The Advent of Surround Sound

In the 1970s and 1980s, Dolby Labs in the USA, run by Ray Dolby, improved the cinematic sound experience. Noise reduction, high-fidelity sound, and surround sound mixing, reproduction, and projection all became industry standards. Gianluca Sergi termed the Dolby company’s intervention in film as the beginning of an era in his book The Dolby Era (2004). Although it could be argued that a film technology company cannot instigate a revolutionary era, this technology emerged due to a distinct interest in spatial audio experiences.

This wave of experimentation with spatial audio arrived later in India due to mainstream film conservatism. 1942: A Love Story (Chopra, 1994) was one of the earliest Indian films to use a Dolby Sound format, becoming a landmark film in surround sound production. The film’s sound was mixed at the Dolby SR facility in London. Romantic thriller Rangeela (‘Colourful’, Varma, 1995) followed shortly thereafter and became one of few Indian films mixed and released in the Dolby SR format. The company subsequently advanced Dolby Digital technology, now used around the world.

In India innovative and business-savvy filmmakers such as Ram Gopal Varma led the way in incorporating new technologies such as Dolby Digital into their work. Varma utilized Dolby Digital, using its noise reduction and surround sound capabilities, in Daud (Run, 1997). Verma incorporated such technologies to produce a cleaner, gentrified and ‘corporate’ sound design in cinema, in which electronic music with capacity to render low frequency tones played a major role. Verma’s film sound work is remarkable in its ability to use sound and music for psychological manoeuvring of his audiences and listeners.

Stereophonic Mixing

Although stereophonic mixing was feasible as early as the 1940s in Hollywood, film scholars James Buhler et al. recognize how, ‘it would not be systematically exploited by the industry until the introduction of Cinemascope in the early 1950s’ (Buhler, Neumeyer, and Deemer, 2010, p. 336). However, in Indian cinema, stereophonic mixing was introduced much later than in America and had a shorter lifespan; Dolby digital and its multichannel formats replaced multiple transitory stereo formats in just a few years.

Cinemascope was first used in India for Kaagaz Ke Phool (Dutt, 1959), but the film’s sound mix was still mono. Monaural mixing in the final mixdown for the projection and exhibition of films had been standard practice in India since the arrival of the talkies. Indian filmmakers indeed took quite some time to expand their sound palette. Raj Kapoor’s Around the World (1967) would be one of India’s earliest films to explore stereophonic mixing. Although a few filmmakers used the technology in the early 1970s, it wasn’t until later in the decade that a series of films popularized the stereophonic sound experience. Sholay (‘Embers’, Sippy, 1975), in particular, marked a historic moment in Indian film sound largely due to these technical innovations.

By the late 1970s, stereophonic sound technology came into full force when mainstream filmmakers like Prakash Mehra, Manmohan Desai, and Feroz Khan began using it in their work. What was the ramification of stereophonic technology’s advent in cinema? According to film sound scholar Gianluca Sergi, stereophonic mixing made it possible to create an extra off-screen space in which part of the focus is left for the viewer to imagine. Stereo sound also made it possible for the viewer to engage with the sound’s directionality.

Loop Dubbing

From the late 1940s onwards to the digital era, sound in Indian cinema was rarely recorded on location. Dubbing and re-recording were deployed instead as the dominant modes of sound practice in mainstream Indian films; the film soundtrack was mostly created (or re-created) in the studio. Actors would recite and re-record their lines as their images appeared on the studio screen in a process known as ‘loop dubbing’, via ‘looping’, or ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement). Background music, along with lavish song and dance sequences at regular intervals followed this process. Various sound effects, or Foley, were entirely made in a post-synchronization process within the close confines of a studio and added later as the secondary or tertiary layers of the sound organization.

The use of ADR in Indian cinema became a regular practice from the 1950s onwards with the arrival of the Arriflex 2C and Arriflex 3 cameras, which required the soundproof cover called ‘blimp’. This distracting camera noise always entered the pilot track recorded on location and it required all the sound components, including character dialogues and synchronized sound effects, to be re-created in the studio. Eventually, this practice of loop dubbing became the standard in Indian films. As dubbing emerged alongside the standardization of analogue magnetic recording and mixing, it was facilitated by multi-track re-recording in the studio. The following phase of sound production in Indian cinema was shaped towards what is known as the ‘dubbing era’ (roughly between the 1950s and 1990s).

Feminist Filmmakers and their Sound worlds

Indian film industries, both in Mumbai and in the regions, have historically been male dominated, but the remarkable work of feminist filmmakers across India challenges the patriarchal genesis of Indian cinema, bringing with them cinematic idioms that push against the normative margins. In this small subchapter, only a very limited number of directors can be partially discussed, but hopefully this will encourage a future film (sound) scholar to expand this analysis.

