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Interrogating immersion: case studies from Indian cinema sound

Indranil Bhattacharya
Centre for Research and Education in Media, Arts & Design
University of Westminster

Abstract
This paper probes the concept of sonic immersion by analysing non-normative approaches to
immersive and surround sound by contemporary Indian filmmakers Gurvinder Singh and Shaji
Karun. The use of immersive/surround sound by these filmmakers are theorised in this paper
as a form of ‘media inoperativity’ – a deactivation of the ontological capacities of immersive
sound and their simultaneous re-appropriation and reuse in a divergent aesthetic context. Like
most filmic technologies, spatial and immersive sound emerged in response to the aesthetic
requirements of the Anglo-American film industries, especially those of Hollywood cinema
(Sergi, 2013). In this paper I claim that the use of surround and immersive sound observed in
the formalist/expressionist context of Indian art films Swapaanam/The Voiding Soul (Karun,
2012) and Chauthi Koot /Fourth Direction (Singh, 2015), redefines the concept of sonic
immersion. The sound design approach in these films frees sonic immersion from its
association with a limited notion of sensory realism and naturalism, thereby expanding its
aesthetic possibilities. To argue my point, I have analysed the soundtracks of the two films,
examined interviews of the directors and sound technicians, and evaluated their claims in the
context of recent developments in film sound scholarship.

Sonic Immersion – in theory and practice

Over the past one decade ‘immersion’ and ‘immersive technologies’ have emerged as key
concepts in our engagement with 21st century moving image forms. The idea of immersion as
a mode of cinematic engagement has existed since the 1950s, manifestly, in large format
cinema, stereophonic visuals and sound, eventually in the form of 3D cinema and Virtual
Reality/Augmented Reality (Doane, 2016, Zone, 2012). Theorists have drawn our attention to
the fact that digitally remediated experiences like 3D cinema and spatial audio have made the
cinematic experience more haptic and visceral, with recent scholarship challenging some of
the established norms and discourses about filmic representation (Recuber, 2007, p315–330,
Chion, 2013, p325, Ross, 2012, p381–397). For example, Miriam Ross underlines the fact that
filmic immersion attempts to blur the distinction between image and representation by virtually
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extending diegetic space of narration into the architectural space of the theatre/auditorium
(Ross, 2012, p381–397). In other words, she argues that the spectator is delinked from his or
her immediate surroundings and drawn, sensorially, into the world of the diegesis. According
to Michel Chion, immersive cinema creates a sensory isolate. “Cinema that reconstitutes or
renders a reality through multisensory technical limitation creates, at the same time, an
awareness of sensory isolates. With a film like Avatar, which gives me three-dimensions,
image and sound, where it is as if I am in reality more than the monocular film …”(Chion,
2013, p325). Beginning with 5.1 Surround Sound, emerging forms like Dolby Atmos and Auro
3D are designed to simulate real life sonic experiences, paradoxically, by isolating us from the
reality of immediate world. These platforms expand the surround potentials of cinema sound
by enabling sound designers to place sounds elements within a 360 quadrant, each element
corresponding to specific ‘sound sources’ within the visual. While it is acknowledged that
immersive sound has made cinematic experiences more affective and absorbing, there is also
a concern whether “immersion cinema’s intense effects have the potential to overshadow some
of film’s more subtle pleasures” (Recuber, 2007, p315–330). Scholars have also questioned the
obsessive preoccupation to recreate the sound of the original or ‘real’ location (Wright, 2015).
There is a view that immersive sound platforms like Dolby Atmos may also be ‘literalising’
the relationship between sound and image 1 and trying to create an ‘original sound event even
though no such event really exist’(Wright, 2015, p227). This misdirected motto, we know, is
reflected in Dolby’s slogan for Atmos - ‘hear the whole picture.’ It is an interesting descriptor
of the technology, but in the age of hybridized and blended images, the ‘wholeness’ of the
picture becomes a contested issue.

