A Short Film About Talking

In her dreams she has many conversations. At first there’s just the two-tone call, like a doorbell she ought to answer but can’t. But as people wake up they drop in to say hi and catch up. The morning slides from sleepy to frantic. Windows open out onto a world she cannot see. The screen is voluble but silent. Only the urgent drum of gtalk and msn punctuates her sleep.

Later, when a film is complete, this is how they design the soundtrack: with chat alerts to indicate that someone has spoken. The sound recordist spends his days in the studio listening to conversations constructed out of these few sounds. In time each arrangement seems to say something different. They talk about this obsessively: the frequency of pings, the most effective arrangement, even the silences that could mean so many things. She knows every sequence by the notes that rise and fall, crowd or thin out.

Just before she goes to bed, she looks at the timeline to see the audio track, dramatic and ragged, insistent to the last. In her dreams she listens to people talking, their voices clear as bells, and looks for windows and words.