Adv. Sound Lecture Notes


1. Historical Background-


a. 1927 was the first sound film The Jazz Singer, produced by Warner Brothers. The film would forever change the Film Industry. Its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, the movie stars Al Jolson, who performs six songs.


b. There never was a silent period, because films were always accompanied by orchestral music.


c. Most first “talkies” were visually dull because actors needed to be near the microphones.


d. Equipment required the simultaneous (synchronous) recording of sound and image. The camera was restricted and editing was restricted to scene changes. Major source of meaning was the dialogue. Images tended to merely illustrate the sound track.


e. Sound resulted in American films being the fastest in the world… sound especially worked well in Gangster films in which the actors spoke very quick stylized speech.


f. Soon sound booms and camera blimps to control camera sound were once again freeing up the camera.

 

g. Formalist directors remained hostile to the realistic use of sound…. Eisenstein thought sound would force film back to its stagey beginnings and wouldn’t work with montage editing.


h. Synchronous sound did include more literal continuity.


i. Hitchcock pointed out that the most cinematic scenes are essentially silent.


j. Most Formalist directors favored non-synchronous sound, sound added after filming and production.


k. Increased realism brought on by sound inevitably forced acting styles to become more natural.


l. Film actors realized that the subtlest nuances of meaning could be conveyed through the voice.


m. Talkies wiped out the careers of many silent film stars some because their voices didn’t match their personas, but also because the highly stylized acting of the silent era seemed over acted and even comical. (John Gilbert)


n. Sound allowed for more efficient exposition of nonvisual information and avoided visual cliché’s that were used to communicate character attributes.

Rene Clair, French Director who believed that sound should be used selectively, not indiscriminately.

  • He believed that the ear is just as selective as the eye and can be edited in the same way.
  • He also noted that conversation can act as a continuity device, freeing the camera to explore contrasting information. (technique favored by ‘ironists’)

  • He began “dubbing” films to add dialogue after filming, now common today.

 

Mae West: was an expert in conveying sexual innuendos

  • Tone of voice can be far more communicative than the words in revealing a person’s thoughts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L0eJp7V2Zs

  • “It’s not the men in my life that counts, it’s the life in my men.”

David Lynch’s – Eraser Head - profusely used bizarre and surreal sound effects

Orsen Welles- his radio experience was an important innovator in the field of sound.

  • Shocked the world with his rendition of "War of the Worlds"

  • Perfected the technique of sound montage. as in the Magnificent Ambersons, in deep focus, the dialogue of one group overlaps and becomes louder than another.

  • Sound Montage is considered the technique of layering of voices as actors cues overlap.


2. Sound Effects


a. Sound effects can be precise sources of meaning in a film as well as atmospheric.
b. Cinematic sound is a constructed experience: multiple layers of sound are (mixed) in a studio rather than recorded in reality, for many are not present at the time of filming.

Notice the use of sound effects in the Catina scene from the original Star Wars.

Darth Vader breathes really loudly. There's no reason for it, but for some reason it's scary as hell. That nightmarish mechanical sound follows him everywhere. That sound, and countless other little touches, were created by Ben Burtt. He has the boring job title of "sound designer," but he brought Star Wars to life in countless ways. (Trivia: Darth Vader's breathing is Burtt breathing through a scuba regulator.) http://www.cracked.com/article_18523_6-artists-you-didnt-know-made-your-favorite-movie-moments.html

The Wilhelm Scream- is a signature sound effect that is in almost every modern action and adventure film. It's a clip of a man screaming that's been used over 200 films. Burtt discovered it. Burtt named it. Burtt is the father of the Wilhelm scream which he stumbled across on a studio reel labeled "Man being eaten by alligator" and made famous

wilhemlm


c. A crunch of a blade penetrating a security officer’s skull in Terminator is actually the sound of a dog chewing a bone.


d. A sound editor gathers sounds necessary from pre-recorded samples in a sound library.
e. Critics refer to sounds that the characters can hear as diegetic, while sounds they cannot hear are nondiegetic. The most obvious can be illustrated by a movies music. If the characters are listening to a stereo the music is diegetic. If the score has no source within the image it is nondiegetic. Deigetic music is often referred to as “source” music while non-diegetic music is often referred to as b music.

