The third joke in the scene occurs as Tati, hearing the man
to achieve a maximum of control over their sound design.
but unable to see him, keeps trying to get up, assuming
In Tati’s masterpiece, Playtime (1967), he playfully
that he must be close given the loudness of his steps.
distorts standard sound perspective. Early in the film,
The doorman, however, who can look down the hallway,
the main character, Mr. Hulot (played by Tati himself),
keeps gesturing for Hulot to stay seated.
is trying to keep an appointment with an official named
This scene is composed of a single shot, and the
Mr. Giffard. When Hulot tries to meet the official, he is
three distinct jokes that occur in it are based on Tati’s
instructed by the building’s doorman to wait beside a
playful manipulation of the sound space– image space
bank of elevators while Mr. Giffard is paged. Hulot waits
relation. In this case, sound perspective is an unreliable
patiently, framed at screen left, while, onscreen right, a
indicator of visual space and of the physical relations
vast, receding hallway extends into the distance. Hulot
in the scene. It illustrates the cinema’s transformational
is seated around the edge of the wall, however, so he
property, its ability to alter and play with perceptual
cannot look down this hallway. But the viewer can.
realities in ways that viewers readily accept. The cinema
As Hulot waits, loud footsteps occur off-screen.
records and transforms audiovisual information, and
Because of their loud volume, the viewer assumes the
filmmakers are constantly negotiating the creative pos-
person these feet belong to must be very near. In the next
sibilities of these functions. ■
PLAYTIME (1967)
Director Jacques Tati
satirizes sound perspec-
tive by making it an
unreliable indicator of
visual space. The sound
of Mr. Giffard’s foot-
steps remains extremely
loud and distinct de-
spite his changing loca-
tion in a long hallway.
Frame enlargement.
Pointing out this feature of Under the Roofs of Paris does not imply that René Clair is an inferior filmmaker. Clair, in fact, was one of the most important early practitioners of sound and a filmmaker whose career straddled the silent and sound periods. He devised many inventive gags in his films where the humor depends on a particular manipulation of sound. Moreover, his work was a decided influence on the U.S. master Charlie Chaplin. Clair’s film, À Nous la Liberté (1931), was the 222
Principles of Sound Design
inspiration for Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). The point here is to emphasize that these codes of sound design are learned applications of style that filmmakers gradually discovered as a way of creating credible audiovisual relationships on screen. The design differences between an early film like Under the Roofs of Paris and more contemporary films shows the development and maturation of sound aesthetics.
SOUND BRIDGES Sound may be connected to a source on screen or disconnected from an on-screen source. In the latter instance, the sound-producing source is off-camera. It is source-disconnected sound because, though viewers hear the sound, they cannot see its source. In any given scene, sound designers employ both categories.
Source-connected sound occurs if viewers see Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans (1993) tell a British officer that he will not serve in the English army. If, by contrast, the camera stays on the British officer while Hawkeye speaks off-screen, the sound is source-disconnected.
Switching between on-screen and off-screen sound gives filmmakers enormous
flexibility in the editing of their films. Not everything that is heard needs to be shown.
This frees the camera from being a slave to dialogue or other sounds and enables it to reveal aspects of the scene independently of what viewers hear on the soundtrack. All a filmmaker need do is return periodically to source- connected sound in order to sustain the viewer’s sense of the important audiovisual relationships. Filmmakers often
“cheat” in the editing of dialogue scenes by using reaction shots of a character’s face taken from other points in the scene or film. The editing encourages viewers to read the expression as a reaction to the immediate dialogue, which is heard off-camera.
Filmmakers use sound to establish continuity across shots by alternating between on-screen and off-screen sound. Because sound gives images a clear direction and orientation in time—with sound, film images clearly move forward—sound can establish continuity of time across the shot changes in a scene. This often occurs through the use of a sound bridge in which dialogue or effects carry over, or bridge, two or more shots, unifying them in time and/or space. Sound bridges are one of the most powerful and important ways of creating continuity in film. In Glory (1989), Col. Robert Shaw (Matthew Broderick) must tell his African-American regiment that the War Department has ordered that black soldiers in the Union army will receive less pay than their white counterparts. As Shaw speaks, the editor cuts to reaction shots of the black soldiers, showing their dismay at this insulting decree. Shaw continues to speak off-screen during these shots, establishing the sound bridge and creating continuity among the shots.
The sound information tells viewers that all the shots, which show completely different groups of characters, are part of a common space and within a single moment of time.
In the early German sound film The Blue Angel (1930), as the schoolmaster (played by Emil Jannings) removes his handkerchief to blow his nose, the action cuts to a reaction shot of the schoolboys. While looking at them, viewers hear the sound of Jannings blowing his nose. The editing switches from source-connected to source-disconnected sound. Sound flows over the cut, establishing a continuity that links up the different images. In dialogue scenes using the shot-reverse-shot technique, passages of spoken dialogue will flow over the cuts to establish continuity across the shot changes.
