One of this weeks readings was an excerpt from Theo Van Leeuwen‘s Speech, Music, Sound. The set chapter was on the topic of sound and perspective, and how the image and sound can create depth and atmosphere.

In the text, Leeuwen talks about how there are two similarities between image and sound: perspective, and social distance. Perspective is all about the space of the ground. It includes three elements: foreground, middle ground, and background. Both picture and audio use these three elements to create a three-dimensional space. Social distance, according to the text, “creates relations of different degrees of formality between what is represented and the viewer of listener, such as intimacy, informality, [and] informality” (Speech, Music, Sound, Theo Van Leeuwen, 1999, pp.15).

One of the topics that particularly interested me was about how the action and dialogue in Hollywood films are usually in the foreground, while the music plays in the background. After reading this particular section, I began to think about different films that broke this rule. While there was a provided example from Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), there was a particular scene I was reminded of from a cinematic in the video game (lame, I know), Metal Gear Solid V, where the music plays the more dominant role.

While you can hear the sounds of the rain and vehicles in the background, the main focus is the song that is supposedly being played on the cassette player. This effect shows the scene from the character’s perspective, as if they’re the ones sitting in the cell with earphones in.

This scene reminded me of my daily bus and train trips to the city. We’ve all been there, trying to drown out the background noise by putting some earphones in. Usually, we can hear the conversations happening nearby, but are mainly listening to the music.

I’ll stop getting sidetracked, but this topic just generally interested me.