic world is built which absorbs the audience into the sound of Vietnam. The paper will be broken down into sections looking at some of the functions of sound and music in pivotal scenes from the film which will be examined, these will consist of; the opening scene, Willard receiving his mission, the ride of the valkyries, the tiger scene, Satisfaction on the boat, the Do Long Bridge, a section from Willard’s capture in Kurtz’s camp and Kurtz’s assassination. These scenes provide a wide range of examples of the narrative use of film sound and music through functions such as off screen acousmatic sound and unidentified sound objects, point of audition, diegetic and non-diegetic music and vectorization/pre-lapping. Sound and music is also used to fulfil functions such as describing the location, time period and cultural setting of the film, to describe the characters emotions or what emotions the audience should feel. Sound and music is used in the film to score the tension in a scene and to anticipate subsequent action. These functions of film sound and music will be discussed in greater detail in regards to the selected scenes mentioned above, and investigation will be made into how these functions are put to use for narrative effect. An investigation will also be made into what Murch describes as encoded and embodied sound, and his law of 2.5

Off Screen Acousmatic Sound and Unidentified Sound Objects

Chion [4] describes acousmatic sound as “sound one hears without seeing its originating cause.” This function is often used in horror films to increase tension as when we hear a sound our mind searches for the origin of the sound and if we are unable to find an originating cause for a strange sound this builds an air of tension much like a bump in the night, “since the origins of humankind, dangers in nature have been brought to our attention through noises: reacting quickly and appropriately to noises that signal danger can be crucial. The most threatening, however, are the noises which cannot be attributed to a known source within a reasonable amount of time.” [5].

Flueckiger [5] discusses off screen sound in a similar way classifying it as unidentified sound objects or USO’s. Flueckiger states “a chief characteristic of the USO is that it has been severed from any connection to a source.” Acousmatic sound is put to use in Apocalypse Now [2] from the very beginning of the film, at first we see a black screen and the first sound heard is a synthesized chopper sound being panned around from left to right at the rear of the cinema then to the front. Murch states in an interview that “at the beginning of the film, where we wanted a more abstract approach, we took the helicopter sound and recreated it element by element on a synthesizer.” [7]. The fact that a helicopter is the first sound we hear in the film is no mistake, the Vietnam War centred around the use of helicopters so this ghost chopper as Murch describes it sets the scene for a film about the Vietnam War, a war of helicopter cavalry.

During the Do Long Bridge scene later in the film where we have travelled up river and seem to be getting ever nearer to Kurtz’s insanity, Willard and Lance get out of the boat to find the commanding officer at the Do Long out post. Strange processed cries and animal sounds are heard, which comments on the increasing insanity of the soldiers and the war the further they travel up the Nung River. These unidentified sounds support and emphasize the scene, and do not divert and confuse the listener’s attention but accentuate feeling of crazed war and also the increasing danger while travelling further up the river. [5].

“As the sample analysis of the opening scene from Jurassic Park [8] reveals, Steven Spielberg is a master in the suggestive deployment of USOs. We imagine some kind of creature, certainly a violent one – the noises and the composition of its cage testify to that.” [5]. As Willard and Lance crawl through trenches of the Do Long Bridge out post they come across a group of crazed soldiers firing wildly into the jungle, Lance who has admitted to Chef earlier in the scene that he had taken the “last tab of acid he was saving” is clearly experiencing the situation from an altered perspective. He climbs up onto some sand bags absentmindedly while Willard and the other soldiers are sheltering from the oncoming fire and we hear processed off screen Red Indian vocalisations commenting on the psychedelic connection between Red Indians, peyote and the desert, this is another excellent example of an acousmatic USO. This connection is also illustrated in The Doors film [15] where Red Indians feature in the most of the psychedelic scenes.

