Cartographic Soundtrack: Voice, Sound and Music in Birdman

Music Analysis

The Soundtrack, 2009

Keywords multi-channel sound surround sound cinematic narrative spatialisation of sound sources Abstract Throughout its evolution, cinema sound has changed the way we watch and understand films. Initially sound carried little narrative information. Today's multi-channel soundtrack, on the other hand, is able to enlarge the diegetic space and immerse the audience in it. However, it could be argued that the multi-channel soundtrack's potential as a narrative tool has yet to be fully explored. This article reports on our research into the possibilities and limitations of the multi-channel soundtrack as a carrier of large sections of narrative information. We identify three areas of interest: spatialisation of sound sources; surround ambiences with a narrative relevance; and separation of sound streams. A short film has been created exploring these topics and feedback has been elicited from a small audience. We conclude that this potential could be fully unlocked if considerations regarding the surround soundtrack are taken into account in the early stages of production.

Proceedings of the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS), 2017

In the Semiology of Cinema tradition sound was assumed as a particular type of “expression substance” among others, an ingredient of “syncretic” semiotics. From this perspective, films are closed texts made of codes deci­pherable by the spectator (Metz, 1971, 1974), one of which would be the sound code. After the cognitive turn in film theories (Bordwell, 1987; Branigan, 1992; Currie, 1995; Bordwell & Carroll, 1996; Grodal, 1999, 2009, among others), film (and audiovisual) semiotics is interested in accounting for the viewer’s experience. This experience is now understood under the same parameters of real life experience, to the extent that humans use the same skills to understand movies that to deal with reality. Some researchers have devoted part of their theo­ries to the description of sound and hearing experience in cinema from different approaches: ecological (Anderson, 1998; Anderson, Fischer, Bordwell et al, 2007), socio-historical (Altman et al, 1980, 1992, 2001, 2007) “eclectic” (Chion, 1985, 1991, 1998, 2003) or even cognitive – in a broad sense (Jullier, 1995, 2002, 2012). Nevertheless, the bridge between cognitive theories and film semiotics is still weak, particularly when dealing with the multimodal dimensions of spectatorship experience. To address the role of sound in filmic experience with more powerful tools, in this presentation I propose to follow the current trend of cognitive semiotics and its link with phenomenology and cognitive sciences (Sones­son, 2009). First, I will show the insights of philosophy and phenomenology of sound (Ihde, 2007; O’Callaghan, 2007; Nudds, O’Callaghan et al., 2009): the phenomenological description of the auditory field and sound hori­zons, and the idea of conceiving sounds as events in hearing experience. Second, I will present some discoveries of cognitive research from an enactive perspective, about the intersubjective exploration of sound spaces (Krue­ger, 2006, 2000, 200). Third, I will link these ideas with a general description of event perception and concep­tion (Zacks, 2008, 2010: Zacks & et al., 2011), particularly in film comprehension (Zacks, Speer, and Reynolds, 2009; Zacks & Magliano, 2009). Finally, I will integrate all these insights in the context of a new semiotic the­ory: agentive semiotics (Niño, 2013a, 2013b; Niño, 2014, forthcoming). This theory provides precise criteria to distinguish (but also integrate) the experience of "semiotic scenes" (intentional constructions assumed here as a particular type of events) and the experience of the world. Thus I hope to provide a new approach to understand the role of sound in the (multimodal) experience of film spectatorship.

Music and Letters, 2009

2013

This chapter focuses on the role of music in narrative fi lm. Unlike most other sensory information in a fi lm (i.e., the visual scenes, sound effects, dialog, and text), music is typically directed to the audience and not to the characters in the fi lm. Several examples will familiarize the reader with some of the subtleties of fi lm music phenomena. Two aspects of fi lm music are introduced: congruence, which focuses on purely structural aspects, and association, which focuses on the associative meaning of the music. The nature of and interplay between the emotional experience of the audience (referred to as internal semantics) and the external "reality" of the fi lm (referred to as external semantics) are discussed, and an assessment is made as to where music (in particular, fi lm music) resides with respect to these two domains. Because the two dimensions of structure and association are orthogonal to the internal-external semantic dimensions, they defi ne four quadrants for describing the relation between music (structure and associations) and fi lm narrative's internal and external semantics. Finally, the concept of a working narrative (WN) is introduced as the audience's solution to the task of integrating and making sense out of the two sources of information provided in the fi lm situation: sensory information (including the acoustic information of music) as well as information based on experience including a story grammar. The author's congruenceassociation model with the working narrative construct (CAM-WN) accommodates the multimodal context of fi lm, while giving music its place.

Film And Film Culture, Vol. 2, 2003

2020

Today, the importance of sound and music in film is well established and an integral part of professional workflows within the audio-visual production industry. However, Sound and Music Design in film has been explored creatively since the advent of Talkies in the 1920’s. The most well-established practices for the use of sound in film always came from the inspiration of film directors, editors and composers, but in recent years the systematic use of Sound and Music in this media has become increasingly relevant in academic domains, as a subject of study and research. This article proposes a possible direction in addressing challenges presented by this growing academic field, by introducing a process for codifying and systematizing an initial grammar of Sound in Film, entitled the Film Sound Analysis Framework (FSAF). The FSAF is a tool for critical analysis of Sound and Music in Film, that is based on the relationship between Sound Semantics and Syntax from a Taxonomical and Applie...

Visual Communication, 2010

Narrative media music, music used for narrative purposes in multimedia such as film, television or computer games, is becoming one of the largest sources of musical experience in our daily lives. Though typically experienced on an unconscious and unreflected level, this kind of music actively contributes narrative meaning in multimodal interplay with image, speech and sound effects. Often, what we (think we) see is to a large degree determined by what we hear. Using Halliday's (1978) metafunctions of communication as a starting point, two short film scenes (from Jaws and The Secret of My Success) are examined, with a focus on the intermodal relationships of music and image. The examples illustrate how musical and visual expressions combine to form multimodal statements where the whole is certainly different than the sum of the parts.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2010

Music is a multi-parametric construct that operates at an almost subliminal level to support, highlight, complement, or even negate any other aspect of the cinematic experience. Current trends of film scoring reflect a fading interest in the associative dimensions of music; rather, composers now strive to contribute with a phenomenological score. It is primarily through embodiment, a hardwired process grounded in our physiology and cognition, that music functions phenomenologically within lm. Embodiment mediates signification, enabling the music to guide the audience’s attention toward particular visual events, to shape the perception of segmentation at micro- and macro-levels, to trigger a myriad of bodily states, and ultimately to present a unique perspective on the discourse of characters and cinematic narrative. Although most film-scoring techniques have gradually emerged through the intuitive use of music, interdisciplinary strands of scholarship from embodied cognition can be instrumental to examine these techniques from empirical and theoretical perspectives, and thus shed light on the logic that motivates the interaction between music and other facets of the cinematic experience.