Sound Effects can be thought of as Realistic, Expressive or Surrealistic:

  • Realistic: This is any sound effect that one could naturally hear if situated in the filmed scene. The source of the sound might be on screen or off screen. Adding the most common sound effects like a car honking, a metronome, or a buzzing mosquito can greatly change the feeling of a scene. These are the most commonly used form of sound effect.
  • Expressive: For our purposes an expressive sound is one that is realistic, but has been altered. That might mean a phone's ring starts out normally and suddenly gets louder and louder. The sound comes from the scene but has been manipulated for effect.
  • Surreal: Sound effects are often enlisted to externalize a character's inner thoughts, nightmares, hallucinations, dreams, or wishes. We might hear, for example, the laughter of a child as a woman picks up a doll from childhood. This gives the scene a surreal feeling. This effect is often called meta-diegetic.

The PITCH, VOLUME AND TEMPO of sound effects can strongly affect our responses to any given noise.

f. Pitch refers to the perceived frequency of a sound.

  • Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower".
  • High pitched sounds are usually harsh, insistent, and discordant and produce a sense of tension in the listener. If prolonged, the shrillness can be unnerving. For this reason high pitched sounds are often heard in suspense sequences, just before and during the climax.
  • Low Frequency sounds are heavy, full and less tense. These are often used to emphasize the dignity or solemnity of a scene. These low pitched sounds can also anxiety and mystery.

g. Sound volume works in much the same way.

  • Loud sounds tend to be forceful, intense and threatening.
  • Quiet sounds strike us delicate, hesitant, and often weak.
  • Silence in a sound film tends to call attention to itself, and in its protracted form creates an eerie vacuum--a sense of something impending, about to burst. The opposite of what one would associate with life, Silence can be said to symbolize death.

h. Tempo - is the speed or pace of a given sound or piece of music and is

  • The greater the tempo, the larger the number of beats that must be played in a minute is, and, therefore, the faster a piece must be played and is measured in BPM (beats per minute)
  • The faster the tempo of the sound, the greater the tension experienced in the listener. (Check out the chase sequence in the French Connection http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu3GmRQ-U9k)

h. Off-screen or External sounds bring off screen space into play: the sound expands the image beyond the confines of the frame. Sound effects can evoke terror in suspense films and thrillers. We tend to fear what we can’t see, so directors can use this technique to create anxiety. The sound of a creaking door can be more frightening than seeing someone.
i. We can recognize someone only by their sinister tune as in “M” by Fritz Lang. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUJXRVh1ss&feature=related
j. Sound effects can also serve symbolic functions that are usually determined by the dramatic context… a heart beat or the sound of bells tied to an actor’s passion or fear of death.
k. Usually once a location has been set, street sounds will be faded out in order to better hear the dialogue in a scene. Not all directors did this, especially those influenced by the philosophy of the Cinema Verite’- which tends to avoid simulated or re-created sounds- directors like Jean-Luc Godard even allowed important dialogue to be drowned out by street noise. His movie Masculine/Feminine dealt with themes of privacy, peace and quiet, therefore he exploited his soundtrack to comment implicitly on these themes.
l. Sound effects can also express internal emotions. A garbage disposal or horn can represents someone’s anger and frustration.
m. Absolute silence tends to draw attention to itself. See the final scene of Bonnie and Clyde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5GDcs8i2ng
n. Silence in film can also be used to symbolize death.


3. Music


a. Since the beginning of film, the image on screen was always accompanied by its emotional equivalent in music. Action in image was accompanied by fast tempo in music. The emotion in the image matched the emotion in the music.


b. Music becomes more specific when juxtaposed with images. Musicians sometimes complain that images rob the music of it’s ambiguity.. hear Ponchiellis “Dance of the Hours” and you’re bound to see the dancing hippos of Fantasia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEjPDS8Jp1E&feature=related


 

 

c. Wegner’s Flight of the Walkeries is forever imbued with the incoming chopper attacks of Apocalypse Now by Oliver Stone.


