Footsteps, breath and recording devices: Abandoning a camera-centric construction of ‘point of audition’

The seminal work of Michel Chion Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen ([1992] 1994) postulates an analogous concept to point of view for sound in the cinema, what Chion refers to as the ‘point of audition’. During his brief discussion of the concept, he touches upon spatial and subjective modes through which the film-maker can clue the auditor towards discerning the origin from which a sound is intentionally perceived. He also alludes to how the auditor might recognize point of audition by the behaviour of on-screen characters towards sound events, of sound events caused by characters, and the recognition of tone and colour caused by microphone positioning or its simulation with signal processing. This article expands Chion’s postulations on how the spectator experiences point of audition, and challenges Chion’s own somewhat limiting conclusion, that point of audition is determined by camera positioning and its subsequent image. By providing closely read examples from narrative and documentary cinema, Schiffer proposes that the implied agency of body-derived sound effects, or sounds that refer to the processes of recording devices themselves, enables the spectator to render points of audition independent from the image created by the camera.