Test Level

You are going to read a newspaper article about editing the sound in movies.   Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A - G the one which fits each gap (41 - 46).  There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

The monstrous complexity of sound editing work - the quest to make films sound the way the world sounds - may not  be immediately  apparent. After a movie has been filmed, it enters the labyrinthine world of post-production, in which the best takes are selected and spliced together into roughly 20-minute segments of film. These are worked on and then stitched together at the end of post-production. 

A. Each of these  components needs to be built and then edited separately for every scene before being assigned  its  own dedicated editor. Then, the top guys take the team's work and layer it to make scenes that sound like the real world sounds.       

B. The gesture had the studious flourish which a minor orchestral instrumentalist — say, the triangle player —  might  devote to his one entrance.   But instead of being the  work of the actor, likely as not, that was a mustachioed man standing in his socks in a warehouse somewhere.

C.  This is radically unlike the way the human brain is designed to hear. We are predisposed to hear the rhythms and pitch of people talking and noises that  might  indicate threat. Other sounds — like “white noise” — are depressed so that the brain fires fewer responses, and we automatically “tune out”. This is how the brain converts sound into information.

D.  The  viewer's  ear will subconsciously anticipate hearing  a maddeningly subtle, but critical, Doppler effect, which means that the tone it  makes as it boils needs to shift downward at precisely the interval that a real one would if you  happened  to walk by at that speed.

E.   Each part goes through picture editing (for such things as visual  continuity or color)  before being  handed  over to the sound supervisor, who oversees all the various elements of sound design, sound editing, and mixing.

F.   When   the  thud of his  boot heel finally connects with the asphalt, his breathing is labored, even the pads of his fingers creak as they make contact with the collar of his leather jacket as he straightens.  None of these are there because some microphone picked them up. They're there because someone chose them and put  them there, like every other sound  in the film.

G.   In other words, it is important to make sure the sound of a butterfly landing on the hood of a car isn't louder than a car backfiring. Only a few people have an ear for these types of work.

41.  The distinction between these processes is subtle: the first two have more to do with the creation and selection of the sounds that make up each scene, and the development of a cohesive aural aesthetic for a movie. The third involves taking sounds created by the designers and editors and integrating them in each scene so that everything comes across as “natural”.

You are going to read an article in which a scientist discusses the mistaken ideas people have about his profession. For questions 47-56, choose from the sections (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once. Click in the listing below the questions.

Why People Think Scientists Know Everything
Neuroscientist Dean Burnett considers the reasons why people often have the wrong idea about science and scientists.

A.   One unexpected aspect of being a scientist is the weird questions you get asked by non-scientists.  Whilst publicizing my latest book, I've been asked many. Among my favorites is: “'Which are smarter, tigers or wolves?” As a neuro-scientist, I'm not trained to answer this (assuming an answer even exists). Obviously, if I'm going to put myself out there as an authority on things, then I should expect questions.  However, this happened to me even before I became   a public figure, and other scientists I've spoken to report similar, regular occurrences. It's just something people do, like meeting a doctor at a party and asking them about a rash. If you're a scientist, people assume you know all science, something which would require several lifetimes of study. In truth, most scientists are, just like experts in any other field, very specialized. If you meet a historian who specializes in 19th-century Britain, asking them about ancient Egyptians is illogical. Maybe this does happen to historians. I cannot say. It happens to scientists though. So where does this “scientists know all science” preconception come from?

B.   Because my area of interest is the human brain, I tend to blame it for many of life’s problems. For example, the way in which it handles information could lead to this idea of the all-knowing scientist.  Our brain has to deal with a lot of information, so it often uses short cuts. One of these is to clump information together. While functionally useful, you can see how this would lead to inaccuracies or even prejudices.   If someone struggles to understand science, in their heads it all gets lumped together as “stuff I don't understand”. The same goes for scientists, who may get labelled as “people who understand things I don't”. Education also plays a role. The study of science gets more specific the      further you progress, but at a young age you get taught what's called simply “science”. So you begin with this notion that science is just one subject, and have to gradually figure out otherwise. Would it be surprising then, if many people never really move on from this perception due to a disinterest in science, and consequently continue to regard scientists as interchangeable?

C.   The way in which scientists are portrayed in the media doesn't help either. Any new discovery or development reported in the press invariably begins with “Scientists have discovered...” or “According to scientists...”. You seldom get this in any other field. The latest government initiative does not begin with “Politicians have decided...”. If any study or finding worth mentioning is invariably attributed to all scientists everywhere, it's understandable if the average reader ends up thinking they're all one and the same. The press also loves the idea of the 'lone genius'. The story of a scientific discovery typically focuses on a single, brilliant intellectual, changing the world via his or her all-encompassing genius.  While this makes for an inspiring narrative and therefore sells newspapers, it's far from the collaborative effort which most science is the result of. In fiction too, we constantly encounter the stand-alone genius who knows everything about everything, usually in very helpful and plot-relevant ways. This is bound to rub off on some people in the real world.

D.    Of course, this whole thing would be easier if it weren't for actual scientists making matters worse.   Some, maybe unintentionally, make declarations about other fields which don't agree with what the evidence says. I've even done it myself occasionally.  In popular science books, it's not uncommon for the author to stray Into areas that they aren't that familiar with but which need to be addressed in order to provide a coherent argument. Sadly, you also get the scientists who, having achieved influence and prestige, start to believe their own press and end up making declarations about fields beyond their own, using confidence instead of actual awareness of how things work. Because such people have a public platform, the public assumes they must be right. The fact is that if scientists really did know everything, they'd know how to put an end to the misconceptions about their professions. But they don't.  So they don’t.

47. Speculate about the experiences of other professionals?