Gabor Balazs: The main points of the thesis (The theory, practice and education of
the creative process of making film-sounds)
In my doctoral dissertation I’m going to think over issues in connection
with preparing a course-book for sound-master students which are very important
to answer not only from the educational point of view, but also in terms of the
creative filmsound-making process. The most important point for me is what the
necessary ratio is between intuition and consciousness to create original works
successfully. In the creative process this question can be formulated as to what the
ideal creative attitude is? When and to what extent do we rely on our intuitive way
of thinking, and when and to what extent do we rely on our professional
knowledge and awareness gained? From the point of view of education the
intuition-awareness issue means that in a branch of applied arts - such as the
sound master profession - what can be teachable, and what are the tricks, solving
methods that, thanks to the experience accumulated can come into the surface as
intuitive ideas. In case of a professional sound task what can the concrete
formulated professional knowledge give us and where does the talent start? How
to teach this profession not only to give recipes or clichés, but rather to develop
students’ creative problem solving ability. While writing the first few chapters of
the sound-master course-book 4 directives crystallized for me, which I will put
into words in the four statements as the main points of my thesis. I will confirm
each statement with the relevant chapters of the course-book.
Statement 1: Breaking with the illustrative practice of the previous books the
sound master course-book will not place the typical and most simple examples,
rather, the original, unique solutions will be mentioned, because I assume that
teaching typical examples moves the creative process to the routine job, while the
extreme examples lead to creative problem solving. For the realization of
statement 1 The History of Film Sound and What Makes a Good Film? chapters of
my dissertation (Chapter II and VI.) and the course-book (currently being written).
Statement 2: To make the professional knowledge conscious is necessary to move
to the next step of higher quality works of creation. I try to prove this statement
with chapter The Basics of Creating Sonic Vision (Chapter IV).
Statement 3: Is there a system of aspects existing which helps the build-up of
sound dramaturgy in practice with principles which can be formulated in a
concrete way? This statement is supported by The Imagined Sonic World and the
Dramaturgy of Sound (Chapter V.)
Statement 4: It determines the format of the course-book currently being written.
In my opinion a given knowledge can be conveyed the most efficient way in the
environment of multimedia in an e-book format. The History of Film Sound
(Chapter 2) models the usage of the planned e-book.