Randy Thom:
Ren Klyce was the Sound Designer on Fight Club and he is a wonderful sound designer. So is Gary Rydstrom, Walter Murch, Skip Lievesay, Mark Mangini, Ben Burtt, Alan Splet and so are lots of others I could mention...but...no matter how good a sound designer/editor/mixer you are, if the film you're working on isn't "aesthetically friendly" to sound then the work you produce is not going to be great. Being lucky enough to work on those sound-friendly projects is ENORMOUSLY important.

Every one of the great sound designers has put just as much energy (often more) into projects which were not sound-friendly, and the results haven't been so impressive.

Even if you are the most talented sound designer in the world, if you're working on a sequence that is visually bereft of ideas, is crammed with stupid dialog, is edited badly, etc. then your work is going to seem mediocre.

The Sound Designer is part of a team that includes the Writer, the DP, the Director, the Editor and the Composer. If all of them don't do well, then none of them do well.

Martin Kreiner:
you are very true, in fact the sound designer must not be less important than the director...., because he is composing, editing and directing the audio-appearance of the production. If you have no picture, you have hopefully at least an interesting radio play, but without audio you have a plain, two dimensional screen, without realism and emotions.

In my experience when a director become aware of a bad production( all the things you described, randy) will force you to rescue the whole production with your audio-design. you are doin the best and you know that you won´t be lucky .

But what´s the conclusio, do we have to work in another job? maybe,
 or do we have to select the productions we are working on more critical?

Randy Thom:
I'm not sure what the conclusions are. Sometimes we're lucky to work on films which are sound-friendly, and often we're not so lucky.

The film business is full of superman myths. There is this idea that if a film looks great then that is because it had a great cinematographer. If the dialog is clever then the writer must be great. If it seemed like a sound effects tour de force then the sound designer must be a genius.

In my opinion those assumptions are naive. The sound isn't going to be great unless lots of other things about the film are working in its favor. Likewise the visual imagery, likewise the dialog.

I guess the main conclusion is that all of us need to continue to find ways to truly collaborate with our peers in other crafts. And we in sound need to continue to try to figure out what we can tell directors about our craft that will help them make better movies, movies that use sound more fully.

Tuomas Klaavo:

I agree!

Here's some thoughts from the third year student at 9 pm

I've been wondering the idea of a "great film". A magnificent story isn't enough; the story should be such that it couldn't be told as effectively in any other way than as a movie.

Movies are about people in relationship to each other AND to the world they live in. The greatest power of film is to SHOW (to your eyes and ears) the people and that particular world. So, to become great, a film needs a good story which is written TO be told in picture and sound. They together build the characters and the world they are part of. And sound is a big part of the world.. 

In my opinion Fight Club had a great feeling of a special world. The production design was great, cinematography and sound were great. So, wonderful film making in general! 

The duty of the director (one of the duties..) is to keep things consistent, to have the vision and to give directions to the designers of the film (picture & sound). The director should have the basic idea, and the others make it real, adding their own creativity and talent into it. And this is where the "chemistry" between people really matters. How to get the idea to someone else's head..

Just the basics.. I'm still fresh, green and inexperienced. But these things are forgotten too often when discussing films.

Tuomas Klaavo:
I saw Fight Club and was totally amazed by the sound! I loved the way the sound was defining the atmosphere of the film, being totally an integeral part of the overall design, and the story of course. Now I'm wondering how that effect was made.. If any of you reading this have been involved in making the film, I'd like to hear any insider comments about the sound design and mixing. The use of reverb, the structure of ambiences, the amount of ADR.. anything. The sound track was one of the best I've heard, and it must have been a painful but rewarding job to do. I'd also like to hear comments form pros who haven't been working on it, but have seen and heard the film.

I wasn't close enough to the production to know much about the methodology, except that Ren always starts working very early on the Fincher films. He is usually on for about a year.That can be an  incredible advantage to the film, because his early experiments can help shape the artistic structure of the whole project, as opposed to the sound just being pasted-on the otherwise finished movie. It helps if the movie is, if you'll excuse the expression, "designed for sound." Fight Club is definitely one of those movies.

Edited excerpts from Cinema Audio Society  Webboard
Original URL: http://www.ideabuzz.com/cas/webboard