Sound and Music - what are their purposes in an audiovisual project?
During week 2, we discussed in class the roles and purposes of Music and sound, in audiovisual products, from cinematography, to advertising, theatre, music videos and animations. Music and sound convey emotions, emphasizes actions, enhance the visuals, explain what emotions characters are experiencing in that particular moment or scene. However, these are only the most common; music and sound affect us, as an audience, in many deep ways, which we might not always be aware of.
Below is a short summary of the main purposes of sound design which we discussed in class. Sound design:
- gives the action purpose, excuses the actions, grants permissions (scene can become problematic and hard for the audience to decode if there is no sound).
- enhance both camera movements and diegetic actions in the scene (an example of this can be the opening scene of Baby Driver (2017) where the fast actions of cars chasing is enhanced by the music. (link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs )
- conveys emotions and arouse passions, for example through rhythm, timbre, pitch, volume. It is also important to note that "emotions" are strong feelings deriving from mood; therefore we can have an emotional response in relation to the mood or vibe of a film, play, song, or video. Mood is an "objectiveless temporary effect of state", a reaction to something, a visual or sonic stimulus for example; it can be personal or more general and it can create an emotional response in the audience without them knowing why (this is also due to "misattribution", which can mess with audience emotionally: we usually misattribute what we are feeling to the visual elements in the scene, whereas more often it is instead the music that has created that state and emotional response in us).
- exaggerate things, for example by adding comic relief, or by simply amplifying the sounds of an action to evoke a funny or happy emotional response in the audience (this can happen for example in animated movies). Personally, I really enjoy this technique, I also used it in assignment 2.1 as I believe it can make any type of content more informal, accessible and evoke strong positive reactions in the audience.
- synchronise, map visuals and authenticating images (this can be the case of Foley sounds, recorded and added in post-production. However, through synchresis, we tend to believe those sounds are actually diegetic, happening in real time in the world of the scene.
- music gives structure, form, temporal and spatial flow to the scene, and affects our perception of these elements.
- add texture to the actions in the scene, (for example adding sounds to show what materials an object is made of, add pitch to characters' voices; emphasize fights through creating sounds of punch, kicks, footsteps, and adding speed, pitch, panning to contextualize and authenticate what is happening).
- can give momentum, emphasise specific actions or give the idea of movement to static images (when including various post-production sound effects like: pitch, doppler effect, surround, reverb, panning, EQ).
- guide the listener through an emotional journey. I believe a good example for this is Emiliana Torrini's "Gollum Song" (2002). Every time I listen to it, it gives me goose bumps, so deep, piercing and melancholic.
- create, control and drive suspence, engagement, attention, anxiety for what is going to happen, tention and then final release, or also enhance the feeling of fear something frightening that has just happened in the scene.
- raises emotional memory (for example if we've heard those sounds before under different circumstances or conditions, when we hear them again we tend to associated those sounds to what we remember of them and how we felt, and this raises our emotional memory.
- Music can also help the audience to establish their position, POA (point of audition) and POV (point of view), and understand if they are actively or passively involved in the scene. This involves both in-frame sounds as well as out of the frame sonic elements, which are technically not part of the scene as we can see anything that's producing those sounds, but we can still hear them, and most of the times they help us understand the location and spatial information of the scene and the world outside the frame. Sound can give idea of what is withing the frame, shown in the screen, what can be heard from outside the frame, even though cant be seen in the scene through camera shots and movements. All this helps to expand the screen space; in fact, another important factor in sound design is the so called Umwelt (from German "Umwelt" which means "environment surroundings"). This refers to any environmental factors, conditions or changes that may be involved of affect the audience's understanding of the scene (this can refer both to the scene of the real world around us; it can also includes our personal perspective).
Design Strategies
The outcomes stated above are only some of the things we can convey to the audience through sound design for audiovisual products. However, in order to successfully achieve these goals and guide the audience through an emotional experience, there are some design strategies we can use to make our things clearer.
