II. Cinematic Soundscapes

1. Sound Theory

Sound Practice

• Professor in Cinema and Comparative literature at University of Iowa

• Also written books on the musical film genre, and edited a book on sound theory and practice that we will read from later this semester.

Rick Altman

Sound Theory Sound Practice

Edited by Rick Altman (1992)

With essays by James Lastra, Michel Chion, and others

Cinema as Text (Traditional Film Studies)

Cinema as Event (Altman’s Model)

• From production to reception, and vice versa (think flying donuts!)

• Multiplicity• Three-Dimensionality• Materiality• Heterogeneity• Intersection• Performance• Mutli-Discursivity• Instability

CINEMA AS EVENT

• Mediation• Choice• Diffusion• Interchange

• The production of sound is a material event: vibration, medium, changes in pressure – the composite nature of sound

• The sound narrative: naming of sound, “our ears tell us,” Rashomon phenomenon

• The recording of a sound event: representation, spatial signature, double (recording/reproduction)

• “…recordings are thus always representations, interpretations, partial narratives that must nevertheless serve as our only access to the sounds of the past” (p.27)

SOUND AS EVENT

• Historical• Ontological• Reproduction• Nominalism• Cinema as index

Fallacies In Film Sound Theory:

• Image scale vs. sound scale in film

• Problem of sound space in Hollywood, 3 main approaches: 1) manipulation of exhibition space, 2) manipulation of production, 3) development of multi-channel capacity

• Point of Audition

• Sound as anchor

SOUND SPACE

1. Multiple identities derived from pre-existing reality codes (theatre, vaudeville, radio, silent film music, etc.)

2. Jurisdictional struggle – speech is the primary vehicle

3. Development of new reality code based on technological specificity – point of audition and intelligibility; new mode of cinematic unity and new subject position for the Hollywood audience.

A New Model for Technological History (Tripartite Historical Model):