Film Sound Design - Film Sound Theory

G L O S S A R I E S:
Queen´s Film studies	Dolby Laboratories, Inc.	Mix Magazine
Sound perspective Balance Microphones	Film Sound Glossary	Larry Blake’s Film Sound Glossary

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's Terminology

(They use mostly musical terms)

Acoustic properties:

Loudness
- sound volume

Pitch
- the perceived "highness" or "lowness" of the sound

Timbre
- a sounds "color" or tone quality

Dimensions of Film Sound:

Rhythm
- sound's rhythmic qualities

Fidelity
- sound faithful to its source

Space
- sound's spatial dimension

Time
- simultaneous and nonsimultaneous sound

"Not a single sound in cinema can be adequately described with musical terminology" Rich Altman criticizes musical terminology

Robert L Mott's Nine Components of Sound

Every sound has its own distinctive wave form.
Nine components must be considered to successfully reproduce or create new sounds.

Musical components: Pitch Timbre Harmonics (overtones) Loudness Rhythm	Sound envelope components: Attack Sustain Decay
Record and playback component: Speed

Michel Chion´s Terminology

Acousmatic sound
- sound one hears without seeing their originating cause

Acousmêtre
- a kind of invisible voice-character with mysterious powers

Added Value
- the expressive and/or informative value with which a sound enriches a image

Audiovisual Contract
- an agreement to forget that sound is coming from loudspeakers and picture from screen

Anempathetic Sound
- music or sound effects that seems to exhibit conspicuous indifference to what is going on in the film's plot

Chronography
- the stabilisation of projection speed made cinema an art of time

Empathetic Sound
- music or sound effects whose mood matches the mood of the action

Extension (of Sound Space)

External logic
- the logic by which the flow of sound includes effects of discontinuity as nondiegetic interventions

Internal logic
- the logic by which the sound flow is apparently born out of the narrative situation itself

Magnetization (spatial)
- "mental pan" of the sound source

Materializing Sound Indices (M. S. I.)
- sonic details that "materialize" the sound source

Rendering
- the use of sounds to convey the feelings or effects associated with the situation on screen

Synchresis
- the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time

Temporalization
- influence of sound on the perception of time in the image

Vococentrism
- the privilige of the voice in audiovisual media

"Chion is a poet in theoretician's clothing" - Claudia Gorbman writes about Michel Chion

Book Review: Michel Chion, Audio-Vision (Escom Newsletters)
- by Nicola Phillips Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge

On-line Articles

Film Sound History ^New

^{on-line
articles, time lines, and books}

Sound Effects in SF and Horror Films

by Fiona Kelleghan

Sound Design of "The Haunting"

Interview with Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom

Sound in Tarkovski's Sacrifice

an interview with Owe Svensson, Swedish Sound Mixer

Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Sound design for a dreamer

by Nick Pasquariello

The Sonic Playground: Hollywood Cinema and its Listeners

- by Gianluca Sergi

Roles of sound - Tomlinson Holman's classification

Sound Design of Star Wars

SOUND of ILLUSIONS - Sound of Moving Images

Designing a Movie for Sound

- sound designer Randy Thom's manifesto

Articles by Randy Thom

Sound Design of The Hunt for Red October

Robert Bresson's Notes on Sound

Lang's M - editing sound as visuals

Blue Velvet - a mixed genre film with horror film sound

The Purpose of Sound effects - Marwin K Kerner's classification of film sound effects

Moving Pictures That Talk - The early history of film sound

Sound recording and the ability to photograph and reproduce motion pictures began intersecting at the very beginning...... In 1891 a Dr. Georges Demeny makes claim to synchronous sound....Even earlier, in 1891, Edison was making inflated claims of achieving synchronous projected sound films....(by Mark Ulano, C.A.S)