Apocalypse Now(Sound),Francis Ford Coppola 1979

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Coppola and Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola 's whole career seems to have been motivated by a need to innovate and to find creative answers to narrative goals . Near the beginning of his career , he used music to recommend that You 're a Big Boy Now ' in 1966 was more than a story of one teenager , but rather like George Lucas 's American Graffiti ' in 1873 , the story of a whole generation or age group . In The Conversation ' in 1874 , he improved and

developed the sound effect to the equivalent of dialogue . The film 's lead character is a private investigator who dedicates his self in sound recording . Listening is his vocation , understanding is his obsession and misunderstanding is his fear . In short , he is consumed by sound Francis Ford Coppola was adventurous in using sound , particularly effects and fragments of conversations , to reflect his character 's shifting state of mind

Conceivably the greatest application of Coppola 's innovation in sound is his film Apocalypse Now ' in 1979 . Working with Walter Murch as sound designer and Richard Marks as editor , Coppola created a film as innovative in its use of sound as Cavalcanti 's documentary work in 1930s . We turn now to Apocalypse Now ' to discover or investigate the use of sound to establish the ideas into the narrative and to see how sounds are juxtaposed with the other elements of the film

Apocalypse Now ' is the story of Captain Willard who is assigned covert operations that often include infiltrating the enemy line and assassinating the opposition 's military leaders . Willard , played by Martin Sheen , is assigned to travel deep into the war zone , cross into Cambodia , find Colonel Kurtz , played by Marlon Brando , and kill him Coloney Kurtz , who was also assigned covert operations , has gone beyond s , killed officials of South Vietnam , and started to operate independently . Convinced that Colonel Kurtz is now a danger , the army and the CIA want him killed

Willard is transported to his mission a small Navy gunship with a crew of four . Their voyage is presented as a voyage into the heart of darkness ' from modern , organized life to a barbaric primitivism . Along the way , they are aided by American helicopter gunship under the control of a colonel , played by Robert Duvali , who is an avid surfer . He professes to love the smell of napalm in the morning ' because it smells like victory ' Later , when they meet Kurtz , an other-worldly quality is evident . Kurt 'z camp looks like a wartime version of hell and Willard releases Kurtz from his torment by killing him . The dying Kurtz whispers , The horror , the horror

A verbal cannot capture the non-narrative character of his film . For the audience and for Coppola , it is a voyage into the American heart of darkness . The non-narrative elements of the film , the sound track particularly , help create the interior world that lies beneath the images that Coppola and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro created

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