Sound design with the goal of immersion is not new. However, sound design for immersive media experiences (IMEs) utilizing spatial audio can still be considered a relatively new area of practice with less well-defined methods requiring a new and still emerging set of skills and tools. There is, at present, a lack of formal literature around the challenges introduced by this relatively new content form and the tools used to create it, and how these may differ from audio production for traditional media. This article, through the use of semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire, looks to explore what audio practitioners view as defining features of IMEs, the challenges in creating audio content for IMEs and how current practices for traditional stereo productions are being adapted for use within 360 interactive soundfields. It also highlights potential direction for future research and technological development and the importance of practitioner involvement in research and development in ensuring future tools and technologies satisfy the current needs.
{"title":"Spatial audio production for immersive media experiences: Perspectives on practice-led approaches to designing immersive audio content","authors":"Daniel Turner, D. Murphy, C. Pike, C. Baume","doi":"10.1386/ts_00017_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00017_1","url":null,"abstract":"Sound design with the goal of immersion is not new. However, sound design for immersive media experiences (IMEs) utilizing spatial audio can still be considered a relatively new area of practice with less well-defined methods requiring a new and still emerging set of skills and tools. There is, at present, a lack of formal literature around the challenges introduced by this relatively new content form and the tools used to create it, and how these may differ from audio production for traditional media. This article, through the use of semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire, looks to explore what audio practitioners view as defining features of IMEs, the challenges in creating audio content for IMEs and how current practices for traditional stereo productions are being adapted for use within 360 interactive soundfields. It also highlights potential direction for future research and technological development and the importance of practitioner involvement in research and development in ensuring future tools and technologies satisfy the current needs.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115268508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Godard revisits in Le mépris (1963) the Hollywood genre of the melodrama which enjoyed a large popularity in the 1950s. For this self-conscious reflection upon the genre of the melodrama, Godard hired Georges Delerue to write the music. Due to the involvement of the powerful mainstream cinema producers Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine, Le mépris grew into a sizeable Hollywood-style production. Under the looking glass of these producers, Godard was expected to abandon his eccentric small-film budget habits and to comply with standard film production procedure. Pertaining to the music (and against his usual modus operandi), he conceived, together with Delerue, a detailed musical concept, spotted the film with Delerue present, integrated each and every cue Delerue composed into the film and respected the placement of the music cues as discussed with the composer. Nevertheless, behind the back of his producers, he was frequently tempted to diverge from the accepted norms and played with audience expectations. He introduced unexpected twists into the placement of the cues, which invite the audio viewer to question the established film music standards. Despite the rigid brief Godard received from his producers, he managed to dissect – with the assistance of Delerue’s lush, Hollywood-style score – the worn-out mechanics of the cinematic apparatus. The over-emphatic, idiomatic and stereotypical symphonic score inspired him to break the illusion of the artificially staged narrative.
{"title":"Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris: Conventional film music in an unconventional guise","authors":"Michael Baumgartner","doi":"10.1386/ts_00014_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00014_1","url":null,"abstract":"Godard revisits in Le mépris (1963) the Hollywood genre of the melodrama which enjoyed a large popularity in the 1950s. For this self-conscious reflection upon the genre of the melodrama, Godard hired Georges Delerue to write the music. Due to the involvement of the powerful mainstream cinema producers Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine, Le mépris grew into a sizeable Hollywood-style production. Under the looking glass of these producers, Godard was expected to abandon his eccentric small-film budget habits and to comply with standard film production procedure. Pertaining to the music (and against his usual modus operandi), he conceived, together with Delerue, a detailed musical concept, spotted the film with Delerue present, integrated each and every cue Delerue composed into the film and respected the placement of the music cues as discussed with the composer. Nevertheless, behind the back of his producers, he was frequently tempted to diverge from the accepted norms and played with audience expectations. He introduced unexpected twists into the placement of the cues, which invite the audio viewer to question the established film music standards. Despite the rigid brief Godard received from his producers, he managed to dissect – with the assistance of Delerue’s lush, Hollywood-style score – the worn-out mechanics of the cinematic apparatus. The over-emphatic, idiomatic and stereotypical symphonic score inspired him to break the illusion of the artificially staged narrative.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134237724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The art of location-based sound recording specifically has been a neglected area of academic research. I seek to address this by drawing critical attention to the intricacies and skills involved in location sound recording within realist filmmaking – both scripted and unscripted. I show how this art continues to be central to the creative process of production, in driving the narrative and shaping the text’s influence, within the pro-filmic space. I hypothesize that the realist sound recordist’s role has an authorial voice and a creative agency. I seek to reimagine and develop an ontological redefinition of location sound recording by proposing that a reinvigoration of the realist genre – unscripted in particular – can be achieved by connecting the storytelling skills in recording for single camera with the new opportunities afforded by the emerging technologies of immersive field sound recording – ambisonics being a vital part of that development. I argue that deploying an ambisonics-centred location sound recording methodology, fused with the existing art of recording actuality sound will offer new creative opportunities for realist makers and audiences, now presented with an exciting ability to experience a sense of the geographical place and physical event that immersive audio delivers.
