“ABSTRACT: The article examines the use of sound in Maghrebi-French film-making since the early 1980s, arguing for a greater need to explore the role of the soundtrack and music in this area of contemporary French/Francophone cinema, as well as in diasporic and postcolonial cinema more generally. The article analyses a range of films by Maghrebi-French directors, characterized by what might be termed ‘displaced audio’. Particular attention will be paid to the concepts of accented voice and heteroglossia, the layering and displacement of sound, and the subversion of more Eurocentric associations of music in film as an ethnic marker.” (pp. 225)

I read an interesting piece titled ‘Displaced audio: Exploring soundscapes in Maghrebi-French film-making,’ recently which talked a lot about sound – applicable to both Maghrebi-French filmmaking, but also generally. Disjointed sounds often used as well as soundscapes. The piece states that “the image has been consistently privileged over sound in film studies, due to the latter’s apparent status as ‘non-representational’” (Higbee, 2009, pp. 225) which was criticised in this piece. The importance of sound had been explored and explained. It is a means of expression and creating feelings for the work – whether comfortable or not. We read that “certain Maghrebi-French directors employ sound and music in complex, subtle and very specific ways that clearly show how sound design is integral to the broader meanings and themes that are constructed and addressed in their films.” (Higbee, 2009, pp. 226) These films use sound to aid the story, that is what I plan to do with my work. I want to create altered feelings within the pieces – trial different sound techniques to express the atmosphere of what’s captured in the frame.

One Maghrebi-French film which was discussed posed the notion that “if the soundtrack allowed us to hear what the characters were discussing, the sense of distanciation and dislocation between spectator, protagonist and the environment … would be far less extreme.” (Higbee, 2009, pp. 228) Within my work for this project, I do not have a set story shown in the pieces and I do not incorporate particular characters. They are segments to potential stories, told in a more poetic manner than most. They are not conventional. The sections where we hear the boys conversing with each other as they walk up the street (singing “you better shut your trap,” putting arms around each other’s shoulders and laughing), or when they laugh, are rather distant in the pieces. However, these sounds will be an interesting element to manipulate in order to create versions which are associative (the words are heard, even in the distance) and dissociative, where the words are no longer coherent, creating a warped and subjective piece for viewers.

“If the dominant cinema is driven by the hegemony of synchronous sound and a strict alignment of speaker and voice, accented films are counter hegemonic insofar as many of them de-emphasise synchronous sound, insist on first person or voice-over narrations, delivered in the accented pronunciation of the country’s host language, create a slippage between voice and speaker.” (Naficy, 2001, pp. 24)

The quote above was found in the ‘Displaced audio: Exploring soundscapes in Maghrebi-French film-making’ reading and it stood out to me as, although it (as well as the entire piece) speaks of foreign filmmaking, the idea that “dominant cinema is driven by the hegemony of synchronous sound” (Naficy, 2001, pp. 24) which is exactly what I’m steering clear of in my work. I’m aiming for poetic, not typical. The skateboarding footage has not been captured to create a classic skating video – it’s been captured to morph it into something with a different feel.

Cited works:
Higbee, W. (2009). Displaced audio: Exploring soundscapes in Maghrebi-French film-making. Studies in French Cinema, 9(3), pp.225-241.

Naficy, H. (2001), An Accented Cinema, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

NOTE TO SELF
READINGS TO POSSIBLY LOOK AT:

Altman, R. (1992), ‘The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound’, in R. Altman (ed.), Sound Theory/Sound Practice, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 15–34.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, (ed. M. Holquist; trans. M. Holquist and C. Emerson), Austin: University of Texas Press.

Chion, M. (1992), ‘Wasted words’, in R. Altman (ed.), Sound Theory/Sound Practice, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 104–12.

Chion, M. (1994), Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (trans. C. Gorbman), New York: Columbia University Press.