In cinema today we’re focussing on the quality of sound within film. We were introduced to the absolute fundamentals of sound in our reading this week: pitch, timbre and loudness.
As these concepts of film are pretty basic, we focussed on how these qualities of sound is able to shape the audience’s experience. The film we are analysing this week is David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
Scene Analysis: Party Scene
Sound and soundtrack was extremely important within this sequence – the dialogue and the soundtrack began with equal volumes at the beginning of the sequence. As the sequence transitions from outside to inside, sound volumes shift and we unrealistically hear louder music when there is a crowd of people within the shot.Toward the climax of the sequence, the soundtrack is almost muted, to give the dialogue more emphasis and veil the sequence with a sense of apprehension and anxiety.
A deep, discordant sound is added after this pivotal conversation to imply or infer that something is different; something wrong has happened.
Dimension of Sound
We delved into some of the dimensions of sound, such as: rhythm, fidelity and diegetic/non-diegetic sounds.
Onscreen and offscreen space can be generated by the use of sound – we referred to Jacques Tati’s PlayTime to verify this idea. The scene we spoke about consisted of a man walking down the hallway, however, the sound of his footsteps create a false sense of space, as they are much louder than they should be.
We touched on simultaneous and non-simultaneous sound. Simultaneous sound is sound that occurs at the same time as events in the image in the story-line. Non-simultaneous sound is described as a kind of ‘sonic flashback’; when a sound reverts back to a past event in the story-line.
Film Week 8: Vivre Sa Vie
This film is segmented by tableaux rather than chapters – this is important because each tableaux mirrors a still image. This is interesting because it allows sound to drive the narrative rather than the visuals – which is fairly uncommon for (Hollywood) films.
The repetition of some of the dialogue creates a disjointed feeling within the sequence. Because we cannot see their (The characters’) faces – we are unable to understand whether the moment is being repeated from different perspectives, or whether the line has simply just been repeated.
The background noise is very distracting within the opening sequence – the busy sounds are juxtaposed against the still camera and little visual movement. This also creates a sense of disunity within the sequence.
Camera technique and dialogue are used to accentuate a key theme that will occur within the film. The camera pans to the main character within the film as a sentence is resonated: ‘…take away the interior, and the soul remains.’
Movie to Watch: Barbarian of Sound