GLOSSARY

concomitance, audiovisual A situation of simultaneous perception of sounds and

images, which may or may not intentional!y give rise to effects. This term, which

literal!y designates the simultaneous occurrence of two facts or phenomena,

seems to me to be the most neutral designation for what is frequently called the

"audiovisual relationship," a phrase that necessarily implies a conscious intention

of meaning, perception, contrast, or encounter. Such an intention could be pres-

ent in an audiovisual concomitance but is not necessary for effects to be produced

al! the same.

See synchresis, vertical relationships.

consistency Descriptive term to designate "the degree of interaction of different

audio elements (voices, music, noise). They may combine to form a general texture

or, on the contrary, each may be heard separately, legibly" (Chion, Audio-Vision,

189). For technical reasons-the presence of considerable background noise, mono

recording, the use of the same equipment for recording al! categories of sounds-

there is a highly consistent general texture in many of the first sound films. This is

also true in later classic cinema, but for aesthetic reasons (the preference for conti-

nuity and fusion). Since the 1970S and Dolby, film has sought rather to detach

sounds from one another, both technical!y and aesthetical!y, though there are

some notable exceptions, such as Blade Runner, with its very "fused" sound.

contradiction (between the said and the shown) The name of one of the five rela-

tionships between the said and the shown wherein what the voice-over narrator

says is belied by what we see, which supposedly shows things as they real!y hap-

pened (e.g., Robbe-Gril!et's I.:Homme qui ment, 1968). This contradiction of the

said by the shown often makes for comedy: a character talks tough, while the im-

age called forth by the iconogenic voice shows him as a coward or a fool.

See contrast, counterpoint, c/omission, scansion.

contrast (between the said and the shown) One of the five relationships between

the said and the shown; it occurs when what the characters say contrasts with what

they do or are going to do, without necessarily being the opposite. For example, a

man and woman speak of trivial matters while kissing languorously (Rear

Window).

See contradiction, counterpoint, c/omission, scansion.

counterpoint (between the said and the shown) One of the five relationships be-

tween the said and the shown, wherein what the characters say and do, or what

they say and what goes on around them, proceed in parallel, the actions not punc-

tuating the utterances, and without any particular contrast or contradiction.

See contradiction, contrasi, c/omission, scansion.

de-acousmatization Term (with a deliberate double negation) to designate the pro-

cess whereby an acousmétre visually materializes into the frame to become an

anacousrnétre, i.e., a discrete body in visual space. This transformation is usually

473

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GLOSSARY

accompanied by a loss of powers-of panoptic sight, omniscience, omnipotence,

and omnipresence that were formerly attributed to the acousmétre=unless, as in

the case of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the de-acousmatization process reveals,

.behind the curtain that hid the source of the voice, a technical apparatus that in-

definitely defers the reconstitution of the anacousmétre.

In coining a negative formulation of what may seem Iike the positive process of

revelation and completion, 1mea n to remind the reader that something is lost (the

powers Iinked to the privileged acousrnatic status) but also that what is constituted

is not a full entity but a split being, audio-divided between voice and body, sound

and image-thus revealing itself as something that can never be wholly complete

or sewn up again.

See acousmaton, acousmatization, acousmatic, acousmétre, anacousmétre, audio-division, offscreen.

Debureau effect A character has been silent or mute in a film; his or her voice has

not yet been heard; when the character does speak, the revelation of his or her

voice produces an effect of surprise, disappointment, contrast. The name 1 have

given to this effect alludes to the true story of the famous mime retold in ChildrenofParadise. The Debureau effect is used for comic purposes in Singin' in the Rain,when the silent star Lina Lamont's unglamorous voice is heard.

decentered narration Describes the situation where what a voice-over narrates do es

not exactly account for what we see, and even offers a different version of things, at

variance with what's unfolding on the screen. Sometimes, as in Badlands and

Days of Heaven, this narration is in the hands of a secondary character (an ac-

quaintance or companion of the protagonists) who does not grasp the seriousness

of what is happening; sometimes it can result from the narrator's total exteriority as

a heterodiegetic storyteller, not a character in the story at all, who does not see

what is happening onscreen and instead follows a path independent from the

film's action; think of the montage with [oseph Cotten wearing different outfits at

the beginning ofThe Magnificent Ambersons.See iconogenic voice, nondiegetic (voice-over).

découpage Scene-construction, the ordering and sequencing of shots for a scene or

sequence. The term emphasizes the conceptual planning of a scene's shooting

and editing, while its counterpart, montage, in French stress es the postproduction

process of editing.-Trans.

diegetic sound Sound whose apparent source is in the space-time continuum of the

scene onscreen. Diegetic sound is sound that the filmleads us to believe the char-

acters can (or could) hear. Screen music is diegetic music.-Trans.

