Working with ImagesSound and Performance Expanded

Practice

Chion, M (1994). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press.

The Moving Pictures Show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLy89wMH_zU

The Two Tars (1928)

Research Context

• Festivals: Pordenone Silent Film Festival; Avignon/New York Film Festival; San Francisco Silent Film Festival

• Score collections: Museum of Modern Art; National Library of Australia; Birmingham Library

• Researchers in the Field: Altman (1996, 2004); Boller (1992); Cohen (2001); Deutsch (2007); Marks, (1997)

www.screensoundjournal.org

• Music functions as a form of mediation between film and older dramatic traditions; between spectator and circumstances of projection; between living spectator and ‘ghostliness’ of projection.

• Gorbman, C. (1987). Unheard melodies: Narrative film music. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; and London: BFI Publishing

Recognisable Music

• Music can directly express its participation in the feeling of the scene, by taking on the scene’s rhythm, tone, and phrasing... music participates n cultural codes for things like sadness, happiness, and movement.

• Chion, M. (1994). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press: New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUSEgi3I2w

What’ll I do? Irving Berlin

Light Cavalry OvertureFranz Von

Suppé

Juxtaposition of Music

• The juxtaposition of scene with indifferent music has the effect not of freezing emotion but rather of intensifying it (Chion, 1994).

Lon Chaney in the Phantom

• And then he’d row, row, row. Way up the river he would row, row, row. A hug he’d give her then he’d kiss her now and then, She would tell him when, They’d fool around and fool around and then they’d kiss again and then he’d row, row, row. A little further he would go oh, oh, oh, oh! Then he’d drop both his oars, take a few more encores and then he’d row, row, row.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzKEWKc_Wc

Music to Illustrate Mood

Aural Perception of Time and Speed

• Sound perception and visual perception have their own average pace by their very nature; basically, the ear analyses, processes, and synthesises faster than the eye (Chion, 1994).

The Use of Leitmotifs

The Role of Improvisation

• Helps create a relatively seamless accompaniment to a film

• Allows a moment by moment adaption of the music

• Allows more flexibility when there are quick changes of mood

The Role of Silence

• The impression of silence in a film scene does not simply come from an absence of noise. It can only be produced as a result of context and preparation... it is the negative of sound we have heard beforehand; it is the product of a contrast (Chion, 1994).

From Instructions for Films. http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index.php?cat=2&subCat=docdetail&id=31

References

• Altman, R. (2004). Silent film sound, New York: Columbia University Press.

• Altman, R. (1996). The silence of the silents, The Musical Quaterly, 80(4), 648-718.

• Boller, P. F. (1992). Memoirs of an obscure professor and other essays, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press.

• Chion, M (1994). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press.

• Cohen, A. J. (2001). Music as a source of emotion in film, in Juslin, P. N. and Sloboda, J. (eds). Handbook of Music and Emotion, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Deutsch, S. (2007). The soundtrack (putting music in its place), The Soundtrack, 1(1), 3-13.

• Gorbman, C. (1987). Unheard melodies: Narrative film music, Bloominton & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press; and London: BFI Publishing.

• Marks, M. M. (1997). Music and the silent film: Contexts and case studies, 1895-1924, New York: Oxford University Press.