Point of Audition

Point of audition describes hearing the world through the ears of an on screen character, much like point of view describing seeing the world through the eyes of an on screen character. Chion [4] defines point of audition into two meanings; “1. A spatial sense: from where do I hear, from what point in the space represented on the screen or on the sound track? 2. A subjective sense: which character at a given moment of the story, is (apparently) hearing what I hear.” It is mainly the subjective which we are concerned with regarding the narrative function in Apocalypse Now, during the opening sequence a montage of images of the jungle and war is overlaid onto Willard in a drunken reverie in his Saigon hotel as Willard starts to come round the sound of the chopper blades slowly fades into the fan spinning above his head bringing the audience into the hotel room and out of Willard’s mind and his thoughts about the jungle, this shows how his mind is still full of the war. The city ambience Willard hears through his hotel window such as the policeman’s whistle and car horns then also morph into jungle ambience, Murch [11] states “we wanted to create the sound of a field of crickets for one of the beginning scenes (Willard alone in his hotel room at night), but for story reasons we wanted the crickets to have a hallucinatory degree of precision and focus.” This hallucinatory degree is commenting on how “one reality is exchanged for another. The thread that links them is the fact that although his body is in Saigon his mind is in the jungle. That’s what Willard really wants to get back to.” [16]

Another good example of point of audition is during the Do Long Bridge sequence, strange acoustics and reverb comment on Lance’s P.O.A. as he has taken L.S.D., low chopper thuds make up bed of background sound creating an eerie sense of foreboding. Willard and Lance come across a sniper called Roach who has the ability to almost echo locate with his hearing. Murch talks about slowly taking the sound out over a period of time so we are pulled into hearing the world the way Roach the sniper does as he focuses in on the voice in the trees. A similar technique is also used in the tiger scene. [9]. An example of how P.O.A. has been has been used in another film could be the shell shock scene in Children Of Men [3] where a tank fires a shell at a building causing a large explosion. After the explosion we hear the diegetic sound from the scene through the main protagonist’s point of audition where all the sounds are muffled as if he is recovering from the shell shock.

Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Music

Diegetic music is music which is coming from a source in the world of the film. “If the source of a sound is a character or object in the story space of the film, we call the sound diegetic. The voices of the characters, sounds made by objects in the story, or music coming from instruments in the story are all diegetic sound.” [16]. Therefore the term non-diegetic music is used to describe the musical score, which usually functions to mark out important parts of the film and is a guide for the audience’s emotions.

During the scene where Willard receives his mission he meets two officers and a C.I.A. representative in a hut on a military camp in Vietnam. Willard enters the hut and inside it looks homely with settees, a coffee table and breakfast bar, a thousand miles away from the war in the jungle. There is soft dinner party music playing diegtically in the background. The fact that this music is playing comments on how relaxed the other characters are in this setting and also provides a sense of juxtaposition to Willard’s narration before he enters the hut where he talks about his story being a confession. As the men sit down to eat the dinner party music fades out which increases the tension in the scene before they start to tell Willard about Col. Kurtz. As the scene draws to a close and Willard is told that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist the score starts up with struck instruments possibly sounding slightly eastern, commenting on the location and this also communicates the emotions in the scene where Willard has just been given a mission to assassinate an American colonel. The non diegetic music also builds to the transition where they are travelling aboard a helicopter on the mission.

The famous ride of the Valkyries scene where Kilgore and his airborne regiment attack the NVA village at the mouth of the the River Nung, while playing Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries, is one of the most iconic scenes in any film about the Vietnam War. The music is based on Norse mythology, arranged by Wagner as part of his opera ‘Die Walkure’. Valkyries were the nine daughters of Wotan by Erda, of whom his favourite was Brunnhilde. It was the duty of the fierce warrior women, or ‘Amazons’, to incite the heroes in battle and carry away the bodies of the bravest on horseback to Valhalla, so that they may serve as the protectors of the gods. Again the horseback, cavalry and battle themes come across with the music. This is commenting on Kilgore’s army arriving in helicopters and the Vietnam War being a cavalry war fought with helicopters. The Ride of the Valkyries also provides a suitably epic soundtrack to the sight of so many helicopters flying in to attack a village, possibly anything other than grand classical opera would not be heroic enough? The cut to the peaceful village serves as a big contrast to the choppers and loud Wagnerian music and shows how the Americans are shattering the peace in Vietnam during the war. This also helps put across the differences in culture between the Vietnamese and the Americans.