‘Mainstreaming’ of immersive technologies

During the late 20th century and the early 21 st century, the emergence of digital technology
facilitated the dispersal of immersive technologies, and ideas about immersion get embedded
within the cinematic apparatus and their design philosophy. Considered a niche technology in
the 20th century, Digital Surround Sound (DSS) eventually becomes an integral part of the
cinematic apparatus in the 21st century, effectively defining the future not only of cinema
sound, but cinema itself. According to Tim Recuber, the new technologies of immersion
become instrumental to what he calls the ‘re-enchantment of the screen’- the reinvention of

1Immersive sound mimics the spatial nature of the image – for example the visual of rain is accompanied by
sound of rain from the upper hemisphere speakers or the top speakers in the theatre.
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moving images as a large screen, enveloping, theatrical experience (Recuber, 2007, p315–330).
But, ontologically, cinematic immersion emerged out of the Anglo-American film industries
in response to specific aesthetic needs of Hollywood and Hollywood-inspired action and
science-fantasy films (Beck, 2016, Kerins, 2006, p41–54). How do filmmakers outside
Hollywood respond to and deploy these technologies? To seek an answer to this question I
have chosen to look at the work of two filmmakers who chose to ‘deactivate’ the immersive
apparatus. These filmmakers not only resist using immersive sound in prescribed ways, but
appropriate and adapt them to new aesthetic contexts. I theorise this deactivation and re-
appropriation of immersive capacity of digital sound as a form of media inoperativity,
borrowing the idea of inoperativity from Giorgio Agamben (Agamben and Heller-Roazen,
1998).

Agamben and the concept of Inoperativity

A fully formed idea of inoperativity is first encountered in Homo Sacer, where Agamben
translates and recontextualises the French term désoeuvrement (inoperosità in
Italian)(Agamben and Heller-Roazen, 1998). Agamben borrows the term from the philosopher
Alexandre Kojève’s 1952 essay, Les Romans de la sagesse, a review of three novels by
Raymond Queneau, Pierrot mon ami (1942), Loin de Rueil (1944) and Le Dimanche de la vie
(1952). “Kojève argues that the three protagonists of the novels, whom he calls voyous
désoeuvrés (lazy rascals), embody, in a sense, the wisdom of the Hegelian wise man living
after the end of history”(Salzani, 2011) In Homo Sacer, Agamben widens Kojève’s notion of
désoeuvrement. Instead of seeing it as absence of work or inactivity (assenza di opera)
Agamben posits it as “a generic mode of potentiality, which is not exhausted (like the
individual or collective action, intenas as the sum of individual actions) in a transitus de
potentia ad actum” (Agamben and Heller-Roazen, 1998, Pg 62). Inoperativity in Agamben’s
account does not valourise inaction “but rather consists in the re-appropriation of the
potentiality of human existence captured and confined in various apparatuses that put human
beings to work”(Prozorov, 2014, Pg 134). Thus, to sum it, inoperativity, according to
Agamben, is thus, not mere inactivity, but a mode of praxis which is devoid of any inherent
telos.

Beyond surround sound: encountering inoperativity in sound praxis

The discourse of surround sound, like most new technologies of cinema, pre-supposes a telos
– an inherent assumption that filmic representation ‘realizes’ the natural world by accurately
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simulating a three-dimensional visualscape and soundscape. This teleological conception of

immersion gets translated directly into strategies that determine the fundamental design of
immersive sound, as well as practitioner discourses that define the application of the principles
360-degree audition. According to sound designers and editors I spoke to, dialogues are
normatively placed in the front channels to indicate that the person speaking on screen is facing
the spectator, atmospheric sounds like forest ambiences are placed in both front and rear
channels to give an enveloping feel, sound of rain and thunder are placed in the ceiling channels
(the so called “voice of god” channel), the swish of a flying arrow moves from front to rear
channels to evoke movement (interview of P M Satheesh, 2016). In short, human aural
perception of the natural world is mapped into the surround sound design practices, born and
refined in US and Europe. As surround sound graduated from 5.1 to 11.1 and eventually to 128
channels in Dolby Atmos, the ability of filmmakers to construct a three-dimensional
soundscape also got enhanced (Riehle, 2012). The challenge for filmmakers and sound
designers, then, is to decide if they want to exploit this three-dimensionality of surround sound,
if they do exploit it, then to what degree and if they don’t want to exploit it, what else can be
done with this technology. The films I examine confront this issue and comes up with
alternative ways to mobilise the surround capabilities available to a filmmaker. The goal, as
we will see, is not to achieve naturalistic representation of reality, but to align the soundtrack
with the formalistic agenda of the filmmakers. In the words of Camillo Boano “what is rendered
inoperative is an activity directed toward a goal, a function, in order to open it to a new use,
which does not abolish the old one but, rather, exposes and exhibits it” (Boano and Talocci,
2017, p860–871).

