Bordwell 10e ppt_ch07

Chapter 7

Sound in the Cinema

1© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Sound in the Cinema

• Sound can be difficult to analyze. It’s elusive.• It can create a strong effect, yet often remain

unnoticeable.


The Powers of Sound

• Can have a unifying effect with visual qualities.• Shapes how we perceive and interpret the

image.• Directs our attention and creates expectation.


Fundamentals of Film Sound: Perceptual Properties

• Loudness is connected to perceived distance, but is constantly manipulated.

• Pitch is the highness or lowness of the sound, and helps viewers distinguish different sounds.

• Timbre is the tone quality, whether nasal, mellow, or in between.

• Together they create the sonic texture of a film and shape the experience for the viewer.


Selection, Alteration, and Combination: Choosing and Manipulating Sounds

• Sound guides the viewer’s attention.• A soundtrack is made by selecting sounds that

fulfill a function.• Often this means that sound is used

unrealistically.


Selection, Alteration, and Combination:Sound Mixing

• Mixing is combining sounds together, creating layers of sonic information.

• Some techniques can contribute to continuity.• In Seven Samurai, the combination of sound

enhances the unrestricted, objective narration.


Selection, Alteration, and Combination:Sound and Film Form

• Choice and combination of sound can create patterns that run through the film.

• Musical motifs can reappear throughout the film but are re-orchestrated to emphasize narrative points as in Jules and Jim.


Dimensions of Film Sound: Rhythm

• Dimensions are the ways the sound relates to other film elements.

• Rhythm involves a beat, a tempo, and a pattern of accents.

• Coordinated rhythm synchronizes visuals with sound.

• Disparity between sound and image can smooth over shot changes and create an expressive counter-rhythm or convey a feeling.


Dimensions of Film Sound: Fidelity

• Refers to whether the sound is faithful to the source as we conceive it.

• This revolves around expectation, and can create jokes or artistic commentary.

• Can also refer to volume.


Dimensions of Film Sound: Space

• Sound comes from a source and what we think about that source can affect how we understand that sound.

• Diegetic sound has a source in the story world.• Nondiegetic sound comes from outside the

story world.


Diegetic and Nondiegetic Sound

• Diegetic sound can be onscreen or offscreen.• Diegetic sound can be external (objective) or

internal (subjective).• In No Country for Old Men, the narration at

times restricts us to Moss’s range of knowledge through subjective sound and visuals, creating suspense.


Playing with Diegetic/Nondiegetic Sound

• Sometimes it isn’t clear if a source is nondiegetic or not.

• This can be a commentary or create jokes.


Sound and Perspective

• Sound perspective is a sense of spatial distance and location being analogous to visual depth and volume.

• It can also have to do with timbre.• Stereophonic and surround tracks can create a

very specific sonic landscape.


Dimensions of Sound: Time

• Can be synchronous or asynchronous, simultaneous or nonsimultaneous.

• Sound bridges create expectation, as can flash forwards.

• Usually nondiegetic sound has no temporal relationship with the story.

• These categories help us analyze film sound and identify patterns and function.


Functions of Film Sound:The Prestige

• The overall structure of the film emphasizes misdirection and illusion.

• Sound choices help smooth understanding of the action through differentiation of sound and sound association.

• The expressive soundtrack enhances the mood of different scenes.

• Sound bridges and dialogue hooks link scenes.• Dialogue misleads.


Echoes, Visual and Auditory

• Parallelism advances the films action, traces character development, and maintains mysteries.

• Auditory motifs, such as mechanical sounds, music, and repeated dialogue create parallels.

• Repeated dialogue also drop hints and clarify the story.


Two Journals

• Robert’s and Alfred’s journals frame parts of the past, guiding the viewer from present to past and back again.

• The diaries and voice-overs emphasize the conflict between the men.

• The diaries also serve to mislead the viewer.

© 2013 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved. 17

Hinting at Secrets

• As new information is presented, it foreshadows the answer to future mysteries.

• Dialogue and voice-overs are part of these hints.

• Offscreen sound withholds the payoff of each man’s greatest trick by keeping the camera on the reaction, not the illusion itself.


The Opening

• Sound is used to reveal and conceal story information from the start of the film with the voice-over and the apparent illusion gone wrong.

• The two magic tricks ask us to make a connection between them, and the voice-over commentary provides the answer.


The Opening

• The voice-over introduces central themes of the film, major characters, time shifts, and the tight image/sound synchronization that will propel the plot.

• The commentary also provides hints.• The first few shots of the film also encompass

narrative themes and motifs in the film such as self-sacrifice, death, and the methods used in the illusions.
