Castaway Audio

I have never seen the movie Castaway  up until last night, but before that I remember learning about its sound track and how it was only composed of wind, water, and wood.  Up until actually seeing this movie I really didn't have any appreciation for this random fact that I knew.

However upon seeing the movie I have a new found appreciation.  I just assumed the audio was in the background and was no big deal, but now I see that for a good portion of the movie, background audio was the main source of the scenes.  Most of the scenes involve little to no dialogue and if there is any it is just Tom Hanks shouting at his friend Wilson, who is in fact a volley ball.

Most of the time it is very long shots meant to capture his emotion as he faces his situation or comes to a realization to his survival.  All of these long shots however are complimented by strong audio.  The constant sound of waves or the whistling of a strong wind really completes the movie.  It is the second half of a being that alone would be useless and unusable. So you have to give credit to the audio crew and the work that they put in to only use very basic natural sounds to create the environment in which we would spend the next hour of our time in.