{"title":"The ‘Truth of Sound’: Exploring the effects of an immersive location sound recording methodology within realist filmmaking","authors":"Steven Whitford","doi":"10.1386/ts_00016_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00016_1","url":null,"abstract":"The art of location-based sound recording specifically has been a neglected area of academic research. I seek to address this by drawing critical attention to the intricacies and skills involved in location sound recording within realist filmmaking – both scripted and unscripted. I show how this art continues to be central to the creative process of production, in driving the narrative and shaping the text’s influence, within the pro-filmic space. I hypothesize that the realist sound recordist’s role has an authorial voice and a creative agency. I seek to reimagine and develop an ontological redefinition of location sound recording by proposing that a reinvigoration of the realist genre – unscripted in particular – can be achieved by connecting the storytelling skills in recording for single camera with the new opportunities afforded by the emerging technologies of immersive field sound recording – ambisonics being a vital part of that development. I argue that deploying an ambisonics-centred location sound recording methodology, fused with the existing art of recording actuality sound will offer new creative opportunities for realist makers and audiences, now presented with an exciting ability to experience a sense of the geographical place and physical event that immersive audio delivers.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127297529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article explores the ways in which the boundaries of cinema are being tested by the transformation of historically formed lip-synching conventions by recent pop music films. While films based on computer-generated imagery rely on the familiar conventions of synchronizing images with the embodied voices of recognizable singer celebrities to regain an impression of corporeality, films created by and starring these same popular musicians choose to forgo this cinematic synchronization aesthetics. This asynchronization is not presented as an interruption within the film, as was often the case in the past, but rather as an alternative to sound cinema’s established vocal conventions of gender and race, as well as its hierarchies of technologies, industries and platforms.
{"title":"Mouthing off: Contesting cinematic synchronization in digital music media","authors":"Tomer Nechushtan","doi":"10.1386/ts_00015_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00015_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores the ways in which the boundaries of cinema are being tested by the transformation of historically formed lip-synching conventions by recent pop music films. While films based on computer-generated imagery rely on the familiar conventions of synchronizing images with the embodied voices of recognizable singer celebrities to regain an impression of corporeality, films created by and starring these same popular musicians choose to forgo this cinematic synchronization aesthetics. This asynchronization is not presented as an interruption within the film, as was often the case in the past, but rather as an alternative to sound cinema’s established vocal conventions of gender and race, as well as its hierarchies of technologies, industries and platforms.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123631382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Len Lye made extraordinary, energetic direct films in the mid-1930s with the help of his sound editors, Jack Ellit and Ernst Meyer. While receiving recognition for his visual animation, the full extent to which Lye broke new audio-visual ground has been underestimated. This article proposes Lye and his collaborators as important pioneers of audio remixing, a musical process generally assumed to have much later origins. His short, hand-painted films including Rainbow Dance (1936) and Trade Tattoo (1937) were constructed using little to no visual editing, while their soundtracks were substantially cut and pasted. These soundtracks were painstakingly constructed from pre-existing musical recordings, re-arranged into bespoke instrumentals. This significant audio-visual accomplishment has remained largely unnoticed, despite predating experiments in audio manipulation by better-known composers. This article brings these considerable audio-visual innovations to the fore, and highlights the important relationship between dance music and Lye’s avant-garde filmmaking.