 

d. Theories about Film Music:

  • Pudovkin and Eisenstein insisted that music must never serve merely as accompaniment: It ought to retain its own integrity.
  • Paul Rotha, the film critic, claimed that music must even be allowed to dominate the image on occasion.
  • Some filmmakers insist on purely descriptive music – a practice known as Mickeymousing (so called because of Disney’s early experiments with music and animation. Watch Steamboat Willie from 1928 to see how it was done.

  • Some directors believe music shouldn’t be too good or it will take away from the images.


e. A film’s rhythm can be created by its musical score. American Graffitti- used contempory music of the 1950’s radio era to create a nostalgic feel in the filmic reality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXFMnfQVINM&feature=related
f. The list of composers who have worked directly with film is an impressive one:
http://filmsound.org/filmmusic/
g. Directors must know what they want from music dramatically. It’s the composer’s job to translate these dramatic needs into musical terms. Composer will watch the film with the Director and “spot” the film, a process that involves noting where the director wants dramatic emphasis.
h. Beginning with opening credits, music can serve as an overture to suggest the mood or spirit of the film as a whole.
i. Certain kinds of music can suggest locales, classes, or ethnic groups. John Ford’s use of simple folk tunes in his Westerns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC6V0FSBTcY Another example is Nino Rota who was used in many Italian films as well as for the Godfather movies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcHMeuhqdR4


Or Sergio Leones's classic spaghetti westerns scored by composer Ennio Marricone in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29YhWIvTAIU&feature=related

 

j. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing uses painstaking precision with its musical score because music is used to characterize culture and lifestyles. The African American characters listen to soul, gospel and rap music whereas, the ballads of Frank Sinatra are more typical of the Italian-American characters.

 


k. Music can be used as foreshadowing: Hitchcock often would accompany an apparently causal scene with “anxious” music- a warning to the audience to be prepared. Sometimes they may be false alarms, other times explode into crecendos.


l. Music can control emotional shifts within a scene. A scene started with a song in a hopeful tone can shift to sound dark and depressing as the character loses hope.


m. Music can also provide ironic contrast. The predominant mood of a scene can be neutralized or even reversed with contrasting music. In Bonnie and Clyde, robbery scenes with a banjo accompaniment can be made to seem fun and playful rather than serious and dangerous.


n. Characterization can be suggested through musical motifs. The pure, sad simplicity of an actress can be conveyed through a melancholy tune she plays on a trumpet as in La Strada. Characterization can even be more precise if the music is accompanied by lyrics, such a tune that is meant to represent a specific character.A leitmotif is a recurring musical theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. ...


o. Stanley Kubric was a bold and controversial innovator in his use of film music. In Dr. Strangelove, he sardonically juxtaposed a sentimental WWII song “We’ll meet again” with images of a global nuclear holocaust. In Clock Work Orange, he accompanies a brutal rape scene with a song and dance routine of “Singing in the Rain”.
p. A frequent function of film music is to underline speech, especially in dialogue.

 

4. Musicals


a. The principle reason for Musicals is song and dance. They were all the rage in the early talkie era.
b. Musicals can be divided into Realistic and Formalistic.
• Realistic musicals are usually backstage stories, in which the production numbers are presented as dramatically plausible. They justify a song with a line of dialogue. Judy Garland in A Star Is Born and 8 Mile are examples of dramas interspersed with music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-rBZREQMw
• Formulistic musicals make no pretense of reality. Characters burst out in song in the middle of a scene without easing into the number with a plausible pretext. Everything is heightened and stylized: sets, costumes, action and so on. Chech out Gene Kelley's famous 1952 "Singing in the Rain" number from MGM.


c. The genre has been dominated by Americans, partly because it was so tied to the American Studio System. Each studio had its stable of actors that had a certain style:
• RKO- charming Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers- Top Hat, Shall We Dance, Follow the Fleet
• Paramount- specialized in sophisticated “continental” musicals with Lubitsch’s The Love Parade, One Hour with You
• Warner Brothers created proliterate show biz stories with Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade. Berkely’stylistic signature were his fondness for abstract geometric patterns and photographs of dancers from unconventional angles to create a kaleidoscope effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=707VxB-ek4Q
• 40’s and 50’s MGM dominated the Genre: Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney etx.
d. Movie musicals can take many forms:
• Animated films like The Yellow Submarine.
• Documentaries- Woodstock, Gimme Shelter
• Musical Biographies: Amadeus


5. Spoken Language


a. Language in film can be more sophisticated than Language in Text.

