CORE STUDIO: INTRO TO TIME-BASED MEDIA › week seven › session one

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• SOUND IN CINEMA
  
• Sound in the cinema often goes unnoticed. Like good continuity editing, good sound contributes to the film's narrative development by being unobtrusive.
• Yet, as in editing, there are moments when sound plays a more important role, contributing thematically or intensifying emotional effect.
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• SOUND IN CINEMA IS OF 3 TYPES:
• — 1] SPEECH
• — 2] MUSIC
• — 3] NOISE (also called sound effects)
• *occasionally, a sound may cross categories — is it scream speech or noise?
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• SELECTION, ALTERATION AND COMBINATION
• — Creation of sound track resembles the editing of the image track. Just as the filmmaker may pick the best image from several shots, he/she may choose what exact bit of sound will best serve the purpose.
• Alfred Hitchcok's "Psycho" (1960) - "Psycho" shower scene scream
• *Speech, music, and noise selected and combined for specific purposes.
• Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" (1974) - "The Conversation"
• *Intersting sound design. Coppola cuts to the footage of a man and a woman in a park walking around (the one's who were being recorded)— audio is garbled that's why Harry Caul is trying to unscramble to hear the audio. As we see them walk around, we hear the tape which Caul is trying to unscramble. The movie will cut back to him playing with the dials, improving the quality, and then back to the couple as the audio improves. This type of sound is sort of carried out in the entire film.
• — Choosing and Manipulating sounds - the creation of the soundtrack resembles the editing of the image track. Just as the filmmaker may pick the best image from several shots, he or she may choose what exact bit of sound will best serve the purpose.
• — Sound Mixing - guiding the viewer's attention, then, depends on selecting and reworking particular sounds. It also depends on mixing, or combining them. It is useful to think of the sound track not as a set of discrete sound units but as an on-going stream of auditory information. Each sonic event takes its place in a specific pattern. This pattern both links events in time and layers them at any given moment.
• Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (1990) - *view clips from "Goodfellas"
• *Soundtrack/songs were chosen to complement the scene or the characters. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action.
• John McTiernan's "The Hunt for Red October" (1990) - *view clips from "The Hunt for Red October"
• *Aural soundscape - sound effects and music blends very well. The bouncing of the sound from different sources (speakers) gives you the illusion that you are inside a sub.
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• DIEGETIC AND NON-DIEGETIC SOUND
• Diegetic Sound — Any voice, musical passage, or sound effect presented as originating from a source within the film's world.
• Non-diegetic Sound — Sound, such as mood music or narrator's commentary, represented as coming from a source outside the space of the narrative.
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• *Clip from the movie "Traffic" [ play clip ]
  — diegetic and non-diegetic sound work together to move the plot forward and highlight the progression of time. Contributes to the mood of the scene and connects the narrative strands of the plot. To connect the storyline, the sound designer uses both the dialogue and the music as sound bridges across the scenes.
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• *Clip from the tv show"Chuck" [ play clip ]
  — diegetic and non-diegetic sound work
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• *Clip from Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights and Modern Times" [ play clip ]
  — Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights and Modern Times" eliminate dialogue, letting sound effects and music come to fore.
• *View: "Lifted" movie [ play clip ]
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• (source: Film Art, "Scorsese on Scorsese" by Thompson, David; Ian Christie) 
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