A good way to start creating sounds for a new audiovisual product, is to find visual affordances (both within and outside the frame) that can help find out a starting point from which we can create sound and music suitable to that specific action, movement, character or scene. Therefore we will then be able to create a sound design suitable to the ambience and environment.
When creating soundtracks, we can decide whether to align them structurally to the visuals, locking and aligning sound to the visuals without including any particular emotional meaning (for example we can use this strategy when creating diegetic sounds that explain spatial information, such as the location. This is purely informative, the only purpose is to explain to the audience where the action will take place). This technique is called suture. The opposite strategy is anchorage, which links sound to visuals with the purpose of evoking an emotional emotions, for example through a piece of music as a background to a dialogue, which helps us to better understand the mood of the scene and the emotions the characters are feeling).
We can also maximize dynamic range and contrastive valence (by exaggerating and the contrast between to opposites in the same scene, such as real and surreal).
Cosmic indifference, is a strategies used to emphasize that the previous scene was particularly dramatic and tragic, by making the following one completely indifferent to what has just happened previously. In a way, comic relief is a way to emphasize cosmic indifference as well. It is used when something tragic is happening, and at the end we hear or see things going on as nothing tragic happened before (this could be everyday life actions, after a particularly dramatic moment). an example of this could be "Spiderman 2", in which Peter Parker has lost his powers, but still tries to jump over a building; he falls down and hurts his back very badly, and to support himself while getting up and walking out of the carpark, he supports himself to the boot of a car, and the car alarm starts ringing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIU-blBfMa0 ).
We also discussed in class that, in Dead Set, after the zombie attack, a woman dies on the floor near a water tank, and as she falls, her head touches the water station, and we can hear the sound of water pouring out of the tank.
Other common strategies to enhance the possibilities of sound and music are:
- amplifying/exaggerating pitch, when we want to draw particular attention to and stress specific words or expressions in a dialogue.
- negative space (in which muffled sounds are used to emphasise harsh actions. like car crashes, accidents, fires, earthquakes....). This contributes to dynamic range in the scene. In many of his films, Francis Ford Coppola, uses music not during a scene, but after scene to emphasisze what just happened, giving audience chance to deepen the feeling of what just happen, open up permission to unlock feelings felt during action.
- time related to pitch ( when things in the scene are slowing down, the sounds as well are low-pitch, deactivated and slow).
- MSI (high MSI sounds indicate energetic, crisp, articulate actions, whereas low MSI amphasise dreamy, surreal, abstract situations).
WEEK 3: MAGI PROJECT OFFERS
As a starting point for Assignment 3, I got in contact with a MAGI student to further discuss her ideas and what kind of animation she wanted to create. Her idea is to create an animated videogame, with the style of old arcade games; her main inspiration is pixel-art, so she wants the sound design to reflect those references as much as possible. The project is still in a developing phase, the animator has provided to me only short GIFs and character design, however I already have some sound ideas I would like to explore further with my animation-partner. As the game is set in London, during the Victorian era, we both believe that it would be cool to play classical music pieces through digital media (like synthesizers and MIDI). This emphasizes the pixel-art style of the visuals, while giving and interesting vibe of19th century England.
The animator has asked for both diegetic sounds as well as a background music track; she also owns an otomatone, so it would be definitely interesting to further explore this idea and create something using this instrument as well.
Otomatones below
REFERENCES:
- Jack Pierce (2018). THE POWER OF MUSIC IN FILM - How music affects film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSkJFs7myn0 (accessed 18th March 2023)
- Rotten Tomatoes Coming Soon (2018). Baby Driver Opening Scene (2017) | Movieclips Coming Soon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs (accessed 18th March 2023)
- Siderman 2 (2004). Sam Raimi. Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Releasing.
- Dead Set (2008) Yann Demange. Charlie Brooker
- TopMovieClips (2018). Peter Parker "I'm Back! My Back!'' (Scene) - Spider-Man 2 (2004) Movie CLIP HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIU-blBfMa0 (accessed 17th March 2023)
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