In contemporary films, filmmakers often employ a modified sound bridge in
which the switch to source-disconnected sound occurs before the cut rather than after it. In other words, the sound cut precedes the visual transition. In Mike Nichols’s The Graduate (1967), a striking sequence expresses the social and emotional alienation of the young hero, Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman), when he dons a scuba suit 223
Principles of Sound Design
GLORY (COLUMBIA TRI-STAR, 1989)
The voice of Col. Robert Shaw (Matthew
Broderick) provides the sound bridge
unifying these reaction shots of
African-American soldiers. The sound
bridge connects the space and time
of these shots, which contain almost
no visual elements in common. Frame
enlargements.
and seeks refuge at the bottom of his parents’ swimming pool. The camera films him alone and isolated in the depths of the pool. As the camera tracks slowly away from him, viewers hear sound from the next scene (which occurs in a phone booth) for 13
seconds before the image cuts to that scene. It is Benjamin talking on the telephone to invite Mrs. Robinson, the family friend, to meet him at a local hotel.
The sound of Benjamin on the phone, asynchronous with the shot of him in the pool, technically violates the time and space of the pool scene, but viewers accept the sound editing as a novel, interesting, and offbeat way of signaling the transition to the 224
Principles of Sound Design
THE GRADUATE (AVCO-EMBASSY, 1967)
A creative noncorrespondence between ima
ge and sound in The Graduate . The sound bridge to the next scene begins well before the end of the final shot in this, the previous scene. As the camera pulls away from Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) in the swimming pool, viewers hear him talking on the telephone in the next scene. Frame enlargement.
next scene. When The Graduate was released in 1967, this was an innovative way of making the transition, but it has become a fairly standard technique today.
OFF-SCREEN SOUND Just as the distinction between source-connected and source-disconnected sound is relevant for understanding principles of sound continuity, it also helps to explain how sound can extend the viewer’s perception of visual space.
Off-screen sound is part of the dramatic action of a scene, but its source is off-camera.
This kind of sound enlarges the coordinates of the world represented on screen. That world is not coextensive with the images on screen. Instead, through sound information, it extends into an indefinite, acoustically defined area of off-screen space.
Filmmakers quickly grasped the creative possibilities. Produced only a few years into the sound era, Fritz Lang’s classic M (1931) brilliantly uses off-screen sound to signal the lurking, unseen presence of a serial killer. The murderer compulsively whistles the theme from the Peer Gynt suite, and his rapid, repetitive whistling occurs off-camera in many scenes throughout the film as a means of building suspense, anxiety, and mystery. As a little girl looks in a store window and then runs down the street, the off-screen whistling conveys his stalking presence and desperate hunger for a new victim. Lang had quickly grasped the power of sound to fire the audience’s imagination. The unseen, conveyed through sound, is far more frightening than how the killer proves to look when the camera finally shows him. This sonic extension of the frame into off-screen space would become an essential technique in horror films in which monsters lurk just out of sight.
The famous ending of All Quiet on the Western Front (1931) shows the hero—a German soldier in the trenches of World War I—killed by a sniper as he reaches tenderly for a butterfly that has alighted on the fields of carnage. In close-up, the viewer sees the hero’s hands reaching for the butterfly and then hears an off-screen gunshot and sees the hands drop lifelessly to the ground. At this moment, the ambient (and off-screen) sounds of battle cease, as the soundtrack deadens to convey the hero’s passing.
The distinction between diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound can provide a useful way of thinking about relationships between sound-producing sources and the story world represented on screen. Diegetic sound originates within the story world, 225
Principles of Sound Design
M (1931)
Director Fritz Lang’s classic film
vividly demonstrated the power of
off-screen sound space. The whistled
leitmotif of the serial killer (Peter
Lorre) suggests his lurking pres-
ence as he stalks his victims from
off-screen. Here, frustrated in his
hunt, he pauses by a store window.
Rows of knives reflected in the glass
encircle his body, suggesting that
he is a prisoner of his lethal desires.
Frame enlargement.
and can include sources, like character dialogue or sound effects, that are on-screen as well as off-screen. Diegetic sound can be heard by characters in the story. Nondiegetic sound originates outside of the story world, and a good example is movie music. If a character plays music within a scene from a radio or a phonograph, that’s diegetic sound. When the music is provided by the score composed for the film, that’s non-diegetic sound. The terms are helpful in describing situations where the distinctions to be drawn about the use of sound involve being inside or outside of the story world rather than on-screen or off-screen.
