Typically French films were based on literature adaptations or historical pieces, the retelling of books and plays), this bored some french filmmakers so in the 50’s and 60’s they readjusted this to become The French New Wave which created exciting rafts of films.
This weeks reading was focused around sound, sound is used to reassure, unsettle and reinforce you with the narrative (for example is the character good/bad, it hints at how you were meant to feel). In the earliest silent films that were distributed, they came with sheet of film music that would be played in the theatre with resident musician, might be small band or just piano. From there music, dialog, soundtrack and sound effects which was then popularised in 1930’s. The most common people involved in sound are the; sound recorder (records the sound), ADR dialog replacement , audio mixers and the foley artist who find things that fit the mould and that give it a realistic effect. Often dialog and sound effect get recorded separately and added in later to get cleaned and build up in sound mix later on post produced/synched sound.
Vivre Sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962, 85 mins; sound design by Lila Lakshmanan), In particular I noticed a few things, the way that silence was used it was used very abruptly in certain parts of the movie. At times we could hear the dialog and other is was muted. The patten of sound was very changeable, this made audiences quite unaware if what was to happen next. In certain aspects such as the opening scene of Nana and the man, we were only hearing their dialog and background noise of the cafe which gave a very faithful perceived source of sound giving realism to the scene.
The opening sequence in particular was interesting because we we given a visual of a close up of Nana’s face from the side and then from the front. This was paired with both silence and a mixture of background music, this added some mystery to the opening titles. There was also a particular scene where we had a close up of Nana’s face and she was looking directly at the camera and the music was orchestral and quite soft which then again prompted us to view her as sad and perhaps slightly distant. This showcases how the effect of sound is very important and how it can be used to cue audiences emotions about a particular scene. This was also evident in the music dance scene, it gave a completely different atmosphere to the rest of the movie and changed from sorrow to her upbeat.
Some extra sound effects that stood out to me where the gun shots and the footsteps. Both of these were extremely loud and juxtaposed the already quiet environment. Which really awoken myself to what was going on. The footstep sounds as well was very prominent in the footage, we didn’t see a shot of her feet, so in some aspects it almost felt like the sounds didn’t quite connect. The loud volume of it also indicated this was put in afterwards and was not coming from onscreen.