Lissa [10] describes diegetic music as source music stating “film music becomes source music when it is motivated by the narrative logic of the visual production's fictional reality', i.e. when the source of that music is part of that same fictional reality. Source music can be thought of as music audible to (hearing) characters (if any) and enacted in the scene where it occurs. The sounding source of the source music may be visible on screen, e.g. a marching band, a band in a nightclub, a parent singing a lullaby, a concert, a church organ and congregation, etc., but it can also be invisible, e.g. a car radio, Muzak in an airport or shopping mall, a TV or hi-fi that has been turned on.”

Another example of diegetic or source music is the scene where Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones is playing on the radio on the boat this is communicating emotion to audience of the men feeling relaxed, they are dancing and Lance is water skiing from the back of the boat. This choice of music again comments on the time period and cultural setting of the film. The acoustic quality of the track changes as shot changes to the side of the boat travelling past the camera, this could be what Murch calls worldizing when the sounds are re-recorded in the environment shown.

Vectorization and Pre-Lapping

During the scene where Willard receives his mission we hear the sound of chopper blades which punctuate the dialogue building up to the transition to the next scene, this effect is known as vectorization. These building sounds provide a means of vectorization (help move the clip along a vector in time) the image its self has temporal animation, movement of characters and objects but the sounds temporality combines with the temporality present in the image helping us to move along the vector in time. [4]. These chopper sounds accentuate the tension in the scene where they are talking about Kurtz’s insanity and they also help to move between shots of different characters on screen pulling the audience’s attention between the shots of each actor.

Pre-lapping is a technique used where a sound from the next scene is overlaid onto the end of the previous cut. “Pre-lapping a sound edit before a scene changing picture edit, simply feels different than cutting sound and picture simultaneously. The sense is heightened that the outgoing scene is over, and the story is driven ahead.” [6] “Musically, it gives you a sense of anticipation and a windup. Something's about to happen. And then, of course, there's this cut, and the sound is very loud.” [7]. At Col. Kilgore’s beach party directly before the start of the Valkyries sequence Kilgore is talking about surfing the beach, as it has a 6ft peak. As the scene draws to a close and Kilgore says “Charlie don’t surf”, the turbine whine from a helicopter is pre-lapped over the end of the scene. There are no helicopters present in this scene but the rising turbine whine does provide a sense of anticipation and a windup. Something is about to happen as they are planning to attack the village the next day. When the transition happens and the scene cuts to the next morning, there are many helicopters starting up their engines ready for the battle it felt as if we were pulled into the scene creating a different type of transition and a bigger build up to the cut. This could also be an example of vectorization.

Scoring Tension and the Anticipation of Action with Sound and Music

There are many examples in Apocalypse Now ^[2] where everyday sounds have been used to score the tension of the narrative which helps to push the storyline forward. During the sequence where Willard receives his mission a recording is played of Kurtz’s voice while Willard and the other officers sit and eat. The voice recording, said to be picked up coming out of Cambodia, contains strange audio artefacts placed over the dialogue. These sounds seem to be made up of more synthesized helicopter sounds. The use of these sounds over the top of the recording serves to heighten empathy within the scene, bringing an air of darkness around Kurtz while the men look at each other, shocked as they hear the evil sound of his voice. This use of helicopter sounds again sets the recording in the Vietnam War.

At the beginning of the Valkyries scene where the choppers are all taking off we hear the diegetic sounds of the helicopters slowly fade out to a soldier blowing a bugle and siren like sound which is not clearly on screen, but could be signalling the fact that they are embarking on an air strike or bombing raid. The bugle is also representative of battle and war. The bugle and siren give the beginning of the scene a solemn feel as if what they are about to do is wrong. When Kilgore’s helicopter lands on the beach with a battle raging around it there are dense layers of sound. Murch [11] talks about how certain sounds are required to tell the story such as the dialogue being most important, then the helicopters, then small arms fire, mortars and explosions and so on. Murch [11] states “so in this section of Apocalypse, I found I could build a “sandwich” with five layers to it. If I wanted to add something new, I had to take something else away. For instance, when the boy in the helicopter says “I’m not going, I’m not going!” I chose to remove all the music. On a certain logical level, that is not reasonable, because he is actually in the helicopter that is producing the music, so it should be louder there than anywhere else. But for story reasons we needed to hear his dialogue, of course, and I also wanted to emphasize the chaos outside – the AK47′s and mortar fire that he was resisting going into – and the helicopter sound that represented “safety,” as well as the voices of the other members of his unit. So for that brief section, here are the layers:

