Chapter 7: Sound

Chapter Overview

The point of Chapter Seven is to make clear that film sound is, as the first paragraph says, “as expressive as any of the other . . . elements of cinematic form.” Like mise-en-scène and cinematography, film sound is not merely taken “as is” when the camera starts rolling.  Nearly every aspect of film sound is as deliberately planned and controlled as the film’s lighting, set, and camera setups. 

If you take away nothing else from Chapter Seven, make sure that you have read the section “Functions of Film Sound,” which starts on page 298, and can articulate in your own words all the various roles that film sound plays in the shaping of our experience of movies. The sections that precede this one provide lots of very important terminology and concepts, but this section gives the fundamental gist.

In order to talk or write about the sound in any particular film, you will need to know and be able to use the key terms that are presented in the chapter. These include terms that help you describe a sound’s perceptual characteristics and the various types of sound in any shot or scene. There’s really no alternative to simply memorizing the key terms that describe sound characteristics and types.

Any serious study of a film’s sound must include a description of the sources of film sound. Arguably, a description of sources of various sounds in a shot or scene is much more important than cataloguing the types or describing their qualities. Make sure you fully understand the distinctions and relationships among the three pairs of descriptive terms for the source of a particular film sound: diegetic or non-diegetic, onscreen or offscreen, and internal or external sound. The section on this very important topic begins on page 281, and Table 7.2 provides a helpful shorthand review tool.