LAM CH. 9

The transition to sound began in 1927

Sound Crew: The group that physically generates and controls a movie's sound, manipulating its properties to produce the effects that the director desires.

Sound production consists of 4 phases: design, recording, editing, and mixing.

Sound design is the planning process of sounds in films

Sound Design: a state-of-the-art concept, pioneered by director Francis Ford Coppola and film editor Walter Murch, combining the crafts of sound editing and mixing and involving both theoretical and practical issues

Before sound design was widely accepted, the responsibilities for sound were divided among. Recording, rerecording, editing, mixing, and sound-effects crews; these crews sometimes overlapped but often not

Boom: A pole-like mechanical device used to position the microphone outside the camera frame but as possible to speaking actors

The recording of production sound is the responsibility of the production sound mixer and a team of assistants

Double-system recording: The standard technique of recording film sound on a medium separate from the picture. This technique allows for both maximum quality control of the medium and the many aspects of manipulating sound during postproduction editing, mixing, and synchronization.

The editor is responsible for the overall process of editing and for the sound crew

Foley sound: A sound belonging to a special category of sound effects, invented in the 1930's by Jack Foley, a sound technician at Universal Studios. Technicians known as Foley artists create these sounds in specially equipped studios, where they use a variety of props and other equipment to simulate sounds such as footsteps in the mud, jingling car keys, or cutlery hitting a plate

Dailies (or rushes): Usually, synchronized picture/sound work prints of a day's shooting that can be studied by the director, editor, and other crew members before the next day's shooting begins

Outtakes: Material that is not used in either the rough cut or the final cut, but is nevertheless cataloged and saved

Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR): Also known as looping. A postproduction process that is used to replace dialogue compromised by intrusive sounds or other new dialogue in a recording studio while watching looped (repeating) footage of the moment in question.

Mixing: The process of adjusting relative volume of multiple sound tracks, and then combining those tracks onto one composite sound track that is synchronous with the picture

Pitch (or level): The level of a sound, which is defined by its frequency. Pitch is described as either high or low

Frequency (or speed): The speed with which a sound is produced (the number of sounds waves produced per second). The speed of sound remains fairly constant when it passes through air, but it varies in different media and in the same medium at different temperatures

Loudness (or volume or intensity): The volume or intensity of a sound, which is defined by its amplitude. Loudness is described as either loud or soft

Amplitude: The degree of motion of air (or other medium) within a sound wave. The greater the amplitude of the sound wave, the harder it strikes the eardrum, and thus the louder the sound

Quality: When referring to sound, also known as timbre, texture, or color. The complexity of a sound, which is defined by its harmonic content. Describe as simple or complex, quality is the characteristic that distinguishes a sound from others of the same pitch and loudness. In lighting, quality refers to the degree to which light is diffused between the source and the subject, and its effect on the interplay between illumination and shadow

Harmonic content: The wavelengths that make up a sound

Fidelity: The faithfulness or unfaithfulness of a sound to its source

Diegetic sounds: Sound that originates from a source within a film's world

Nondiegetic sounds: Sound the originates from a source outside a film's world

On-screen sound: A form of diegetic sound that emanates from a source that we both see and hear. On-screen sound may be internal or external

Offscreen sound: A form of sound, either diegetic or nondiegetic, that derives from a source we do not see. When diegetic, it consists of sound effects, music, or vocals that emanate from the world of the story. When nondiegetic, it takes the form of a musical score or narration by someone who is not a character in the story

Simultaneous sound: Sound that is diegetic and is presented to the audience at the same time as the corresponding image

Nonsimultaneous sound: Sound that has previously been established in the movie and replays for some narrative or expressive purpose. Nonsimultaneous sounds often occur when a character has a mental flashback to an earlier sound that identifies a place, event, or other significant element of the narrative

Asynchronous sound: Sound that intentionally exploits a discrepancy between a presented sound and the images and action on screen

Internal sound: A form of diegetic sound in which we hear the thoughts of a character we see on-screen but other characters cannot hear them

Interior monologue: A variation on the mental, subjective point of view of an individual character that allows us to see the character and hear his or her thoughts in their own voice, even though the character's lips don't move

External sound: A form of diegetic that comes from a place within the world of the story, which we and the characters in the scene hear but do not see

Types of sounds that filmmakers can include in their sound tracks fall into four categories: 1. Vocal sounds (dialogue and narration), 2. environmental sounds (ambient sound, sound effects, and Foley sounds), 3. Music, and 4. Silence

Vocal sounds

Dialogue: The lip-synchronous speech of characters who are either visible on-screen or speaking offscreen, say from another part of the room that is not visible or from an adjacent room

Narration: The act of telling the story of the film. The primary source of a movie's narration is the camera, which narrates the story by showing us the events of the narrative on-screen. When the word narration is used to refer more narrowly to spoken narration, the reference is to the commentary spoken by either an offscreen or on-screen voice. When that commentary is not spoken by one of the characters in the movie, it is omniscient narration; when spoken by a character within the movie, it is first-person narration

Environmental Sounds

Ambient sound: Sound that seems to the viewer to emanate from the ambience (background) of the setting or environment being filmed. Ambient sound is almost always added or enhanced during postproduction

Sound effects: A sound artificially created for the sound track that has a definite function in telling the story

Foley sounds: A sound belonging to a special category of sound effects, invented in the 1930s by Jack Foley, a sound technician at Universal Studios. Technicians known as Foley artists created these sounds in specially equipped studios, where they use a variety of props and other equipment to simulate sounds such as footsteps in the mud, jingling car keys, or cutlery hitting a plate.

Music

Music is used in many distinct ways in the movie, but the many focus in this chapter was the kind of music that Royal S. Brown, an expert on the subject, describes as "dramatically motivated…music composed more often than not by practitioners specializing in the art to interact specifically with the diverse facets of the filmic medium, particularly the narrative."

Silence

Silence has that function when the filmmaker deliberately suppresses the vocal, environmental, or musical sounds that we expect in a movie

Audience's expectations

Sounds create expectations for the audience since normally we know when we hear soft elegant music with a couple we know something romantic might happen

Rhythm 

Sound can add rhythm to a scene, whether it's accompanying or juxtaposed against movement on the screen

Montage: Another term for editing, from the French verb monter ("to assemble or put together"). Montage may also function as a noun to refer generally to an edited assembly of images or sounds

Characterization

All types of sound---dialogue, sound effects, music---can function as part of characterization

Continuity

Sound can link one shot to the next, indicating that the scene has not changed in either time or space.

Overlapping sound: Also known as a sound bridge. Sound that carries over from one shot to the next before the sound of the second shot begins

Emphasis

A sound can create emphasis in any scene: it can function as a punctuation mark when it accentuates and strengthens the visual image

The 1930s was the first decade of sound in film