StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Nobody downloaded yet

Evolution on Film Sound - Dissertation Example

Summary
This paper 'Evolution on Film Sound' tells that the evolution of film sound is analyzed from a historical perspective aims to understand if the technology being developed in certain periods of our history influenced the audio-visual relationship or if there was already a need for sound to be incorporated into the moving images…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER97.6% of users find it useful

Extract of sample "Evolution on Film Sound"

Download file to see previous pages

The synchronized sound came to motion pictures in the mid-1920 when engineers in Germany and the United States demonstrated a few systems. In these systems, the sound from a disc was mechanically matched with the film. This method was soon replaced by one in which the sound was recorded on the film. The sound-on-film system is still in use. The most thoroughly and self-consciously “diegetic” understanding of sound representation, however, emerged in the late 1930s, unsurprisingly in contact with the cinema.

The collaboration between Prokofiev and Eisenstein on the latter's Alexander Nevsky (1938) prompted the composer to re-imagine musical recording along with the model of Eisenstein's visual techniques. Prokofiev argued for a recording strategy that combined different sonic “angles” and “scales” to create a whole that was as fully penetrated by the microphone in its conception as Eisenstein's visible world was by the camera. For the most part, Prokofiev's “narration” of the music consisted of “unnaturally” foregrounding particular instruments by placing microphones very close to them or recording different sections of the orchestra in different studios, producing effects the composer likened to standing the orchestra on its head During recording, Prokofiev stood in the mixing booth rather than on the podium, overseeing the performance through the mediation of the recording apparatus rather than the mediation of the concert hall.

Indeed, for the composer, the piece was as inconceivable without recording as Eisenstein's films were without the camera. Neither considered representation a process of bringing an external device to bear upon an otherwise complete performance, but instead imagined staging, performance, inscription, and editing as inseparably united aspects of the same integrated vision. So radical a rethinking was this (although so unobtrusive sounding) that even the ostensibly more radical sound theories of the Soviet filmmakers give it little attention.

Nor did it have much of an effect in more purely theoretical realms. The reduction of a complex system of representational practices to a single act of mechanical recording or inscription is characteristic of nearly all representational technologies and derives from an understanding of representation as an act of mechanical perception. 

...Download file to see next pages Read More
Download file to see previous pages

The mechanical nature of the devices, and the uncannily precise effects of nonhuman technological recording, so thoroughly crystallized the novelty and epistemological uncertainties embodied by the new media that it is hardly surprising that the camera's “click” and the microphone's passive “listening” came to stand for the totality of the process. Even if the preternaturally present images and sounds of the new media suggested a world where machines could perceive and preserve a world that produces its own record, the varied practices of image and sound representation within particular institutional settings and under specific representational demands proved again and again that even the single image or recording implies a broad range of different possible stories of production.

The most convincing “Arizona” landscape might be shot in Brooklyn and require framing out Coney Island attractions, and the most “faithful” recording of a Caruso might require him at times to sing like an amateur. As Marey proved in one way and Edison in another, technological representation is never a case of simply seeing or hearing, but of looking and listening. We look and listen for things, for specific purposes, while the machine's “more perfect” eyes and ears simply absorb indiscriminately.

Whether recording muscle contractions for a study of human physiology, or an aria for the most demanding audience, it is not possible to separate the performance from the processes of inscription, nor neither from the conditions of exhibition. Even the most “objective” recording cannot leave its object untouched, for the very goal of objectivity touches the core of that which we wish to record, and the techniques we use to record it. While the “coming of sound” may seem a particularly clear-cut instance of adapting a well-defined technology to a similarly stable aesthetic form, such is decidedly not the case.

Not only were both technology and representational form in flux, but each helped to define or constitute the other in the process of their mutual interaction. Moreover, the period before the putative coming of sound offers us a glimpse into how two new technologies with sometimes overlapping and sometimes quite distinct histories—namely, cinematography and phonography—could combine to form an integrated sensory experience that was neither audio nor visual, but distinctly audiovisual. However, the proper ratio between the senses—between hearing and seeing—was open to vigorous debate and competing models.

Was the cinema an essentially aural medium, born of the spirit of publicly performed music, to which spectacles of various sorts might be appended, or was it a narrative visual form, to which sound could only be an “accompaniment”? Chapter 2 Literature Review During the early cinema period, especially, we can indirectly witness a confrontation between competing sensory regimes, each one adhering to its own dictates and coexisting at times unpeacefully. The dominant ideal of listening as attentive, sensitive, and receptively passive—as complete and self-contained—confronted the film industry's emerging visual language, and each sense was forced to work with and against the other in a project of audiovisual collaboration.