{"title":"Rainbow remixes: Cut and paste sound in the films of Len Lye","authors":"Suzy Mangion","doi":"10.1386/ts_00013_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00013_1","url":null,"abstract":"Len Lye made extraordinary, energetic direct films in the mid-1930s with the help of his sound editors, Jack Ellit and Ernst Meyer. While receiving recognition for his visual animation, the full extent to which Lye broke new audio-visual ground has been underestimated. This article proposes Lye and his collaborators as important pioneers of audio remixing, a musical process generally assumed to have much later origins. His short, hand-painted films including Rainbow Dance (1936) and Trade Tattoo (1937) were constructed using little to no visual editing, while their soundtracks were substantially cut and pasted. These soundtracks were painstakingly constructed from pre-existing musical recordings, re-arranged into bespoke instrumentals. This significant audio-visual accomplishment has remained largely unnoticed, despite predating experiments in audio manipulation by better-known composers. This article brings these considerable audio-visual innovations to the fore, and highlights the important relationship between dance music and Lye’s avant-garde filmmaking.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121702396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin Marks holds an almost unique position to talk about silent film music: he is a scholarly musician and musical scholar. Besides his canonical book on the history of silent film music (1997), he has been playing piano accompaniments for silent films regularly for nearly four decades. In this interview we asked Martin about the challenges and complexities of choosing and creating music to accompany musical numbers in silent cinema. Martin relates how he detects musical numbers and he expounds his decision-making process on how to treat them. His explanations are interspersed with engaging examples from his practical work and based on both his scholarly knowledge and on his musical intelligence. He talks about the use of pre-existing music as well as about anachronisms in choosing music written many decades after a film was first released. In sum, this interview delivers detailed and informed insights into the difficulties and pleasures of accompanying musical numbers or other types of diegetic music in silent cinema.
{"title":"A highly creative endeavour: Interview with musicologist and silent film pianist Martin Marks","authors":"Claus Tieber, A. Windisch","doi":"10.1386/ts_00012_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00012_7","url":null,"abstract":"Martin Marks holds an almost unique position to talk about silent film music: he is a scholarly musician and musical scholar. Besides his canonical book on the history of silent film music (1997), he has been playing piano accompaniments for silent films regularly for nearly four decades. In this interview we asked Martin about the challenges and complexities of choosing and creating music to accompany musical numbers in silent cinema. Martin relates how he detects musical numbers and he expounds his decision-making process on how to treat them. His explanations are interspersed with engaging examples from his practical work and based on both his scholarly knowledge and on his musical intelligence. He talks about the use of pre-existing music as well as about anachronisms in choosing music written many decades after a film was first released. In sum, this interview delivers detailed and informed insights into the difficulties and pleasures of accompanying musical numbers or other types of diegetic music in silent cinema.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116895733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the early years of synchronized sound film, cinema’s relationship to live theatre was a topic of debate. Many stars from the Parisian stage successfully transitioned to the screen, becoming important figures in establishing a French national sound film style at a time when the medium’s future remained uncertain. Not only did French audiences take pleasure in hearing French stars speak on-screen, but the French singing voice also had an equally influential, if less examined, effect. Songs performed on-screen by stars from the French stage bridged theatrical traditions and sound cinema’s emerging audio-visual aesthetics. This article examines the singing star in early French sound cinema. Drawing on scholarly approaches to stardom in France and abroad by Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau, I focus on musical numbers in early French sound films that feature three singers already famous on the Parisian stage: Fernandel, Henri Garat and Josephine Baker. I consider how these songs are visually structured around the singing star’s stage presence, and how the soundtrack was likewise constructed around their voices familiar to audiences from recordings and stage performances. Through my analysis, I show how the singing star contributed to a broader acceptance of sound cinema in France.