See nondiegetic sound, pit music, screen music.discordance The effect caused by brief or prolonged superimposition of pit music

and screen music when they're not in the same key and clash with each other. An

GLOSSARY

example occurs in The French Connection when Jimmy Doyle (Gene Hackman)

and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are waiting outside in the street while the dealers

they're tailing are having lunch in a fashionable restaurant. The crosscutting be-

tween the cops outside and the bad guys inside is accompanied by a strident non-

diegetic cue, but the portions of the sequence inside the restaurant also have di-

egetic piano lounge music that clashes discordantly with Don Ellis's scoring.

Similar effects occur in Godard's Every Man [or Himself and Minghella's TheEnglish Patient.A subtle variant: someone delicately plays diegetic piano music that is slightly

off when heard with the nondiegetic scoring. Two examples are Harrison Ford's

piano playing in Blade Runner and Adam Sandler's trying out a tune on a harmo-

nium in Punch-Drunk Love.The extravagant, pitiful picnic thrown by Kane and Susan toward the end of

Ciiizen Kane is different because the blues performed by the hired band is deliber-

ately discordant and rhythmically loose, and the singer who repeats "It can't be

love" is a bit out of synch with the players; what results is a kind of parodie musical

chaos that echo es Susan's decidedly weak opera performances elsewhere in the

film.

dissonance, audiovisual Effect of diegetic contradiction between a distinct sound

and a distinct image or between a realist sound ambience and the framework in

which one hears it. For example, in Fírst Name: Carmen (1984) Godard pairs the

cries of seagulls and ocean surf with a night shot of the Austerlitz bridge in Paris.

Patrick Schulmann's comedy fantasy Rendez-moi ma peau (1980) swaps the voicesof the hero and heroine. Think al so of the dissonant pairing of a loud, rough voice

with a delicate, small body in several cartoons by Tex Avery, including The CatThat Hated People, in which a kitten roars vehemently. When the contradiction

hinges on size, what results is not so much dissonance as monstrosity.

Dissonance strikes me as a more apt term than the common-and prol:ilematic-

counierpoini, which in music refers to the superimposition of melodic Iines. Note

that the effect of audiovisual dissonance is almost always limited to situations that

are highly coded rhetorically: gender opposition, contrast between voice and body,

and rural versus urban in the Godard example. Other oppositions include nature/

culture in Padre Padrone and historical past vs. science fiction future with "The

Blue Danube" waltz in 2001. Dissonance can be difficult to achieve because of the

spectator's easy acceptance of many sounds as realistic when they're associated

with images and also because of the power of the psychophysiological process of

synchresis that effortlessly fuses together what she or he hears and sees.

effect See audio-visiogenic effects; added value, anempathetic effect, Debureau effect,empaiheiic effect, "keep singing" effect, masking effect, on-the-air sound, Shiningeffect, visítíng-room effect, X-27 effect.

475

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•IR•••

lJ7 GLOSSARY

elements of auditory setting (EAS) In audiovisual scenography this term refers, in

opposition to ambient sounds that are continuous and prolonged, to sounds that

are momentary, isolated, and intermittent and that help to construct and populate

a given space with distinct and localized touches: the distant bark of a dog, the

ring of an office telephone. In keeping with the principIe of overdetermination

found at all levels of film language, an EAS, at the same time it identifies a place,

can also provide an effect of extension if it is far off (a spatial audio-visiogenic ef-

fect), contribute to a scene's scansion, give emphasis to a line of dialogue, interact

with a character's glance (audio-visiogenic effects of phrasing), and so on.

EASs and ambient sounds contribute to differentiating settings of scenes, in

conjunction (or not) with visual and rhythmic details.

See ambient sound, extension, audiovisual phrasing, scansion.

emanation speech The type of dialogue that exists as a sort of secretion of the

characters, an aspect of their way of being, an element of their profile. It does

not contribute to advance the film's story, nor does it govern découpage (the or-

dering of shots), having little to do with the scene's divisions and strong mo-

ments; the order of shots proceeds according to a logic that is independent of ema-

nation speech.