Chauthi Koot: Interrogating Immersion

The film Chauthi Koot / Fourth Direction (Gurvinder Singh, 2015), set in the western Indian
province of Punjab, combines a realist theme with a formalist design, especially of its
soundtrack. The narrative unfolds in the violent backdrop of the Khalistani separatist
movement in India in the 1980s. Chauthi Koot is not a documentary chronicle of a violent
struggle – it attempts to capture the unseen, ‘hidden’ part of the political turmoil. It delves into
the fear, the anxieties, the mistrust and the indignity suffered by the ordinary citizen in the
backdrop of political violence. The two parallel narratives in the film focusses on the plight of
the Punjabi families caught between the might of the Indian state on one hand and the separatist
armed militia on the other. A central theme in Chauthi Koot is the threat of violence and its
traumatic impact on the human psyche. Director Gurvinder Singh conveys this threat through
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an array of filmic techniques – temporal distensions achieved through lingering frames,

delayed cuts, use of off-screen voices, use of silences, as well as on-screen and off-screen sound
effects. Gurvinder, in an interview, has invoked Robert Bresson’s idea of sound and image
relationship – especially the Bressonian idea that sound is more ‘inward’ with respect to the
human sensorium, as well as his advice that the subconscious power of sound should be
effectively mobilised in cinema (Bhatia, 2015). Gurvinder also refers to Bresson’s prescription
that sound and image should be used in a ‘relay’ so that they complement, rather than duplicate
each other (Bresson et al., 1986, Pgs 28-29). Gurvinder added in the same interview that he
starts thinking and working on sound even while scripting the film. Sound is too important to
be ignored by a serious filmmaker. “Sound is a carrier of time. It is also a carrier of memory.
You can have multiple sounds in a shot. Sound is multi-layered (Bhatia, 2015).” Gurvinder is
referring here to the fact that, unlike visuals which are edited horizontally across time, sounds
can be layered in many different strands, vertically, with one visual combining with multiple
sound elements. Digital surround technology not only enables multiple layering and blending
of sounds but allows filmmakers and sound designers to push sound from different directions
towards the audience. Before surround sounds came in, the entire soundtrack was placed in a
single screen channel and most sounds would come from the direction of the screen. The arrival
of surround technology required audiences to reorient themselves to sounds coming from all
directions, especially those from behind them (Smith, 2013, p331–356)2. In conventional
surround and immersive sound designs – sound editors deploy sounds corresponding to every
action in the visual, literally following Dolby’s prescription of making the spectator ‘hear the
whole picture,’ thus producing extremely saturated soundtracks. Chauthi Koot, although
technically a surround sound film, avoids the sonic saturation one associates with immersive
sound, while weaving a complex pattern of sounds and silence. The aural world of Chauthi
Koot is replete with sounds that does not immerse but engages the spectator. These sounds
replace background music, creating a kind of a symphonic effect that pulls the viewer into the
narrative. In fact, the declared intention of the director was to avoid music and use effects
sounds to create a sense of musicality (interview of Gurvinder Singh, 2018). The horn of an
approaching locomotive, the boots of paramilitary men, the rumbling and the chugging of the
old train, the howling of the wind blowing across the meadows, dog panting, croaking of frogs,

2 In the early days of 5.1 surround, sounds from rear channels were infamously identified as a distracting
novelty – something that took the spectator’s attention away from the screen as he/she looked backward
trying to identify the source of the sound. Described as ‘exit door effect’, this distracting aspect of surround
sound has been discussed extensively, both by practitioners and theorists (Holman, 2008).
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the buzzing of flies, the whirring sound of a table fan, the howling afternoon storm, crackling
of the old radio, or a single gun-shot ringing out at night – are used in combination with silence
and soft atmospheric sounds. Instead of placing these sounds in the surround channels to
orchestrate three-dimensionality, the filmmakers have placed them along the screen. This
strategy helped to emphasise and individuate these sounds and make them stand out with
respect to the visual. The film’s recordist-cum-sound designer Susmit confirmed this during
an interview I conducted with him (interview of Susmit Nath, 2018). He explained that the
surround channels were deployed minimally and were used only for ambient sounds like
thunder and strong winds. Diegetic sounds, in Chauthi Koot, are not entirely functional, but
sometimes convey important feelings or emphasise the dominant emotion of a scene. The
whirring sound of the old table fan in Joginder’s room is not an incidental diegetic sound, its
persistent mechanical whirr evokes a sense of anxiety. Unlike conventional surround sound,
Chauthi Koot does not overwhelm us sensorially, but guides our attention in a controlled way,
alternately between image and sounds. The soundtrack of this film, thus, makes us reflexively
aware of the filmmaker’s formalist agenda, eliciting intellectual responses rather than sensory
absorption.