As the institution of cinema moved more and more firmly toward narrative, sound took its place as an integral, but also over determined, part of the sensory order characteristic of the classical cinema. Sound In 1926 In retrospect, the sonic needs of Hollywood in 1926 seem almost obvious. Who, for example, could ever have doubted the primacy of intelligible, narratively important speech for the classical paradigm? The cinema of narrative integration, long since established, apparently mandated the practices of sound we have come to accept as the norm, as it simultaneously ruled out other approaches.

David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, for instance, assert that “sound as sound … was inserted into the already-constituted system of the Classical Hollywood style,” that “the centrality of speech became a guide for innovation in sound recording,” and that the use of character-centered leitmotivs indicates how even musical accompaniment had become a fully integrated component of a narrative unity.

...Download file to see next pages Read More

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Evolution on Film Sound

Evolution of Cinema in Nineteenth Century

Luckily, 19th century was the era when the cinema brought the combination of sound as well as visual scenes together with the help of Kodak still cameras and Thomas Edison'... It will not be incorrect to state that film ultimately became a way to gain money.... evolution of Cinema in Nineteenth Century The aim of this paper is to carefully analyze the ways in which the cinema evolved from the popular forms of visually-based entertainment.... Furthermore, in order to understand the ways that helped the evolution of cinema, an in-depth discussion will be undertaken....
3 Pages (750 words) Essay

Evolutions in China Film Industry

China's film industry is one the fastest –growing movie market in the entire universe.... Advanced technology is the last two decades has greatly enhanced China's film making in greater ways.... The film industry is a dynamic sector, compelling various film industries in different countries to adopt the most recent technologies to remain relevant as far as audience satisfactions are concerned (Blythe, 2008).... This discourse is about the changes or improvements in the China's film industry, as a result of advancements of technology in the last two decades....
9 Pages (2250 words) Essay

Modern Science Fiction Films

The author describes the features of science fiction films which form a particularly useful body of film industry through which to examine the socio-cultural matrix dealing with super-weapons for three reasons.... Science fiction films are consciously didactic.... ... ... ... Caught in contradictory assumptions about ourselves and history, viewers feel helpless to act....
10 Pages (2500 words) Term Paper

Narrative, Screen and Space in Film Influence a Viewers Interpretation

New and traditional methods in filmmaking, photography and art, and advances in sound are given appropriate discussion.... From the paper "Narrative, Screen and Space in film Influence a Viewers Interpretation" it is clear that in the popular TV series 24 starring Kiefer Sutherland, the juxtaposition of the scenes allows the viewer to interpret the events and circumstances as they unfold on the screen at the same time.... In this essay, I will explore ideas of film form, and themes of Time Code, Drowning by Numbers, early Soviet cinema and the silent films, and the TV series 24....
23 Pages (5750 words) Coursework

Chicano Studies: Latino Narrative Films

At the initial stage, Latin American film direction and productions were basically aimed at receiving affiliation from the mainstream Hollywood film industry.... However, from the 1930s onwards a change was observed in the Latin American film industry and initiation of the change occurred especially among Brazilian film directors.... For a time period of almost two decades, a cultural struggle within the Brazilian film industry was gradually becoming conspicuous and it was mainly reflecting a desperate quest among the filmmakers to develop their own identity, going beyond the realm of oppression that they encountered due to Western cultural acculturation....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

The Invention of the Film and Its Insights

While the features of a sound are straightforwardly affected by the space in which it is contained, the recognition of an image can only be understood as time passes by (Awan, Schneider and Till, 2011).... The image, which is mobile, is the means through which space and time are inherently combined by means of motion, image, and sound.... From the paper "The Invention of the film and Its Insights" it is clear that when analyzing a movie critically, consideration of the filming techniques is very essential....
20 Pages (5000 words) Essay

Equality, Race and Disability in Films

In order to evaluate the usage of the philosophy of Levinas and Irigaray in both films, it is much important to understand the stories and the characters of the film.... Following is the background of the actual plots of the films:The plot of the film has been set during the Civil Rights era which is the period of the early 1960s.... The film revolves around the story of a white woman who automatically creates a strong bond of sisterhood with the black maids....
12 Pages (3000 words) Essay

American Silent Film

This paper 'American Silent Film" focuses on the fact that a silent film is made up of motion pictures combined together, but with no synchronized recorded sound.... This was after the introduction of a synchronized dialogue in films which involved recorded sound.... The silent film was popular in America during the 1920s.... However, the popularity of American silent film came to an end in 1929.... Pierce says that 'the silent film had an unparalleled capacity to draw an audience inside it, probably because it demanded the audience use its imagination' (21)....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us