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- Volume 7, Issue 1, 2014
Soundtrack, The - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2014
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2014
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The Craftsman: The use of sound design to elicit emotions
Authors: Neil Hillman and Sandra PaulettoAbstractBy looking at the relationship between audience emotions and a film’s soundtrack, this research started by asking the question ‘Are a listening-viewers Emotional Reactions to moving-picture sound design identifiable, predictable and repeatable?’. If so, can we pre-determine how an audience will react to audio stimuli, and, can we develop sound design techniques for triggering specific audience responses? This article proposes that within a film soundtrack, four distinct sound areas can be defined and described as the Logical, Abstract, Temporal and Spatial areas. The Logical Sound area is concerned with sound that carries direct communication and meaning. Dialogue and commentary are the most important examples of this area, which also includes symbolic and signalling sounds such as ring-tones, sirens, and other sounds and music with a clearly defined meaning. The Abstract Sound area is concerned with sounds that have a less codified and clear meaning. Atmospheres, backgrounds, room tones, sound effects and music are examples of these. The Temporal Sound area is concerned with the evolution in time of the sound design. Its characteristics are rhythm, pace and punctuation. This area can include music, sound effects and voice. The Spatial Sound area is concerned with the positioning of sounds within a three-dimensional soundfield. We propose that the definition of these areas provides a useful framework for sound designers and academics to devise and analyse how emotions can be elicited through sound design.
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The Celtic Tiger ‘Unplugged’: DV realism, liveness, and sonic authenticity in Once (2007)
More LessAbstractOnce (2007) is described by its director Carney as ‘a modern day musical’, eschewing the elaborately staged set-pieces associated with the film musical genre in favour of a more intimate style in which the songs arise ‘naturalistically’. Depicting the friendship between two musicians towards the end of ‘Celtic Tiger’-era Dublin, the film won critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide, confounding expectations of such a low-budget feature, shot cheaply on digital video. The commercial success of Once exemplifies the ‘rags-to-riches’ heroics of shoestring feature production in the millennial digital era. Yet the narrative of Once is paradoxically uneasy with digital technology and instead articulates what Philip Auslander (and others) term ‘rock authenticity’, fetishizing the ‘live’, the ‘lo-fi’ and the ‘acoustic’ in music. The overall approach to the sound of the film aspires towards ‘liveness’, as the use of location sound recording for the song sequences provides a particular textural quality that incorporates background noise and environmental reverberation, or ‘materializing sound indices’. This article uses analysis of the construction of sound space and sound-image relations in Once to demonstrate how this formal approach works with the narrative to communicate texturally a particular notion of ‘authenticity’ and ‘liveness’ of the film. This will be supplemented with analysis of discourses of authenticity used in the film’s publicity.
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‘How Silver-Sweet Sound Lovers’ Tongues’: The music of love and death in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet
By Samantha LinAbstractThis article examines the ways in which the musical ‘love theme’ in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) plays a crucial role in the careful negotiation of additions and subtractions in terms of content, visuals, and audio alike—negotiations made necessary by the shift of medium from drama to film. Introduced as a song entitled ‘What Is a Youth?’ in the film’s diegesis, the ‘love theme’ is a popular tune that has since been covered extensively in various versions and arrangements. However, despite the name attributed to the cue, the ‘love theme’ does not only represent the titular characters’ passion, but also the result of such love: their deaths. By considering the function of the ‘love theme’ in relation to both notions of love and death, this article argues that the soundtrack is crucial in supporting Zeffirelli’s interpretation, not only in terms of creating an emotional landscape for the film, but also on a wider level in consolidating and translating the ideas of Shakespearean tragedy.
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Audio-visual moiré patterns: Phasing in Guy Sherwin’s Optical Sound films
More LessAbstractBritish experimental film-maker Guy Sherwin’s Optical Sound films from the 1970s explore the corporeal correspondence between sound and image through a transposition of the optical soundtrack into the visual images presented on-screen. These films are fundamentally a series of experiments investigating not only the relationship between sound and image, but also the essence and materiality of film itself. Sherwin asserts that his Optical Sound films have three discernible influences on them: the rigorous structuralism of the London Filmmaker’s Co-operative of the 1970s, the idea of aural/visual equivalence and Steve Reich’s contemporaneous musical experiments with sound phasing. Bearing this assertion in mind, this article intends to explore how Sherwin’s films, such as Phase Loop (Sherwin, 1971, 2007), subvert conventional notions of sound and synchronization in the film form from the vantage point of structural/materialist film theory. Further to this, it will also consider the influence of Reich’s use of phasing, looping and his stress on the importance of process in the structuring of material in order to assess the effects of perceptual shifts as extended to the audio-visual experience by Sherwin.
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