The Fugitive

The film is based on a series that ran on US television for 120 episodes between
1963 and 1967 and was critically received as a success. The film is famous
because of his real life train crash: a real train crashing into a real bus.

Storyline:
Dr. Richard Kimble, unjustly accused of murdering his wife, must find the real
killer while being the target of a nationwide manhunt.

Sound:
We had a great visual movie, but what we did with that movie was going over
the top with sound, but tastefully, not running it. Actually, what we ended up
doing is making much more of it then it deserved to be. I dont really mean
deserved to be but more of it then its there. We took it to a different level.
(Bruce Stambler, supervising sound editor and sound designer on The Fugitive)

The film had an Oscar nomination for all three sound categories (sound, sound
effect editing, and music)
The main thrust behind sound in The Fugitive was to achieve more than simple
support for the films image. The films overall style mostly follows generic
conventions, while the sound design goes in a other direction.
Bruce Stambler uses both a unconventional and a conventional way to design
the sound of the film.

Opening: Brutal murder of Dr Kimlbes wife, Helen.

- Aerial shot of the Chicago skyline
- cut to a shot of a woman being attacked in her own home (black and white and
slightly slowed down)
- Cutting between this two scenes goes on, until the woman is finally shot dead.
- New cut to a police ambulance arriving
- Murder sequence ends with a point of view shot of a police photographers
camera flashing.

Normally a scene like this would be laid down with a rather basic soundtrack. The
choices made by Bruce Stambler and John Leveque counter these expectations.
The film starts off with music laid on in the background. Suddenly this traditional
pattern is interrupted by the sound of a slamming door, which is repeated three

times in succession. This unsettling sound confers a threatening feel to the

beautiful views of Chicago skyline (especially because we are not provided with
its image equivalent). Directionality is used cleverly by bouncing the sound from
channel to channel all around the auditorium to prevent pinpointing it to any
specific action on screen.
When the shot cuts to the struggle in the home we are confronted with sounds
that are manipulated to such an extent that their origins become impossible to
pin down. We dont hear the sounds we would expect as screaming, cries for
help. Instead we here a clap of thunder tough it isnt raining and a distant police
siren, a key aural element developed throughout the film. And the gun shot,
when Helen is murdered, sounds as a long distant echo of a shot.
When the ambulance comes the sound seems to go for the conventional way (we
hear what we see), but that illusion lasts only for a few seconds. As a police
officer climbs down from the ambulance, the sound focuses on his rattling keys
rather than the noises of the real life.
At the end of the scene the police officers camera flashes: that again sounds
more like a muffled gunshot and we leave all the conventions behind us. The way
the sound is edited here (fast succession of camera flashes) gives the final shot a
very aggressive tone. The sequence concludes with the sound of the slamming
door.

Relationship between sound and narrative space

The scene after the train crash sequence. Gerard is introduced.
Scene starts off with a longshot that establishes clearly the aftermath of the
crash. Camera than follows Gerard and his team moving through the debris until
they finally reveal their identity to a local cop of the scene. The tracking scene
focuses on Gerard and his team. Framing is kept as tight as possible. The scene
ends with a medium close up of the team after a few quick inserted close ups of
the team members.
The scene follows a well-established editing pattern: long, medium, close-ups,
back to medium.
Sound in this scene:
As Gerard enters the scene a quick burst of his autos siren announces his
arrival. The sound serves the function of singling out his car from the other police
cars on the scene: this auto is different, this person is special.
The establishing shot of Gerard surveying the scene is accompanied by a very
dense soundtrack which reinforces the scale of disaster. The sounds we hear are
varied in identity (we hear police cars and ambulances, police officers and
rescuers, heavy machinery) but they are diffused around the auditorium in a
rather non directional way. Its not possible to identify their point of origin.

Gerard and his team walking through the debris. Sound here become more
directional and we can identify where the sounds come from. With this shift from

non-directional to directional the sound editor maintains the narrative space and
refines it. We are placed side by side with Gerard. We are offered the same aural
perspective as that of Gerard and his team while retaining a considerable
amount of the previous shots sound density. This pattern of directionality and
density is sustained until the end of the shot.
The soundtrack here provides continuous density and increasing directionality.
The aim is to place the audience within the narrative space. Differently from the
opening scene, this scene here works in a much more realistic fashion.

Cinematography:
For the cinematography we have chosen the scene where Dr. Kimble manages to
escape, because it is an essential scene.
At the beginning of that scene we have a wide shot of the bus that shows us that
we are leaving the city. The change from day to night shows that the drive was
quite long and that they are far away from Chicago.
The scene continues inside the bus and starts of with an establishing shot. Than
the cinematographer uses mostly tight shots, to increase the dramatic of the
situation. There is just some dialogue in the background, but the scene itself
works with the technique of eye line matching and shot/reverse shot. The close
up of Dr. Kimble shows us that he doesnt know, what is happening.
During the violent struggle the cinematographer maintains the tight framing and
we jump from inside to outside in a 2 second rhythm. This crosscutting continues
until the train crashes into the bus.
Apart from increasing the suspense, the function of this scene is to convince the
audience of Kimbles moral goodness and heroism making his death penalty
appears even more undeserving. (Everyone runs away as the train is
approaching and refuse to assist Kimble who is trying to help the injured police
officer).
Kimble now is no longer a victim of circumstances but has become an active
agent. It is a turning point in the film and gives Kimble the change to change his
destiny.