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:
“An old pond—
a frog tumbles in—
the sound of water.”
—Matsuo Basho (1644–1694)
“This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense in practice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable limits of destiny and the tyranny of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half hour, seem to the sleeper to have been protracted for three weeks or a month.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)