Swapaanam: Appropriating Immersion

While Chauthi Koot tends towards Bressonian minimalist sound aesthetic, Swapaanam/The
Voiding Soul (Karun, 2013) celebrates the expressive power of sound through a selective
mobilisation of the capacities of immersion. Swapaanam is the sixth film directed by
cinematographer-turned-director Shaji Karun. Shaji’s debut film Piravi (aka The Birth, 1989)
won the Golden Camera in Cannes film festival way back in the year 1989. Compared to the
restrained and contemplative realism of Piravi, Swapaanam is stylistically expressionistic and
flamboyant, despite being a moderate budget non-mainstream production. At the heart of the
film is a musical instrument – a traditional drum called Chenda, played in Southern Indian
rituals and festivals. The film’s melodramatic narrative reminds us of the tragic operas of Verdi
or Puccini. Unni, a young drummer in a family of Chenda players, is trapped in an unhappy
marriage. Spurned by his wife and her hatred of drums, Unni gets into an intense relationship
with the classical dancer Kadambari, a bond based on their shared love for music and the arts.
He finds this relationship joyous and creatively fulfilling, but social disapproval tears the lovers
apart. Meanwhile, Unni’s fame as a master drummer threatens his elder brother, who conspires
to destroy him. Thwarted love and cruelty of the family destroys Unni’s spirit and he descends
into insanity. Shaji, the director and the writer of the film, deploys formal elements of
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melodrama – songs, elaborate choreographed Chenda performances, a web of characters and a

Greek tragedy-like plot. To design and mix the soundtrack Shaji decided to use Auro 3D - an
immersive format with 11.1 channels. According to Barco technologies, the inventors of Auro
3D, Swapaanam was the first Malayalam language film to use this format (Barco, 2014). We
encounter surround sound right in the first scene – where a devastating fire breaks in the lunatic
asylum where the film’s protagonist is incarcerated. Death and destruction is evoked through
the sounds of fire crackling harshly in the soundscape, as Unni lay there chained to a post.
Apart from this scene, it is music, rather than effects, that dominate the surround mix of the
film. Music drives the narrative of Swapaanam. Music is not only the theme and the subject
here, but a formal element around which the film is designed. According to the films music
composer, the centrality of music in Swapaanam, prompted Shaji to opt for an immersive sound
format for his film (K.Pradeep, 2014). The films recordist Krishnan Unni advised the director
that recording the performances with a surround microphone and reproducing it in surround
sound in the only way of ensuring that the sound does not distort (Interview of Shaji Karun,
2014). Sound of the Chenda drum is usually played in large ensembles and the performances
are often ritualistic and aesthetically coded with the rhythmic discourses of classical music.
According to Shaji a hundred drummers performing together is like a ‘drum symphony’ and
he had to capture the sound of it (Interview of Shaji Karun, 2014). The surround capabilities
of Auro 3D allowed the designer and mixer to effectively reproduce the sound of Chenda
Melam (large drum ensembles) recorded by Shaji and his team. It also gave the sound mixer
the ability to manipulate and control the tonal quality of the music so as to convey the mental
state of the film’s protagonist. As the sounds and the music of the film continuously moved
between the indoor and the outdoor, the surround sound becomes a vehicle for expressivity,
conveying rapid shifts in the soundscape. We are not subject to a deluge of sounds but exposed
to powerful emotions by way of the rich musical soundscape constructed by the filmmakers
with Auro 3D.

Conclusion
Both the films discussed in this paper – Chauthi Koot and Swapaanam have been produced
outside the space of the behemothic mainstream film industry of India which churns out 1200
feature films a year. The mode and manner in which most of these films are produced do not
leave room for formal experimentations. But filmmakers like Gurvinder and Shaji, despite
working under constraints continue to experiment with the film form. The artistic ambitions
and agendas of the two filmmakers are quite divergent. But what these two films share is their
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zeal to exploit the possibilities of immersive sound, but in their own terms, rather than being
determined by prevailing discourses and conventions. For Gurvinder, surround sound is a
template which helps him to avoid background music in Chauthi Koot and enables him to
substitute them with effects and atmospheric sounds by layering them inventively. For Shaji,
surround/immersive sound is a tool that helped him actualise his idea of mounting an
impressive cinematic melodrama about music and creativity. Both the director interrogate
immersive and surround sound from their own personal aesthetic priorities and with varying
success. But in doing so they have expanded the potential of immersive sonic forms and opened
them up for further experimentations.

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