One can start with Arundhati Devi, who made films like Chhuti (‘A Vacation’, 1967), Megh o Roudra (‘Clouds and Sunshine’, 1969), Padi Pishir Barmi Baksha (‘Burmese Box of Aunt Padi’, 1972), Deepar Prem (‘The Love of Deepa’, 1983), and Gokul (1985). Her portrayal of familial voices, often marginalized in society, and their greater aspirations in mundane situations receive significant perspective through sensitive listening. The balanced handling of sound contributes to the acoustic ecology of these filmic universes.

Aparna Sen, director of 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), Paroma (‘The Ultimate Woman’, 1984), Sati (1989), Yugant (‘What the Sea Said’, 1995), Paromitar Ek Din (‘One day of Paromita’s’, 2000), Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002), and, more recently, Sonata (2017) and Ghawre Bairey Aaj (‘The Home and the World, Today’, 2019), has spearheaded a feminist and often intersectional-feminist perspective in Indian cinema. Her films, while incorporating conventional production technologies and aesthetics such as dubbing, ADR, Foley, and an expressive use of music, address cultural taboos, societal trauma, and the position of women. Her work also advocates for a collaborative spirit, sense of community, and convivial relationship between fellow filmmakers and practitioners.

Sound after Ray

Indian cinema arguably touched modernity when the sound of a train gradually invaded the pastoral landscape in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955). In this moment, the two protagonists, brother and sister Apu and Durga, lose their sense of orientation in a field on the edge of their village. The sound of the train, a new-fangled sonic intervention, destabilizes their sense of the everyday, bridging the previously uncrossed divide between a rural environment and the big city via a sound stage. The sound also transcends a formulaic period of Indian cinema, then known for its gargantuan output with arguably little substance. The film hints at the possibility of Indian cinema’s future directions, inspiring generations of filmmakers towards an alternative and independent cinematic style, subverting the mainstream.

As shown in previous chapters, the 1950s and 1960s are considered the Golden Age of Indian cinema, when film auteurs such as Ray, Chetan Anand, and Guru Dutt emerged, putting Indian cinema on the international stage. At the same time, younger generations of filmmakers were initiating a new Indian independent cinema that assimilated wider influences, including European cinema, Indian folk, and vernacular cultures, drawing often from local myth and ritual practices.

The use of sound in these Indian New Wave films was a departure from their Golden Age predecessors. It began taking a central, creative role in the narrative. As we learn from interviews with Indian sound practitioners, this was the time when sound production was evolving due to early technical advances. For example, audio effects such as reverb, EQ, compression, limiting, and echo were developed at this time.

Sounds of a Transformative World within the Home

One wonders about the ramifications of the disruptive intrusion caused by the jarring sound of an electric generator in renowned Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s (1921–92) award-winning film Jalsaghar (‘The Music Room’, 1958), appearing in an otherwise lyrical and nostalgic auditory setting. In this sequence, the landowner-protagonist Biswambhar Roy is enjoying a Hindustani classical Vina recital by a musician in his music room while the faint sound of a motor enters the room, gradually becoming prominent. The landowner asks his porter, ‘What is the sound I hear?’ with a slight furrowing of his eyebrows. He is obviously disturbed. The porter replies that it is the sound of a generator coming from the house of his nouveau riche neighbour Mahim Ganguly who has recently got electricity. The music is paused while the landowner ascends to the rooftop and the new-fangled sound of the generator engulfs the landscape around his dark and desolate palace. Symptoms of modernity thus appear at the cost of disturbing and destabilizing the archaic ecology of sound at the protagonist’s home, suggesting a new sonic reordering. We later hear the recurring sound of the generator in a number of sequences and with each occurrence, the contemporary and modern world of rapid and tumultuous change casts a darker shadow over the traditional coziness of the home.

Background Sounds

In the autumn of 2006, I was a final-year student of audiography at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), a prestigious institute for film education in India. I was invited to speak about my experience as an emerging sound art practitioner and my concerns regarding the use of sound in cinema at a conference titled Sound Cultures in Indian Cinema. The conference was held with the intention of launching an Indian film sound research programme in the Department of Film Studies at Jadavpur University in Kolkata. I presented a student paper at the conference, which was later published in the Journal of the Moving Image (2007). The paper was my first critical intervention within the field of (film) sound research and, as such, allowed me to enter academic debates around sound in film and audiovisual media as an active sound practitioner and artist.