Emanation speech is often only partially intelligible, but it can appear in other

forms as well. In the work of FeJlini or Tarkovsky the words are comprehensible,

yet they are not reinforced by the découpage (shot scale, framing, order) or by de-

tails of acting. The result is a style that can be caJled verbo-decentric and voco-

decentric.

Emanation speech makes spoken words into just one expression among others

in the sensory world, via choices in the découpage that decenter attention from the

dialogue instead of reinforcing it (Tarkovsky, FeJlini) or by using various distanc-ing techniques for the dialogue text, such as degrees of uninteJligibility or polyglot

mixtures of language (Tati, Iosseliani, Ophuls, and sometimes Visconti). In no

wa)', however, contrary to what is often written, does this mean that the words

spoken are mere noise or that they have no significance.

See textual speech, theatrical speech, verbo-decentric.

embedded listening Refers to those situations where a character in a film listens to a

sound recording (with or without images) on a tape recorder, editing console, or

other playback medium-thus foregrounding the spectator's own experience in

the movie theater. This act of embedded listening reactivates a time and space that

is other than the space-tirne inhabited by the character/s, and as such can prompt

a flashback that's not a flashback, a sort of reactualization accompanied (or not) by

images and visualization. Examples include scenes from La Dolce vita, La Notte,

The Conversation, The Double Life of Véronique, and [acques Doillon's La Purit-

aine (1986).

GLOSSARY

empathetic effect The effect created by music that is or seems to be in harrnony

with the emotional climate of a scene: drarnatic, tragic, melancholic, etc. The op-

posite of the anempathetic effect.The empathetic effect might not arise from the music considered on its own

but may arise entirely from the particular relation created between the music and

the rest of the scene.

See anempathetic effect.extension Audio-visiogenic effect concerning the degree to which a scene's diegetic

space is relatively confined or stretches out into depth and width; this construction

of scenic space is aided by ambient sounds and elements of auditory setting

(EAS) in conjunction with the visual field. The degree of extension aids in consti-

tuting the aucliovisual frame that serves as the scene's geographic, human, and

natural space. Consider, for example, the case where the setting of a scene is lim-

ited to an interior space from which the camera rarely or never strays (Rear Win-dow, AMan Escaped, Panic Room). In these films the extension will be restrictedwhen the sounds heard are limited to those produced within the enclosed space;

it will be broader if we hear offscreen sounds from a neighbor's lancling or apart-

ment; and broader still if street noises are present; and even broacler if we hear

clistant noise, such as a harbor foghorn or train whistle. These decisions are up

to the director, souncl eclitor, and sound mixer and are generally made accord-

ing to the expressive requirements of the scene. Whatever choices are made are

sure to be acceptecl as "natural" by the spectator, but they will contribute to shap-

ing what she or he sees from moment to moment within a reality whose dimen-

sions have greater or les ser reach, ancl they will help coorclinate one moment in

the action with another accorcling to the formal, dramatic, emotional, and narra-

tive objectives.

See offscreen.external logic See logic.fixing of sounds More commonly callecl recording, fixing of sounds is the term I

prefer to apply to all processes that serve to capture existing sounds (a concert per-

formance, everyday events, historical events) but al so, during shooting, to produce

sounds specifically intended to be inscribed on the material recording medium.

The fixing of sounds not only revolutionized music; it also revolutionized cinema

from the moment a system of synchronization between the motion picture camera

ancl the phonographic recorcling was introclucecl. This synchronization necessi-

tated the standarclization of the filming ancl projection rate and thus made cinema

a chronographic art. Starting in 1927 this gave rise to what I like to call an audio-lego-visual synchrono-cinematograph, a new genre more commonly known by the

name sound film.See chronographic arto

GLOSSARY

Foleyed cinema Movies whose pleasure derives from the fact that their sound effects

aren't disguised and recal! the play of children who make sound effects with their

mouths to go with toy planes, trucks, or cars. A prime example is the Star Warsseries, with its noises of weapons and spacecraft. Another is all the noises that ac-

company camera movements and zooms in many action films.

fundamental noise The continuous and undifferentiated sound into which symboli-

cally all the other sounds of the film can fall or dissolve; the sound into which

everything in a given film tends to be reabsorbed and pacified; either by covering

over all other sounds at a given moment or by revealing itself as the background

noise we hear when all the other noises fall silent or return to it. A film's funda-

mental noise (which always has "cornplex mass" to use Schaeffer's term, i.e., no

precise pitch) is often both a metaphor for the noise of the movie projector and a

metaphor for the background noise of life. It is a metaphor of equalizaiion, in that

it creates the feeling that all the film's sensations and feelings will become lost

in it, "like tears in rain" (see chap. 26).

