The Power and Limitations of Sound
- Radio Producer’s medium is Since he is to work in the medium of sound, he must know what sound is, what its characteristics are, what its artistic potentials can be, what can be done with it. Just as a ballet dancer works with the medium of sight and uses line, form, color, mass and impressions to create an idea or a story for an audience, so must the production director work with the tools made available to him in the field of sound.
- What are the artistic potentials of sound? Can one measure the greatness of any art form? The answer is yes. The greatness of any art can be measured in terms of the number of people it moves, the depth to which it moves them, and the length of time that its influence is effective.
- If we apply this measuring rod to the medium of sound as it is used in radio, the results are most encouraging. Sound has always had the power- in all times and in all civilizations- to move people deeply. From the jungle drums to the primitive man to the air-raid siren screaming over a continent, sound carries a tremendous power to give a message. It could probably be argued that sound is the most powerful of all media with which to reach an audience. Sight of a bomber coming in is a terrifying thing, but that it is only when the whine of a shell or a descending bomb reaches a shrieking crescendo that the ultimate in fear is generated. There can be no doubt of the power of sound.
- Consider now the number of people that can be reached through the medium of sound. The language of sound knows no barriers of time, place, language, civilization or creed. It is true that when sound is formalized into the symbols of a given language, it lacks universality of communication. But that limitation holds only for language.
- Other sounds have a message for all people in all times. It is interesting to know that the same sound has the same effect on a Russian peasant and a board chairman in the New York Stock Exchange. Both these men have a common reaction to the sound pattern of the scream of a woman in mortal agony. When one considers sound only as a phenomenon of radio and thinks of the number of people which sound can reach by the means of radio, it becomes one of the most important media of communication of all times. No other medium has the great audience, which is given to it.
- This is true that the ear’s memory for sound is admittedly shorter than the eyes memory for visual impressions.
Sounds are quickly forgotten. But because sound has such tremendous power to move man deeply, the impressions created by it last many years. The memory of an emotion aroused by sound may last a lifetime.
Because of the shortness of the ears memory, radio often is an ephemeral thing.
This analysis of the effectiveness of radio as an artistic medium should be encouraging to the prospective production director.
AN EVALUATION OF THE MEDUIM
Its Advantages
- One of the greatest advantages of radio is its emotional power. Because radio appeals more to the emotions than to the intellect.
Radio allows an artistic treatment that is not always available in other media. “Only the ear is engaged and the ear is already half poet”.
- Music comes into it’s own on radio, and this should certainly be listened as one of the advantages of the medium. No visual cues are needed for the enjoyment of music. It is certain that music appeals only to the ear and that this is radios particular mode of expression.
- By all odds, however, the most important advantage of the medium is the size of its audience. No other artist in any medium has the privilege of making an idea clear to so many people.
- Other advantages:
- Mobile Medium
- Background medium
- Poor man’s medium – advent of transistor.
Its Limitations
- Any medium, no matter how ideal, must by its very nature have certain inherent drawbacks. Radio has such limitations. We must recognize these limitations and stay within them if we are to make radio the artistically sound thing it can be.
- In the first place, radio is not an ideal medium for exposition of a kind that is inherently visual. A second limitation is the difficulty of making complex action clear to an audience over the air. Either in news or in drama this difficulty is a serious one.
The third limitation is the condition of the audience. It is shifting, uninhibited easily bored, often distracted. There are no social or economic pressures to keep him at his radio. For all these reasons, radio directors play to one of the most difficult audience situations known.
It must be recognized as a fourth limitation of the medium of radio that it can play to one sense only. There is, fifth, always the limitation of time. This has nothing to do with the qualities of the medium itself, but it has a great deal to do with its practical working. There is, finally, an economic limitation in radio. There is less money and less time to spend on each program.