1.       Dialogue (“I’m not going! I’m not going!”)

2.       Other voices, shouts, etc.

3.       Helicopters

4.       AK-47′s and M-16s

5.       Mortar fire.  

The tiger scene is another good example of the use of scoring sound in anticipation of the action “in which a high-pitched, sustained sound of insects freezes time and causes the experience of suspense, an effect usually achieved through the use of music, and by orchestral means.” [1]. This use of everyday sounds focuses attention and describes the location, using jungle ambience to build up before a tiger jumps out, from the jungle. An example of this use of everyday sounds used to score tension in this manner from another film could be in The Godfather where Michael is deciding whether or not to commit his first murder and the sound of a screeching train plays his emotional state.

After Willard and Lance’s encounter with Roach the sound is brought back in with an explosion blowing up a tower on the bridge giving a sudden shock and this marks out the fact that we are leaving the location. Strange processed orchestral hits start the cue of the score and horror movie string trills play the tension as the Chief tries to persuade Willard not to go any further up river. This is an “expression of actor's emotions, i.e. using music to communicate what characters played on screen are supposed to be feeling.” [10].

When Willard reaches Kurtz’s camp he is captured and at one point he is tied up outside in the rain, the music follows the movement micky mousing Kurtz’s footsteps as he walks over to where Willard is tied up. “Mickey mousing consists in following the visual action in synchrony with musical trajectories (rising, falling, zigzagging) and instrumental punctuations of action (blows, falls, doors closing).” [4] This “emphasis of movement, i.e. musically underlining visible or audible movement that is not intrinsically music” [10] serves to underline the severity of what is about to happen, building up to the impending action. A large crescendo of music dies down into rain lulling you into a false sense of security before Chef’s head is dropped into Willard’s lap by Kurtz. Willard’s horror is then punctuated with a clap of thunder marking the severity of the situation again. Lissa [10] describes this function as “anticipation of subsequent action , e.g. the music starts to sound nasty while the picture is still quite innocent', presenting a mood of threat just before the visuals go ugly with a sudden cut to a foul deed.”

Encoded and Embodied Sound and Murch’s Law of 2.5

Murch [11] divides up sound into the spectrum of light with encoded sound, over on the left (violet); and embodied sound, on the right (red). “The clearest example of Encoded sound is speech. The clearest example of Embodied sound is music. When you think about it, every language is basically a code, with its own particular set of rules... Music, however, is completely different: it is sound experienced directly, without any code intervening between you and it.” Flueckiger [5] describes the USO as “a piece of pure music which expresses itself in an openness for associative links on an abstract sound level.” This would place the USO’s used in the scenes mentioned above towards the red end of the spectrum as they are embodied sound. “Sound effects can mercurially slip away from their home base of yellow towards either edge, tinting themselves warmer and more ‘musical,’ or cooler and more ‘linguistic’ in the process... Sometimes a sound effect can be almost pure music. It doesn’t declare itself openly as music because it is not melodic, but it can have a musical effect on you anyway.” [11]. This use of musical sound effects works well to describe the ghost chopper at the opening of the film as it sets the stage and describes the location for a war film and also introduces the helicopter as an important character in the film and the war.

Figure 1. showing encoded and embodied sound on a spectrum from violet to red [11]

Murch also discusses his law of 2.5 which deals with the fact that our brains can only concentrate on 2.5 things at a time and after that we group the information into being many. Murch [11] states “so what began to interest me from a creative point of view was the point where I could see the forest and the trees – where there was simultaneously Clarity, which comes through a feeling for the individual elements (the notes), and Density, which comes through a feeling for the whole (the chord). And I found this balance point to occur most often when there were not quite three layers of something. I came to nickname this my Law of Two-and-a-half.”

These ideas of encoded and embodied sound and the law of 2.5 can be applied to the scene where Willard is presented with Chef’s head by Kurtz mentioned above. There are no insect sounds present with music and rain in this sequence as the audience is meant to focus on the rain falling on Willard and, this is another example of Murch’s law of 2.5 where he uses combinations of embodied and encoded sounds. The rain and the insects would fall in the orange section of the spectrum but this already has the non-diegetic score there so something must be taken out to create space. Murch removes the insect sounds, used in earlier scenes as a musical sound effect which focuses the audience’s attention on the rain hitting Willard’s face and his predicament, being captured in Kurtz’s camp, tied up outside in the rain.

