Sound

I first would like to point out that this article was difficult to read and stay focused on. Although the topic was interesting, the language was jack full of complicated vocabulary that kept taking me out of the piece because I had to keep rereading sentences to try and figure out exactly what the writer was talking about. That aside I agree with most of the arguments in this paper. Sound, to me, is what creates the magic of the film world. In the silent era, I feel that movies were somewhat of a spectacle. They were fun to watch, especially since this technology was unprecedented, but I do not believe these films had the ability to take viewers away into another world as do films that are created with sound. I did learn something from reading this, I was not aware that sound was the reason that a standard projection rate came into existence. One thing he talked about that I never thought of before was the example of the news reporter and the air show. What the reporter said, here we have three small planes, was what the viewers, undoubtedly focused their attention on. This concept could be useful for me if I ever make anything film with narration. This blatant technique of focusing the audience’s attention on what ever it is that you want them to see would be great to use along side shots that are full of many visually stimulating images. The film Playtime by Jack Tati comes to my mind here. The news reporter example also made me think of how easily the opinions and attention of the general public are swayed just by the things modern news reporters speak about everyday. The writer’s concept of empathetic vs. anempathetic music is something I feel as if I had always been aware of, but never thought about specifically. We are all used to the whirlwind of happy instruments that accompany, for example, a reunion scene is many films. Most of the time this music is nondiegetic, and although it does greatly aid the mood of such an even, for me, it usually takes away from the realness of the story. Realness is not always a goal in a film, but I think that when it is anempathetic music works much better. Like the writer points out, it creates a sort of blank slate for the action to occur. This in turn, makes the viewer more involved with the film itself, because rather then being cued on what he or she is supposed to feel, they have to figure it out for themselves, reasoning from the action taking place. Then again I’m really into films that inspire active viewing. For this purpose anempathetic music works really well, but then again, if the film maker is trying to make something soley for entertainment this might not work as well. I was a little confused about what the article said about sound and temporalization of images. I understand how the randomness of sound, as well as the tempo of the moving images can animate or create a sort of pace of a film, but I’m not sure that the conditions written here are always true. A low irritating hum, in my opinion, can create just as much tension in a scene as a bunch of crazy high pitched string instruments. The examples of the sounds in various horror movies creating a vivid picture without actually showing the violence is actually one of my favorite film technique. For this reason I usually prefer older horror films to the new gory ones that have come out over the last five years. I strongly believe a viewers imagination, prompted by extreme sounds and some sort of storyline, is much more vivid then any blood and gore filmmakers can create on screen. I’m not saying cut all of the stuff out of every film, but I think it would be great if sometimes modern horror films would leave some of this stuff to our imaginations.