  • The words of a movie are spoken and therefore are capable of far more nuances than the cold printed page.

  • The written word is a crude approximation of the The of spoken language. Consider the meanings an actor can emphasize in the words, “I will see him tomorrow”


1. I will see him tomorrow. (implying, not you or anyone else)
2. I will see him tomorrow. (implying, and I don’t care if you approve)
3. I will see him tomorrow. (implying, but that’s all I’ll do)
4. I will see him tomorrow. (implying, but not anyone else)
5. I will see him tomorrow. (implying, not today or any other time)


b. Actors routinely go through their lines to see which words to emphasize and which to “throw away.”

 


c. Dialects or Accents can be a rich source of meaning in movies because dialects are usually spoken by people who are outside the establishment and therefore may convey a subversive ideology. Think of Cockney, Boston or New York Mafia. When Tony Soprano talks, we know he's from New Jersey and Italiene decent.

 

 


d. Language can often be juxtaposed with the ideas and emotions of a subtext. A subtext refers to those implicit meanings behind the language of a film. Consider the following:


• May I have a cigarette, please?
• Yes, of course. (Lights her cigarette)
• Thank you, you’re very kind
• Don’t mention it.


e. The meaning of the passage is provided by the actor not the text.
f. Any script meant to be spoken has subtext.
g. Some filmmakers intentionally neutralize their language, claiming that the subtext is what they’re really after. In The Homecoming a sense of incredible eroticism is conveyed through dialogue involving a request for a glass of water. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv4-XI1hD9o
h. With Subtext, language is often a “cross-talk”, a way of concealing fears and anxieties.
i. In film, close ups can convey the meanings behind words more subtly than an actor on a stage.
j. Movies can also extend the meanings of language by contrasting spoken words with images. Juxtaposed images can be reaction shots that clarify the intended meaning of the statement
k. This advantage of simultaneity extends to other sounds. Music and sound effects can modify the meanings of words considerably: Echo vs. whisper an line can have different meanings.
l. Depending on the vocal emphasis, the visual emphasis and accompanying soundtrack, a simple sentence can have a dozen meaings.
m. There are 2 Types of Spoken Language in film:

  • Dialogue and Monolgue
  • Monologue-is often used in documentaries, in which an off screen narrator provides the audience with facts.

    1. Here the narrator must avoid duplicating the information given in the images itself and instead provide commentary that is not apparent on the screen.
    2. Cinema Verite’ documentarists have extended this to include interviews in the first person.
    3. Monologues are also used in fictional work and useful in condensing events and time.
    4. Narrative Monologues can be used to create ironic contrast with the visuals.
    5. Off screen narration  or Voice Over tends to give a movie a sense of objectivity and often an air of predestination. The main interest is not what happened, but how and why. Billy Wilder said that by knowing what happened, we can now focus on how the net closed.
    6. The Interior Monologue is on of the most valuable tools of the filmmaker because it conveys what an actor is thinking.
    a. Thoughts via a “voice – over” sound track can deliver back story. Private ruminations and public speech can be combined in interesting ways, with new and subtle emphases.
    7. In movies, the convention of articulation can be relaxed whereas in stage monologues, the actor must exaggerate articulation to be heard.
    8. Images will always convey more than speech and therefore speech can be sparse and realistic.

n. Dubbed vs Subtitles in Foreign Films-

  • Dubbed will often sound tinny or hollow and the language doesn’t match the emotion of the actors. Lips are not synchronized.
  • Some of the old Kung Fu Classics are notorius for terrible dubbing:
  • Dubbed movies do allow the audience to focus on the visuals instead of having to “read” the film.

o. The French Director- Rene Clair believed that the use of sound permits a director more visual freedom, not less because speech can reveal a persons class, region, occupation, and prejudices. The director doesn’t need to waste time establishing these facts visually. Sound can be more economical and precise way of conveying information.