Conclusion

 Apocalypse Now [2] provides many excellent examples of the functional use of sound and music for storytelling and narrative purposes. Acousmatic sound is used from the very start of the film to describe the location, setting and genre of the story, along with being used to comment on actors states on mind and emotions. There are multiple examples of how point of audition is used to let the audience know how the characters are hearing the war which pulls us into the world of Vietnam.

Music has been used in creative ways throughout the film taking us into intimate settings using diegetic music from radios on screen or shocking images where an airborne regiment attack a village to the theme tune of Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries. These shock tactics have earned the film iconic status where people now associate the music with this film.

Sound is used for the purposes of vectorization helping move the clip along a vector in time such as helicopter blades punctuating dialogue to focus the audience’s attention on different characters in the plot. Pre-lapping where sound is overlaid onto the cut of a scene has been used as a creative device to provide a different kind of transition where the mind of the audience is placed between scenes as a prominent sound from the following scene is introduced before its source is revealed.

Both sound and music have been used extensively to score tension within a scene and to anticipate forthcoming action. An excellent example of this technique is during the tiger scene where a sustained sound of jungle insects freezes time before a tiger attacks Willard and Chef, this kind of effect is usually achieved through the use of a orchestral score.

Walter Murch uses advanced techniques and theories to manipulate sound for narrative effect in Apocalypse Now [2]. This includes splitting sound into categories such as encoded and embodied and placing them on a spectrum from violet with encoded sounds such speech, to red – embodied sounds which are experienced directly such as music. This classification works alongside Murch’s law of 2.5 to enable him to decide what sounds to include in a movie sound track and what will be left out, judging on the fact that the human brain can only concentrate on around 2.5 pieces of information at once. This in depth knowledge of sound design has enabled Murch to design a soundtrack which is as compelling as Coppola’s images, plunging the viewer into the world of the Vietnam War using sound to tell the story of the film alongside the visual. Together the sound and image combine to create a film which deserves the awards and iconic status it has received.

 References and Bibliography

[1] Anderson. M. (2008) Audio Visual Correspondences

[2] Apocalypse Now. (1979) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. USA, Zoetrope Studios. [film:35mm]

[3] Children Of Men. (2006) Directed by Alfonso Cuaron. USA, UK, Universal Pictures. [film:35mm]

[4] Chion. M. (1994) Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press, New York

[5] Flueckiger. B. (2002) USO: The Unidentified Sound Object B USO. Available here http://www.zauberklang.ch/uso_flueckiger.pdf (Accessed 04/05/2012)

[6] Holman. T. (2002) Sound for Film and Television Vol.1. Focal Press

[7] Jarrett. M. (2000) Sound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murch. Film Quarterly Spring 2000. Available here http://www.yk.psu.edu/~jmj3/murchfq.htm 

[8] Jurassic Park. (1993) Directed by Steven Spielberg. USA, Universal Pictures. [film:35mm]

[9] Kenny. T. (2000) Sound For Picture: The Art of Sound Design in Film and Television. Mix Books, CA USA

[10] Lissa. Z. (1959)  Ästhetik der Filmmusik (1959: 115-256) Quoted From: Tagg. P. http://www.tagg.org/udem/musimgmot/filmfunx.html

[11] Murch. W. (2005) Dense Clarity – Clear Density. http://transom.org/?page_id=7006 (Accessed 3/5/2011)

[12] Red Road. (2006) Directed by Andrea Arnold. Glasgow UK, Advanced Party Scheme. [film:35mm]

[13] Seymour. T. (2011) Walter Murch – The Sound of the Apocalypse http://www.moviescopemag.com/features/walter-murch-the-sound-of-the-apocalypse/ (Accessed 3/5/2011)

[14] Terminator 2 Judgement Day. (1991) Directed by James Cameron. USA , Carolco Pictures. [film:35mm]

[15] The Doors (1991) Directed by Oliver Stone. USA, Carolco Pictures. [film:35mm]

[16] Weis E. & Belton J. (1985) Film Sound: Theory and Practice. Columbia University Press, New York