Research: Sound - Mrs. Quinlan

What is sound and why is it important to use in films?

Sounds can be displayed in many different forms such as: sound effects, music and dialogue these are the things you hear and controls your feelings. It can make the audience feel emotional, happy or even scared depending on how you use it. Also sound (music) could reflect the unspoken feelings of the character. The sounds start and end the scenes and this shows continuity as people do not get bored, the sound fills in the gaps during a performance. Having good sound in the film will mean having much more audience as having a bad sound will mean that it will detract from its success. As we all know the effect of a sudden sound can leave that moment in your ears, as then it will leave in the audiences ears as well because they are waiting for the moment when something similar happens and scares them.

What is diegetic and non-diegetic sound?

• Diegetic sound: diegetic sound is any sound which is presented as created from source within the film world, e.g. sound which have been made by the objects in the story, voice of characters, music from the radio or jukebox. The sound can be on or off the screen in times, so you may see it on screen or you may not.
• Non-diegetic sound: Non-diegetic sound is given as coming from the source outside the story space, as this is not a part of the film world. These sounds can be e.g. narrator’s comment, sounds which have been added to make a dramatic effect on the audience and sound tracts. As you cannot see where this is coming from, but this does make sense to the film world.

Contrapuntal and Parallel sound:

Parallel sounds are sounds match with the image that is give, so let's say there is a emotional scene when we add the emotional sounds it will turn into parallel sounds. As the effect on the audience will grow because there emotions don't only come out with seeing a scene that it emotional if the sound is mixed with it then there will be a better effect left on them. As this will leave them the effect of talking about that scene to the person that they might have watched it with. As we see in this trailer the sounds around the end is parallel to the images that is presented by the characters.

Contrapuntal sounds are sounds which does not easily match the image, as they do not go along with what is show on screen or even run against them. This can have a confusing effect on the audience as they maybe not waiting for that to come, as the audience will also question what they are seeing in that scene because of the confusion. I'm not sure but in this trailer at the start i thought that the sound that they have used at the start of the trailer did not match the scene because they are explaining that they are happy to there mum but a children song came up out of nowhere as these kind of sounds would be in a pixel film not a horror typed film.

Conclusion:

The research I have done for sound has helped me a lot to understand how in some parts of the scenes have confused me till this time when I watch a movie but now by knowing what contrapuntal sounds is I will understand what is going on and when this appears in a different film I won’t question what’s happening. It also has helped me to know where the sounds that isn’t shown comes from and why as these micro-elements will help me in my thriller scene in Media As, on how I could use sounds and where it will be coming from and if they could see it or not. I will be using contrapuntal sounds so it can confuse the audience, as mystery is very good in a thriller film as a sound, so they can question what is happening.