SOUND MONTAGE Contemporary multitrack sound design is based on montage, the editing of sounds into highly intricate and complex patterns that create meaning and ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN
FRONT (UNIVERSAL, 1931)
As the hero (Lew Ayres) reaches
tenderly for a butterfly, a sniper’s
bullet, fired off-screen, abruptly
ends his life. To simulate his pass-
ing, the soundtrack goes dead,
all ambient noise ceasing. Frame
enlargement.
226
Principles of Sound Design
APOCALYPSE NOW
(UNITED ARTISTS,
1979)
The beginning of
Apocalypse Now shows
Captain Willard (Martin
Sheen) in a Saigon ho-
tel room. A complex
sound montage replaces
Saigon’s city sounds with
jungle sounds to suggest
Willard’s desire to return
to the jungle. Frame
enlargement.
emotion. Apocalypse Now (1979) features an exceptionally creative sound montage during the opening scene as Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) lies on his bed in a Saigon hotel. Willard longs to be back in the jungle where he can safely satisfy his violent appetites in combat and by working as a paid assassin. As he lies in the hotel, Willard imagines himself in the jungle. The soundtrack carries an audio representation of this inner fantasy. Sound designer Walter Murch systematically replaced city sounds with a series of jungle sounds. Urban noises—a policeman’s whistle, the engines of cars and motorcycles—give way on the soundtrack to the squawk of jungle birds, the buzzing of insects, and the cries of monkeys. Murch pointed out that these sound manipulations convey the idea that, although Willard’s body is in Saigon, his mind is in the jungle.
Visual montages arrange shots to express meanings not contained in any single shot taken in isolation. This scene from Apocalypse Now uses the same principle, transposed to sound. The total arrangement of sounds expresses the reality of Willard’s fantasy in a way that the individual sounds, taken in isolation, cannot.
The multi-channel systems used for playback in theater auditoriums and con-
sumer home video have accentuated the montage structure of contemporary sound design. By spatializing sound—sending discrete elements to different speakers positioned about the viewer—multi-channel playback emphasizes the richness and density of sound montages. The expanded dynamic range provided by digital sound has enabled filmmakers to construct ever more complex audio montages and has helped make this an essential feature of contemporary sound aesthetics.
SUMMARY
Though moviegoers may not be explicitly aware of sound design, its contribution to film cannot be overstated. The next time you watch a favorite movie, turn off the sound and see how impoverished the pictures become. Without sound, a movie loses much of its emotional impact.
Sound design works with the three types of sound—dialogue, music, and effects.
Dialogue in film tends to be either voice-over narration or character speech. Sound effects are created using Foley techniques or more elaborate electronic manipulations as part of a comprehensive sound design. Music in film tends to be composed within a late 227
Principles of Sound Design
romantic style, whose musical conventions and range of coloring are familiar to most moviegoers. Movie music helps set the locale and atmosphere of time and place in the story, adds psychological and emotional meaning to a scene, provides background filler, establishes continuity, and calls attention to climaxes and conclusions of scenes.
Sound design creates a complex audio environment to accompany film images,
establishing dynamic audiovisual relationships and shaping in subtle and almost subliminal ways the viewer’s interpretation of those images. Sound design is orderly and rule-based, following a set of basic codes, some of which establish perceptual correspondences with the viewer’s real-world audio experience.
Dialogue, music, and effects are controlled to establish a hierarchy of sound relationships with dialogue being given primary impo
rtance. Direct, reflected, and ambient sound levels are carefully related to camera position to create sound perspective.
Editors alternate between establishing on-screen and off-screen sound–image relations to keep camera perspective flexible and to maintain continuity. Sound editing establishes continuity across cuts, primarily by allowing sound to flow over the cut, as in the use of sound bridges. Sound is also used to prepare viewers for visual transitions, as when a sound cut precedes a visual cut, and to establish off-screen space that extends the viewer’s physical sense of the image. Finally, sound montages may establish intellectual and emotional associations that go beyond the content of the images.
KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS
ADR
non-diegetic sound
sound design
ambient sound
off-screen sound
(designer)
cue sheet
postdub
sound field
dialogue
production
sound perspective
diegetic sound
track
speech
direct sound
realistic sound
spotting
effects
reflected sound
synthetic sound
Foley technique
room tone
temp track
leitmotif
soundstage
voice-over
music
sound bridge
narration
SUGGESTED READINGS
Rick Altman, ed., Sound Theory/Sound Practice (New York: Routledge, 1992).
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision , ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992).
Fred Karlin, Listening to Movies: The Film Lover’s Guide to Film Music (New York: Schirner Books, 1994).
Sarah Kozloff, Overhearing Film Dialogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Vincent LoBrutto, Sound-on-Film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994).
Michael Schelle, The Score: Interviews with Film Composers (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1999).
Movies and Meaning- Pearson New International Edition Page 36