This intervention was significant for several reasons. Firstly, as a sound practitioner, that is, one who explores the medium of sound for aesthetic, cultural, and artistic purposes, as well as one who theorizes about it, I was able to offer novel insights into the ongoing academic debates in film sound research, which, up to that point, had been based on mostly non-concrete ideas about sound recording and design in films by seasoned academics, who were not sound practitioners themselves.

The Sonic Leakage

Throughout the trajectory of monaural sound practice in Indian cinema since 1931, available recording techniques and equipment have had a somewhat limited dynamic sound recording and production range, leading to voice and dialogue being at the top of the priority list, as previously discussed. Likewise, the freedom of a microphone in outdoor locations or on a film set had been reduced by controlling its directionality, to focus on recording ‘almost always the voice’ (Chion, 1994, p. 5), thus establishing a sound-cinema that was of an essentially vococentric nature. It is no surprise then, that the films produced in these times were mostly devotional song and musicoriented mythical or religious stories where the primary narration was carried out through either dialogue between characters or post-recorded voiceovers in some cases. Despite the limitation of the dynamic range, and the controlling and suppression of other sounds such as ambient and incidental sounds, some louder locational environmental sounds may have unwantedly intruded into the film’s directly recorded soundtrack. The predominant emphasis had been on the voice of the actors, but these stray and fundamentally unwanted sounds could provide spatial information about the real site that the film was shot in. In a well-known sequence from the legendary Indian film Devdas (Barua, 1935/1936), the eponymous protagonist Devdas is languishing over his initial arrival at a brothel in Calcutta (now Kolkata) following his recent breakup with Paro, a childhood sweetheart from his native village. Devdas’ fateful interaction with the ‘prostitute’ Chandra leaves him in a state of perpetual melancholia, claustrophobia, and remorse from which he can never recover.

In a Nutshell

Sound has received extensive academic interest in recent years. However, much of this attention has been invested in studying sound within an American and/or European media cultural context. Sound in other global regions, for example in India, has remained underexplored. And yet India is one of the world’s largest producers of films and audiovisual media, with a formidable international presence as an emerging arts and cultural production giant. This book develops a comprehensive understanding and overview of the unique sound world of Indian film and audiovisual media to fill this void in analysis. It examines the historical developments of sound from early optical recordings to contemporary digital audio production alongside an aesthetic inquiry into mainstream, Parallel Cinema, and audiovisual art works. As a sound and media artist who studied film, I bring a practice-based methodology to these themes, incorporating extensive conversations with prominent sound practitioners and filmmakers active in India. The book locates an emerging spatial and social awareness of film and media through sound, occurring alongside or against a traditionally transcendental approach to listening. Tracing this confluence of tradition and modernity, the book makes fresh contributions to the fields of film, audiovisual media, and sound studies.

The validity of the term ‘Indian’, housing a diversity of practices from Bombay and regional cinemas, is discussed. Despite linguistic and other vernacular differences, India’s geographic unity, its common use of technology and technology transfer, and ongoing cultural exchanges within a methodological mélange suggest the term ‘Indian cinema’ is a useful, broad umbrella term.

Indian films are well known for producing transcendental sonic experiences, exemplified by the overwhelming use of non-site-based song-and-dance sequences. In this practice, the careful application and attentive organization of sounds is generally lacking from the narrative strategy.

The Auditory Setting in the Digital Era

It isn’t difficult to observe that sound in Indian films has been inconsistently produced due to evolving phases of production practices, affected by technological innovations and shifts. There have been phases of sound practice (such as the entire ‘dubbing era’), that cared less about quality, giving more importance to the typical narrative tropes such as songand- dance sequences, dramatic use of sound effects, studio processing, sound editing, and dialogue replacement, as explained in chapter 6. However, there are also phases such as the ‘digital era’ (2000–) where some degree of careful and creative rendering of sound is observed. In this light, I consider the advent of digital technology in the form of ‘sync sound’ and surround design in Indian cinema to be significant, given the evolution of sound use through earlier phases of Indian cinema’s production practices. The scholarly perspectives on sound production in the digital era in Hollywood (Kerins, 2011, 2006; Sergi, 2004; Sonnenschein, 2001) and the aesthetic impacts of digital production practices on the cinematic experience have often been described by film scholars as ‘real’ (Altman, 1992), ‘sensorial’ (Sobchack, 2005), or ‘authentic’ (Biancorosso, 2009). Although these expressions cannot be uniformly applied to Indian cinema in the context of its historical trajectory, much can be discussed along these lines. As I have mentioned in the Introduction and earlier chapters, mainstream Indian film’s general tendency has been to ignore subtleties of sound while reconstructing the pro-filmic space into film space.