I really enjoyed watching this film. I peticularly liked the part of the film where Joe tells Ruben that he has to leave. I like it because of the pain that you can see in Joe's expressions in voice when he says it. He doesn't want Ruben to leave, Rubin is means something to the people in this community, but he made a choice, and has to deal with the consequences of it. "There are too many others to consider," I think is what Joe said. It was very human. 

Another scene that I liked was when Ruben first heard the ringing in his ears. The look in his eyes when it first started was great acting. The way they potrayed Rubens loss of hearing was great as well. Going from ringing, to muffled voices, to eventually jusst having silence. 

        The Sound of Metal movie was very interesting to me as, like I am sure it was meant to be, I have never seen a movie like it. The sound design that revolved around how Ruben's hearing was in that moment was both interesting and informative. I think with a lot of movies about a struggle, viewers often have a hard time understanding the movie because they can't truly understand. The way this movie was made, made us understand as we experienced what Ruben was. Those scenes in his perspective were often jarring just as a viewer, not even knowing what it would be like to have that happen to your own person. 

Throughout the movie, I realized that there was a focus on background noises that are not normally focused on. For example, bird sounds, blender, air can, sound of trailer. This was unusual because the background noises were still apparent while the characters were talking. This changes later on to act as a contrast when Ruben starts to lose his hearing. The background noises slowly fade and become muffled. The POV of sound changes from time to time from Ruben to the outside world. For example, we are able to hear what Ruben is hearing, which is distorted noises, at the party held by Lou's father. Then, later we can hear the piano when Lou's father is playing.

For most of the movie silence (or muffled sound) appeared to have been used negatively- to create a sense of isolation or confusion. At the (very) end of the movie, however, silence was used to create a sense of relief, of comfort. I think that’s supposed to be interpreted as an acceptance deafness, but I’m not sure that’s the case. If the cochlear implant had returned sound the way Ruben remembered it, I doubt that last scene would have happened. I, however, was mostly relying on captions and subtitles, so this could have been misinterpreted. What do other people think? How was sound used in the film and what was it intended to achieve?

This is a preview of "Here Comes Mavo!" an animated TV series currently in the funding process. There's not a lot to go on because of how short the clip is, but ideally this show would both normalize deafness and help with language aquisition.

More information about this project can be found here: https://herecomesmavo.com/ and here: https://seedandspark.com/fund/here-comes-mavo#story

https://youtu.be/GfCbDZOT1DI?si=yi0h7BzEtmwvd9XS