For November 13 class read the following essay by Walter Murch, available on-line: “Dense Clarity Clear Density.”
Murch is a cinema sound innovator, “giant” in the industry, founding member of American Zoetrope, writes and speaks on the subject extremely well. Recommended: “The Conversation” a film that was Murch’s idea and edited by him, a very sound specific film.
The following two books are fundamental reading material on the subject of audio in relation to time-based images.
For extra credit: write a two-three page paper responding to one the texts—for example, choose a particular idea, theory or history presented in the either of the books or in Murch’s essay and address its meaning and its application in your work.
--Sound Theory, Sound Practice, Rick Altman, Routledge. A collection of essays about sound/audio primarily in cinema but very interesting and relevant to time-based art.
Amazon available.
--Audio-Vision, Michel Chion, Columbia University Press, 1994. Chion is a French scholar of audio in cinema, this book has been a “bible” on the subject for years.
Forward is by Walter Murch. Amazon available.
Terminology:
Synchronized sound is “matched” to the image; non-synch sound is not matched to the image.
Diegetic Sound:
Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film: voices of characters or sounds made by objects in the story or music represented as coming from instruments in the story space ( = source music)
Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film's world
Digetic sound can be either on screen or off screen depending on whatever its source is within the frame or outside the frame.
(Diegesis is a Greek word for "recounted story.")
Non-diegetic Sound
Sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action: narrator's commentary or sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect or “mood” music
Non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from a source outside story space.
The distinction between diegetic or non-diegetic sound depends on our understanding of the conventions of film viewing and listening. We know of that certain sounds are represented as coming from the story world, while others are represented as coming from outside the space of the story events. A play with diegetic and non-diegetic conventions can be used to create ambiguity (horror), or to surprise the audience (comedy).
Synchresis
Synchresis is the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis
The possibility of reassociation of image and sound is fundamental to the making of filmsound. For a single face on the screen there are dozens of allowable voices - just as, for a shot of a hammer, anyone of hundreds of sounds will do. The sound of an ax chopping wood, played exactly in sync with a bat hitting a baseball, will "read" as a particularly forceful hit rather than a mistake by the filmmakers
When we expect sound - a character walking for example - synchresis are unstoppable and the filmmaker can use about any sound effects for these footsteps.
