Michel Chion is a French theorist and composer. His book ‘Audio-vision: Sound on screen‘ (1976) offers many analysis of sound used in films and its effect on the audience.

Synchresis as Chion states is the “the forging of an immediate and necessary relationship between something one sees and something one hears.” When watching a film audience will expect the sounds to affirm what they are seeing on the screen such as with footsteps – although any sounds can be used in place of these effects. When there is no match between the sound and the video than it can have an interesting effect on the audience. It can disrupts and alter the audience perceptions of the film and it can . Such as displaying a video that is calm or beautiful and overlaying sound that is fast or tense. the audience then interprets that there is a build up to an impending doom or that something more is about to happen.

Michel Chion also proposes three different types of listening modes:

Casual listening: “…consists of listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause (or source).” This is the most common mode of listening. The audience are able to understand information about certain objects which will be important to think about, especially when doing foley. The sounds that I will be creating in foley will need to be accurate to make the sounds seem organic such as giving the sense that the cup is empty or full.

Semantic listening: Chion remarks that semantic listening “refers to a code or a language to interpret a message: spoken language, of course, as well as Morse and other such codes.” It involves a deeper or learnt understanding of patterns and meanings within different sounds. We will be incorporating this idea into our film as we might be using a non-diegetic score to help give meaning to the story, it will most likely be a slow and simple piano score that is familiar and resonates with the audience emotionally who would be familiar with similar soundtracks.

Reduced listening: “focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause of its meaning.” Listening to the sound object, the formal qualities of the sound; frequency, tone, noise, intensity, direction, length, shape. It is interesting to note from Chion’s work that everyone will hear a sound but that they may interpret it differently to others and that this mode of listening is all a matter of perspective.