See complex mass.horizontal relations Those aspects of the audiovisual relationship that are horizon-

tal-as opposed to vertical-are those that involve the perception of sounds and

images in evolution and movement in time, based on the notion that each element

be considered in its temporal development, particularly with regard to any tempo-ral vectorization to which it might give rise.

See temporal vectorization, iemporalization, vertical relations.iconogenic voice A voice that seems to conjure up the images that then "illustrate"

(with greater' or lesser fidelity-even contradicting) the words spoken. This effect is

not limited to voice-overs; it can be bestowed on a character on the screen when

he or she names a place, a person, etc. and the film moves immediately to another

time or place to show what has been named ..

iconogenic voice, contradicted The "illustration" conjured up by the iconogenic

voice can show something that contradicts what was said, and the effect is often

comic (as in Singin' in the Rain). But not always: in Hiroshima mOI1amour the [apa-nese lover repeats, "You saw nothing at Hiroshima," yet these affirmations are

paired with images of the horror at Hiroshima.

See 110niconogenic.in-the-wings effect This effect is created in Dolby multitrack by a sound in "abso-

lute offscreen" space, which is positioned in the real physical space of the movie

theater to the left or right side of the screen and goes on long enough to create the

impression that the screen has a contiguous space, like the wings of a theater

sfage. This effect, which was very noticeable in some of the early Dolby stereo

films, particularly in France (Choice of Arms), would be reined in much more

carefully soon afterward. Exhibitors learned to avoid installing the theater speak-

G LOSSARY 479

ers too far fram the screen, and in the sound mixing, greater care was taken to •

avoid having an overly long sound effect in the audio setting or entering sounds 11I(such as the sound of a-car heard before it appears onscreen). Interestingly, the in-

the-wings effect made an overt and systematic return in the 1990S in films such asMother and Son and in a number of different genres, notably horror.

See acousmaton, offscreen sound. •

internal logic See logic.

internal sound Sounds heard or imagined by a single character and that we assume

cannot be heard by any other characters who may be present.

We can distinguish two types: objective internal sounds (a character's own

breathing or heartbeat) and subjective internal sounds (mental voices, aural mem-

ories, and imaginary conversatioris, as in Psycho).

It is characteristic of objective internal sounds that we have no precise indica-

tion whether they are in fact being heard by other characters as well. In TheElephant Man, for exarnple, does Dr. Treves hear as loudly as we the nervous

breathing of the Elephant Man under his hooded mask? This example of the un-

certain extent of the auditory field that leads to problems of distinguishing internal

from externa], real world frorn subjective world, is one of cinerna's defining

features.

See auditory compartmentalization.

iterative sounds (Pierre Schaeffer, 1967) Sound characterized by the rapid repeti-

tion ofbrief, distinct sounds ("impulses") that form a sort of dotted line of sound.

I-voice A type of vocal presence in a film or video-generally but not necessarily a

voice-over narrator-when he or she speaks with maximum proximity to the specta-

tor's ear (this impression created by certain audio properties: close miking, absence

of reverb in the voice). Indeed, a voice prolonged by reverb is likely to be "perceived

as a body anchored in space," whereas the I-voice that resonates to the spectator like

his or her own voice "must be its own space unto itself" (Chion, The Voice in Cin-ema, 51). The I-voice generally lacks materializing sound indices (breathing noises,

mouth sounds) that would suggest a material body to genera te it.

"keep singing" effect When a piece of diegetic music-often a song-seems to have

the power to momentarily hold evil or chaos at bay, as a kind of spell or charm.

Examples include the song sung by Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter, the

children's singing in school in The Birds, Lalo Schifrin's piercing music before the

chase in Bullitt, and the bull scene in Ken Russell's Women in Love. The name for

this effect comes from a line in Women in Love.

logic (external/internal) External logíc of an audiovisual sequence is that which

foregrounds effects of discontinuity and rupture, as external interventions with

respect to the represented content. Editing, in cutting the flow of an image or

sound, and other kinds of breaks, abrupt changes in speed, etc., are frequent in

••••••

80 GLOSSARY

films organized according to external logic, and these features are attributable to

choices in mise-en-scene and decisions regarding narration.

Internal logic of audiovisual sequencing is a way of crafting the sequence of

images and sounds to appear as though they partake in a continuous organic pro-

cess of development, variation, and growth, which arises naturally out of the narra-

tive situation and the sounds it inspires.