{"title":"The singing film star in early French sound cinema","authors":"H. Lewis","doi":"10.1386/ts_00010_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00010_1","url":null,"abstract":"In the early years of synchronized sound film, cinema’s relationship to live theatre was a topic of debate. Many stars from the Parisian stage successfully transitioned to the screen, becoming important figures in establishing a French national sound film style at a time when the medium’s future remained uncertain. Not only did French audiences take pleasure in hearing French stars speak on-screen, but the French singing voice also had an equally influential, if less examined, effect. Songs performed on-screen by stars from the French stage bridged theatrical traditions and sound cinema’s emerging audio-visual aesthetics. This article examines the singing star in early French sound cinema. Drawing on scholarly approaches to stardom in France and abroad by Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau, I focus on musical numbers in early French sound films that feature three singers already famous on the Parisian stage: Fernandel, Henri Garat and Josephine Baker. I consider how these songs are visually structured around the singing star’s stage presence, and how the soundtrack was likewise constructed around their voices familiar to audiences from recordings and stage performances. Through my analysis, I show how the singing star contributed to a broader acceptance of sound cinema in France.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130175582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although the film musical as a genre came into its own with the sound film technologies of the late 1920s and early 1930s, several characteristic features did not originate solely with the sound film. The ‘musical number’ as the epitome of the genre, can already be found in different forms and shapes in silent films. This article looks at two Austrian silent films, Sonnige Träume (1921) and Seine Hoheit, der Eintänzer (1926), as case studies for how music is represented without a fixed sound source, highlighting the differences and similarities of musical numbers in silent and sound films. The chosen films are analysed in the contexts of their historical exhibition and accompaniment practices, Austria’s film industry as well as the country’s cultural-political situation after the end of the monarchy. These two examples demonstrate that several characteristics of the film musical are based on the creative endeavours made by filmmakers during the silent era, who struggled, failed and succeeded in ‘visualizing’ music and musical performances in the so-called ‘silent’ films. In reconstructing their problems and analysing their solutions, we are able to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of musical numbers during the silent era and on a more general level.
{"title":"Musical moments and numbers in Austrian silent cinema","authors":"Claus Tieber, A. Windisch","doi":"10.1386/ts_00009_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00009_1","url":null,"abstract":"Although the film musical as a genre came into its own with the sound film technologies of the late 1920s and early 1930s, several characteristic features did not originate solely with the sound film. The ‘musical number’ as the epitome of the genre, can already be found in different forms and shapes in silent films. This article looks at two Austrian silent films, Sonnige Träume (1921) and Seine Hoheit, der Eintänzer (1926), as case studies for how music is represented without a fixed sound source, highlighting the differences and similarities of musical numbers in silent and sound films. The chosen films are analysed in the contexts of their historical exhibition and accompaniment practices, Austria’s film industry as well as the country’s cultural-political situation after the end of the monarchy. These two examples demonstrate that several characteristics of the film musical are based on the creative endeavours made by filmmakers during the silent era, who struggled, failed and succeeded in ‘visualizing’ music and musical performances in the so-called ‘silent’ films. In reconstructing their problems and analysing their solutions, we are able to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of musical numbers during the silent era and on a more general level.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114462149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Though the musical numbers in Applause (1929) and Love Me Tonight (1932) are decidedly different, they share two characteristics: both were highly unusual at the time of their release, and both were directed by the same man: Rouben Mamoulian. This article examines these differing numbers as the work of a director with a surprisingly unified vision of cinema, and assesses their level of innovation within the early sound era. In these films, Mamoulian, an unabashed intellectual, put into practice theories of medium specificity and stylization that he had developed in his theatre work, theories that have received little scholarly attention. Believing that an artist uses medium-specific tools to transform the subject matter so as to express an artist’s personal viewpoint on the material, Mamoulian sought cinematic ways to stylishly dismiss and deride his numbers in Applause and elevate them in Love Me Tonight. In doing so, Mamoulian charted early and important ways in which musical numbers could be conceptualized and executed.
{"title":"Dismissal and elevation: Mamoulian’s musical numbers and the early sound era","authors":"Michael Slowik","doi":"10.1386/ts_00011_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00011_1","url":null,"abstract":"Though the musical numbers in Applause (1929) and Love Me Tonight (1932) are decidedly different, they share two characteristics: both were highly unusual at the time of their release, and both were directed by the same man: Rouben Mamoulian. This article examines these differing numbers as the work of a director with a surprisingly unified vision of cinema, and assesses their level of innovation within the early sound era. In these films, Mamoulian, an unabashed intellectual, put into practice theories of medium specificity and stylization that he had developed in his theatre work, theories that have received little scholarly attention. Believing that an artist uses medium-specific tools to transform the subject matter so as to express an artist’s personal viewpoint on the material, Mamoulian sought cinematic ways to stylishly dismiss and deride his numbers in Applause and elevate them in Love Me Tonight. In doing so, Mamoulian charted early and important ways in which musical numbers could be conceptualized and executed.","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129951049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Musical numbers in silent and early sound films","authors":"Claus Tieber, A. Windisch","doi":"10.1386/ts_00008_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00008_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":253130,"journal":{"name":"The Soundtrack","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132048020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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