Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Ai-Ling Lee (‘Barbie’ sound designer) video interview
GoldDerby: “In Barbieland, nothing is alive. It’s an interior world, so there’s no wind, no water. Even the trees, they don’t have real leaves to create this sound,” explains Ai-Ling Lee of “Barbie.” The Oscar nominee served as sound designer for the hit Warner Bros. film, which takes viewers into the delightful plastic world of the famous Mattel doll.
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4 comments:
I saw the Barbie movie, and I was a bit underwhelmed. It wasn’t my favorite movie and I think was overrated. It was of course a great Blockbuster movie, however, I think it was overanalyzed and misanalyzed at some points. However, this article gave me a new appreciation for it. To see the thought put into the sound design was pretty cool. I also liked the concepts presented here.
They wanted it to feel whimsical as well as campy, creating this Barbieland. It exists for everyone, not just children the nostalgia is actually more targeted to the people who grew up with Barbie. When I was watching the movie I didn't feel the dreamlike effect Greta Gertwig was trying to give off. Maybe if I gave the movie a second watch it would change my perspective. I find it so cool the inner workings of movies, and how much it adds to the entire film.
God, sometimes I forget that the work we do in theater can also be applied to movies and TV shows. the film industry is so incredible and versatile and I think it's so cool that we can potentially have the opportunity to work on things like that. I saw the Barbie movie and I thought it was pretty good, thinking about the sound is something I honestly didn't do while I was watching. but now I want to go forward and watch other movies thinking about the sound more. I quite often look at the sets and different props and other things like that throughout the movies but don't really think of the sound. I think of the scores and everything like that but ignore the background noises which is one of the most important parts. random side note but I kind of liked the Barbie movie. I don't think it was as fantastic as everyone thought it was. I will say I did have a fun little transgender moment where I was connecting to both the women and the men in the movie and that was kind of cool. overall good movie, good designs, and I would watch it again.
Learning about the world building that went into the Barbie movie will never cease to amaze me. The team came together in such a beautiful way to create an intersection of fake and reality in Barbieland. Sound design is crucial in establishing the atmosphere, mood, and believability of a fictional environment and having to build a world made of plastic seems difficult. This sound team had to be open to experimentation. By trying unconventional techniques, combining different sounds, and pushing the boundaries they were able to create a truly unique and memorable audio experience. The goal of sound design in a fake world like Barbieland is to enhance the audience's suspension of disbelief and immerse them in the narrative. To get them closer to the character’s and story at hand. The more thought and detail put into the sound design, the more convincing and engaging the fake world will become. To me it seems like all of the designs in this movie put a lot of thought into their designs. And the movie is a huge success because of it.
I’ve read about so many of the elements that went into the creation of the Barbie movie, including about the set, the costumes, and now the sound! I never realized that the details of sound played such a big part in this movie, and I feel like sound is always something that brings so much to the table, but almost always goes unnoticed. The sound teams for a lot of movies always have to experiment so much to recreate the sound that the scene is requiring, but often, what is actually in the scene isn’t the best sound for the scene, as the audience often expects something else. With this movie, I’d imagine that there is so much more work, as the team has to imagine what these noises are supposed to sound like in that Barbie world, and create that sound. Every time I watch movies, if given the chance to watch it multiple times, I watch from different perspectives every time, including once just to enjoy, from an acting and storyline perspective, then from a technical perspective.
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