TERMINOLOGY: Sound



TERMINOLOGY: Sound

Sound

• Diegetic and non-diegetic sound; synchronous/asynchronous sound; sound effects; sound motif, sound bridge, dialogue, voiceover, mode of address/direct address, sound mixing, sound

perspective.

• Soundtrack: score, incidental music, themes and stings, ambient sound.

Diegetic/Non-diegetic Sound

Any voice, musical passage, or sound effect presented as originating froma source within the film's world is diegetic. If it originates outside the film (as most background music) then it is non-diegetic.

Synchronous sounds are those sounds which are synchronized or matched with what is viewed. For example:

If the film portrays a character playing the piano, the sounds of the piano are projected.

Synchronous sounds contribute to the realism of film and also help to create a particular atmosphere. For example:

The “click” of a door being opened may simply serve to convince the audience that the image portrayed is real, and the audience-may only subconsciously note the expected sound. However, if the “click” of an opening door is part of an ominous action such as a burglary, the sound mixer may call attention to the “click” with an increase in volume; this helps to  engage the audience in a moment of suspense. 

Asynchronous sound effects are not matched with a visible source of the sound on screen. Such sounds are included so as to provide an appropriate emotional nuance, and they may also add to the realism of the film. For example:

A film maker might  opt to include the background sound of an ambulance's siren while the foreground sound and image portrays an arguing couple. The asynchronous ambulance siren underscores the psychic injury incurred in the argument; at the same time the noise of the siren adds to the realism of the film by acknowledging the film's (avowed) city setting. 

  Sound Effects

In film/tv production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself.

Sound Motif

A sound effect or combination of sound effects that are associated with a particular character, setting, situation or idea through the film. 

The sound motifs condition the audience emotionally for the intervention, arrival, or actions of a particular character. The sound motifs can be very useful in the rough cut, where they help clarify the narrative functions of the characters and provide a sound association for those characters as we move through the story. 

The use of sound motifs can help shape a story that requires many characters and many locations and help unify the the film and sustain its narrative and thematic development

Sound Bridge

Sound bridges can lead in or out of a scene. They can occur at the beginning of one scene when the sound from the previous scene carries over briefly before the sound from the new scene begins. Alternatively, they can occur at the end of a scene, when the sound from the next scene is heard before the image appears on the screen. Sound bridges are one of the most common transitions in the continuity editing style, one that stresses the connection between both scenes since their mood (suggested by the music) is still the same. But sound bridges can also be used quite creatively, as in this clip from Yi Yi (Taiwan, 2000). Director Edward Yang uses a sound bridge both to play with our expectations. The clip begins with a high angle shot of a couple arguing under a highway. A piano starts playing and the scene cuts into a house interior, where a pregnant woman is looking at some cd's...

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...finally, the camera pans to reveal a young girl (previously offscreen) playing the piano. It is only then that we realize the music is diegetic, and that the young girl was looking at the window at her best friend and her boyfriend. The romantic melody she plays as she realizes they are breaking up in turn introduces a now possible future relationship for her -- which eventually happens, as she starts dating her best friend's ex-boyfriend later in the film.

Voiceover

When a voice, often that of a character in the film, is heard while we see an image of a space and time in which that character is not actually speaking. The voice over is often used to give a sense of a character's subjectivity or to narrate an event told in flashback. It is overwhelmingly associated with genres such as film noir, and its obsessive characters with a dark past. It also features prominently in most films dealing with autobiography, nostalgia, and literary adaptation. In the title sequence from The Ice Storm (1997) Ang Lee uses voice over to situate the plot in time and to introduce the subject matter (i.e., the American family in the 1970s), while also giving an indication of his main character's ideas and general culture.

While a very common and useful device, voice over is an often abused technique. Over dependance on voice over to vent a character's thoughts can be interpreted as a telling signal of a director's lack of creativity --or a training on literature and theater, rather than visual arts. But voice over can also be used in non literal or ironic ways, as when the words a character speaks do not seem to match the actions he/she performs. Some avant garde films, for instance, make purposely disconcerting uses of voice over narration.

Modes of Address

Modes of address can be defined as the ways in which relations between addresser and addressee are constructed in a text. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).

Sound Mixing

The combination, during the phase of postproduction, of three different categories of film sound-dialogue, sound effects, and music.

Sound Perspective

The sense of a sound's position in space, yielded by volume, timbre, pitch, and, in stereophonic reproduction systems, binaural information. Used to create a more realistic sense of space, with events happening (that is, coming from) closer or further away. Sound perspective, combined with offscreen space, also gives us clues as to who (and most importantly, where) is present in a scene. Welles' use of sound in this scene is unusual since Classical Hollywood Cinema generally sacrifices sound perspective to narrative comprehensibility.

Film score is a broad term referring to the music in a film, which is generally categorically separated from songs used within a film. The term film score is frequently synonymous with film soundtrack, though a soundtrack may also include the songs used in the film, while the score does not. A score is sometimes written specifically to accompany a film, but may also be compiled from previously written musical compositions.

Incidental Music: music composed to accompany the action of a drama or to fill intervals between scenes 

Sting: Distinctive background music used to add emphasis to an important moment in a motion picture or television program.

Ambient Sound: This term generally refers to any sounds that are used to establish location.  The ambient sound of a scene in a park, for instance, might include birds chirping, children laughing, or a dog barking.  The ambient sound of a train station would include the whine of train brakes, the tinny sounds of arrival and departure announcements, and the general noise of people walking and talking.

Sound

Some useful terms used to describe film music:

Symphonic – music performed by a large orchestra

Melody – a distinctive tune

Atonal – music having no established key

Rhythmic – percussive sounds forming a beat

Dissonant – discordant (non-harmonious) combination of sounds or lacking conventional harmonies

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