A Criterion Blooper

The Criterion Collection and its streaming service, the Criterion Channel, are synonymous with excellent taste in film, and so it’s all the more confusing that the company’s year-end “Room Tone” roundup from 2023 fails to actually deliver any substantial room tone. The otherwise cute supercut collects brief snippets of Criterion interviewees — among them Laura Dern and Martin Scorsese — sitting quietly and self-consciously as film crews record room tone for whatever video production was underway. In what is essentially a purposeful blooper reel, we hear the subjects occasionally joke about the discomfort inherent in staying still and we witness the unease on some of their faces and in their posture. Room tone serves the editing process: it provides background sound that can later be used to fill gaps during the assemblage of a film (or video — and it’s a necessity for audio-only projects, too, such as podcasts). Room tone is unique to a given place and moment — the physicality of the space, including what time of day it is, who’s in the room, even what they’re wearing. However, instead of getting to listen to the various room tones, we hear instead what appears to be a bit of a Nino Rota score. This seems like a missed opportunity on the part of Criterion. More to the point, it seems “off brand” for Criterion to employ a proper film term and to not make good on it (then again, Letterboxd has its “Rushes” and “Call Sheet,” which are neither). As one commenter on YouTube put the Criterion situation, “This was not the ASMR feast I was expecting… but I enjoyed it nevertheless.” Same here — and I hereby request a director’s cut that removes the repurposed background music entirely.