Countless film sequences alternate between these two logics, for reasons of

rhythm and phrasing among other motives, since this alternation gives to editing

the same variety and expressive suppleness as music, with its ability to pass be-

tween legato (linked) and staccato (detached).

masking The masking effect occurs when one sound disrupts our hearing of an-

other, or when the impression is created that were the sound not there, we would

hear another one suggested by the image but not heard. The masking effect allows

for the creation of phantom sounds and sensory phantoms, and also enables certain

sounds to function as fundamental noise. Every sound has the potential of mask-

ing another.

See fundamental noise, phantom sound, sensory phantom.

materializing sound indices (MSI) Aspects of a sound that make palpable the mate-

riality of its source and of the concrete conditions of its emission. The MSI can

suggest the sound source's solidity, airiness, liquidness, or another material consis-

tency, as well as accidents or flaws in the process of the sound's production. A

sound can have a greater or lesser presen~e of MSIs, to the point of none at al!.

See rendering.

narrative indeterminacy (of acousmatic sound) Most of the time, a sound on its own

gives only weak or imprecise information, or none at all, as to its cause. This fact

enables a sound that is not visually identified to create acousmatic enigmas and

audio puzzles. Moreover, very different events or causes can create similar or even

identical sounds. Narrative indeterminacy is therefore not solely attributable to our

limited ability to decipher sounds (an ability that varies with education and experi-

ence) but al so to the conditions in which the sounds were produced; i.e., by spe-

cific events, which themselves affect the objects fhat "cause" them, and not by the

objects themselves; sounds do not depict the objects that produce them. In a forest

the creaking of tree trunks as they move in the wind or rub against other trees can

sound surprisingly similar to the creaking of a harnmock: and the sound of one

can very well be used to dub the other.

See acousmatic, causallistening.

nondiegetic sound In the audiovisual relation, sound whose apparent source is not

the space-time of the scene depicted onscreen. The most frequently encountered

examples of nondiegetic sounds are voice-over narrators or commentators and

GLOSSARY

musical accompaniment. Nondiegetic music is here called pit music. Nondiegeticsounds are acousmatic.-Trans.

See diegetic sound, pit music, screen music.nondiscontinuity A neologism with a deliberate double negative (as in de-acousmati-zation) that designates the establishment of an impression of continuity (of time, of

action, of perception) achieved by means of its interruption or its interrnittence,

especially regarding sounds.

See X-27 effect, Shining effect.noniconogenic (voice or narration) oniconogenic describes the situation where a

film character is telling a story and we are shown only the storyteller and his or her

audience, and no other images intervene to "illustrate" or follow up on the narration,

even though the cinema offers this possibility and tends to make abundant use of it.

The noniconogenic narration oft~n occurs at a filrn's "mornent of truth," or relates to

a foundational scene for the characters, and is transmitted thraugh language alone.

See iconogenic voice, textual speech,offscreen sound In the audiovisual relation, and according to the specific use I've

introduced, this term describes sounds (voices, sound effects, etc.) whose source is

not visible on the screen at the same time but that supposedly exist in the space

and time of the scene. Examples would be the voice of a diegetic character who is

speaking fram outside the frame and who is Iistened to by an interlocutor on-

screen, or noises of the street outside the raom where a scene is taking place.

On one hand, we may speak of mental offscreen sound when we recognize a

sound we hear only mentally or logically as offscreen, as its source is absent fram

the image, when in fact its source is the same loudspeaker as the sounds that are

onscreen or nondiegetic: this is what happens in monaural film. On the other

hand, we may speak of real offscreen sound (or absolute offscreen sound) when

the sound is truly acoustically heard emanating fram a speaker situated outside

the borders of the screen, when its fictional source is supposed to be situated "in

the wings" of the screen space. The latter be comes possible with Dolby stereo and

all other multichannel systems.

See acousmatic, onscreen, díegetíc, nondíegetíc.active offscreen sound. Those offscreen (i.e., acousmatic and diegetic) sounds

that, by their nature or by their relation to characters, elicit reactions from the

characters or the spectator's expectation to find out the source of these sounds. For

exarnple, a noise of a scuffle coming from the ceiling, signaling new neighbors, in

The Lady Vaníshes and Visconti's Conversatíon Píece. In the découpage of a scene,

active offscreen sound often leads to a follow-up shot that will answer the questionit raises or relay it to yet another question.

See acousmatíc.

481

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