In most films, outside of music, the sound design remains almost hidden to the viewer. This is because most sound in film is diegetic sound, in that it comes from the world of the story and matches what you expect to hear. Of course, this does not mean sound teams haven’t been hard at work. Sound mixers, foley artists, and sound designers are often unsung heroes in the old production adage, “fix it in post.” An obvious example of the work of sound designers and mixers is with Jurassic Park; they had no live recordings of dinosaurs to base their sounds on, so they had to create them. Less obvious is in Titanic when you hear Rose’s frozen hair crack as she lifts it from the door when she’s being rescued; that sound was created by peeling frozen lettuce. Sound Design is usually only noticed in big epics, like Arrival, or films that emphasize and manipulate it for narrative reasons, like Sound of Metal, this year’s Academy Award Winner for Best Sound. Out of Sync falls into the latter category.
Out of Sync stars Marta Nieto as a sound designer who finds her hearing out of sync with her vision. Her career is dependent on her being able to sync sounds perfectly to match the action on screen and with the time clock ticking away on the bottom of our screen as we watch the film. Unaware she’s unable to do this, she quickly finds herself pushed out of work because her mixes have been coming in off; they’re behind. That’s not the only area she’s fallen behind, it parallels her personal life. Her ex has moved on and needs her to move out; she’s stayed well past the time he asked her to leave the apartment.
Once she’s made aware that her world is out of sync director Juanjo Giménez (Oscar-nominated for his short Timecode), his co-writer Pere Altimira, and their amazing sound team drew emphasis to it. By having un-synced sound, they created moments of unexpected impact.
One of the first places she goes after realizing what is happening is to a church. This was a perfect choice because in some movies, finding out you might be losing your path/passion would be a “come to Jesus” moment, but as a sound person, she’s drawn there because of the acoustics a church represents. It was a great moment, and not just because of the looks she kept getting from the church ladies as she conducted her little tests, her little prayers to the sound gods as it were, that it would return to normal. It didn’t.
The worse her emotional state gets, the greater the delay seems to be until you start to realize you are watching a “superpower” power movie, as she can hear the past of places. Although glimpsed at before, you get the weight of what this means when she hears the private conversation her ex and his current paramour had about her before she joined them, after they’ve left. This sounds confusing on paper (trust me, I know) but watching, it was never hard to follow. The only unclear thing came later in the film, and that was the scope of her powers. She goes from hearing the recent past of a place to hearing the very distant pasts almost instantaneously. Though, this can be easily explained by her desiring to draw out those sound memories from the space. She’s the sound designer.
She only tells two people what’s happening with her, her doctor and her old boss, Ivan. Her doctor recommends going to a facility for assistance, and Ivan doesn’t seem to believe her. Earlier in the film, I might have sided with the doctor, so likely would the lead character. It’s why she went to the doctor in the first place. However, by the time the doctor suggests this, there was mounting evidence to the “superpowers” theory, even if Juanjo Giménez and Pere Altimira did a great job seeding reasonable doubt. Ian, the previously presumed skeptic, shows he’s on “team superpowers” by believing in her powers and using them to guide her to date. After this date, after she experiences happiness and rest, her world comes back into sync. However, she eventually triggers her powers again, to get to the root of them; to the truth of her past, and what she’s been working to uncover. By doing this, she moves out of the past and into the future. Her powers once again evolve to shift and sync with her emotional state.
Stray Thought
I was not pleased she left Ian her childhood audio files overtop the Pro Tools session of that boxing film, especially since she knew he stuck his neck out to get her work. Though, of course, visually the juxtaposition of the child’s voice learning speech paired with grown men punching each other created a nice offset.