Sound
Sound is used extensively in filmmaking to enhance presentation, and is distinguished into diegetic and non-diegetic sound:
- Diegetic sound: It is sound that the characters can hear as well as the audience, and usually implies a reaction from the character. Also called "literal sound" or "actual sound":
- Voices of characters;
- Sounds made by objects in the story, e.g. heart beats of a person
- Source music, represented as coming from instruments in the story space.
- Basic sound effects, e.g. dog barking, car passing; as it is in the scene
- Music coming from reproduction devices such as record players, radios, tape players etc.
- Non-diegetic sound: It is sound which is represented as coming from a source outside the story space, i.e. its source is neither visible on the screen, nor has been implied to be present in the action. Also called "non-literal sound" or "commentary sound":
- Narrator's commentary;
- Voice of God;
- Sound effect which is added for dramatic effect;
- Mood music; and
- Film Score
- Non-diegetic sound plays a significant role in creating the atmosphere and mood within a film.
- Very commonly diegetic shift occurs from one to the other, for example when characters are listening to music, then start dancing and the music becomes non-diegetic to indicate being 'lost in the moment'.
Read more about this topic: Cinematic Techniques
Famous quotes containing the word sound:
“Every now and then, when you’re on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It’s a sound you can’t get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live.”
—Shelley Winters (b. 1922)
“The mastery of one’s phonemes may be compared to the violinist’s mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor’s renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”
—W.V. Quine (b. 1908)
“It’s precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)