This article explores the idea of audiovisual immersion through the portal of the virtual reality music video. Our focus falls on a close reading of Björk’s video, ‘Family’, which addresses questions of immersion in relation to user-experience, staging, and technological innovation. This article draws on the authors’ responses to the video by considering the implications of VR immersion in a new generation of music video productions. As part of the methodology on offer, a model for music analysis is devised for conceptualising virtual audiovisual space (VAVS) and the inextricable relationships between production and compositional design.
{"title":"‘A Swarm of Sound’","authors":"Zachary Bresler, S. Hawkins","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.2","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores the idea of audiovisual immersion through the portal of the virtual reality music video. Our focus falls on a close reading of Björk’s video, ‘Family’, which addresses questions of immersion in relation to user-experience, staging, and technological innovation. This article draws on the authors’ responses to the video by considering the implications of VR immersion in a new generation of music video productions. As part of the methodology on offer, a model for music analysis is devised for conceptualising virtual audiovisual space (VAVS) and the inextricable relationships between production and compositional design.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44807946","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}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.2.01
Toby Huelin
Abstract:Library music is used extensively in television production, but its central role is overlooked by scholars and viewers alike. Using travel television as a case study, this article examines the process of selecting library music and the impact of its use—especially when the same tracks function across multiple series.
{"title":"Soundtracking the City Break: Library Music in Travel Television","authors":"Toby Huelin","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.2.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.2.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Library music is used extensively in television production, but its central role is overlooked by scholars and viewers alike. Using travel television as a case study, this article examines the process of selecting library music and the impact of its use—especially when the same tracks function across multiple series.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"49 1","pages":"24 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76397774","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}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.2.02
Edward Venn, A. McAuley
Abstract:This article explores the narrative function of music in the French TV drama Les Revenants and its connection to the literary tradition of the fantastic. It argues that the music enacts the narrative device of hesitation to provide generic, timbral, tonal, semantic, and temporal ambiguity and, in doing so, gives voice to the show’s characteristic fantastical presentation of the Freudian uncanny.
{"title":"Narrating the Uncanny: The Music of Les Revenants","authors":"Edward Venn, A. McAuley","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.2.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the narrative function of music in the French TV drama Les Revenants and its connection to the literary tradition of the fantastic. It argues that the music enacts the narrative device of hesitation to provide generic, timbral, tonal, semantic, and temporal ambiguity and, in doing so, gives voice to the show’s characteristic fantastical presentation of the Freudian uncanny.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"39 1","pages":"25 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89862019","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}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.2.03
Trevor Penoyer-Kulin
Abstract:This article looks at how the soundtrack for the movie Gone Girl operates on several different narratological levels: it represents characters, it expresses character psychology, and sometimes even seems controlled by one particular character. In this way, it informs how we read the dynamic between the film’s two married protagonists.
{"title":"Narration, Voice, and Character in the Soundtrack to David Fincher’s Gone Girl","authors":"Trevor Penoyer-Kulin","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article looks at how the soundtrack for the movie Gone Girl operates on several different narratological levels: it represents characters, it expresses character psychology, and sometimes even seems controlled by one particular character. In this way, it informs how we read the dynamic between the film’s two married protagonists.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"12 1","pages":"44 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88193757","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":"Contributors to Issue 16:1","authors":"","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42771165","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}
Playback, the process of separately recording actors’ images and voices in cinema and media, has a long history of cultural stereotyping. This article analyses how performers are typecast when media technicians manipulate sound/image synchronisation in lip sync and dubbing. Inspired by Janelle Monáe’s oeuvre, I focus my study through the figure of the electric lady - female simulacra who are programmed by heteronormative, patriarchal operators. I trace the electric lady back to talking machines (Faber’s Euphonia) and early phonograph recordings (minstrelsy and opera singer Agnes Davis) to show how proto- and post-phonographic notions of playback are bound up with racialised and gendered stereotypes. Drawing on the work of Alice Maurice, Mary Ann Doane, Jennifer Fleeger, and others, I illustrate how industrial practices of playback reproduce the sounds and images of ideal femininity and obedient Others. In her ‘emotion picture’ Dirty Computer (2018), Monáe transforms history’s electric lady from obstinate object to empowered subject by unmasking homogenising operations of playback. Monáe lip syncs as multiple personae to showcase the material heterogeneity of her Black, queer, and feminist identities. Ultimately, Monáe’s hybrid personae mobilise Doane’s notion of the masquerade in their defiance of playback norms that would bind Monáe to racialised and gendered images.
回放,即在电影和媒体中单独记录演员的形象和声音的过程,有着悠久的文化定型历史。本文分析了当媒体技术人员在对口型和配音中操纵声音/图像同步时,表演者是如何被定型的。受Janelle Monáe作品的启发,我把研究重点放在了电子女性的形象上——由异性恋规范的、父权的操作员编程的女性拟像。我将电子女士追溯到会说话的机器(Faber的Euphonia)和早期的留声机录音(吟游诗人和歌剧歌手Agnes Davis),以展示原始和后留声机的回放概念是如何与种族化和性别化的刻板印象联系在一起的。借鉴Alice Maurice, Mary Ann Doane, Jennifer Fleeger等人的作品,我阐述了工业实践如何再现理想女性气质和顺从他人的声音和图像。在她的“情感图片”Dirty Computer(2018)中,Monáe通过揭露回放的同质化操作,将历史上的电子女士从顽固的客体转变为强大的主体。Monáe假唱了多个角色,以展示她的黑人、酷儿和女权主义身份的物质异质性。最终,Monáe的混合人物动员了Doane的假面舞会概念,他们蔑视将Monáe与种族化和性别化图像绑定在一起的回放规范。
{"title":"Electric Ladies in Playback","authors":"Amy Skjerseth","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.1","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Playback, the process of separately recording actors’ images and voices in cinema and media, has a long history of cultural stereotyping. This article analyses how performers are typecast when media technicians manipulate sound/image synchronisation in lip sync and dubbing. Inspired by Janelle Monáe’s oeuvre, I focus my study through the figure of the electric lady - female simulacra who are programmed by heteronormative, patriarchal operators. I trace the electric lady back to talking machines (Faber’s Euphonia) and early phonograph recordings (minstrelsy and opera singer Agnes Davis) to show how proto- and post-phonographic notions of playback are bound up with racialised and gendered stereotypes. Drawing on the work of Alice Maurice, Mary Ann Doane, Jennifer Fleeger, and others, I illustrate how industrial practices of playback reproduce the sounds and images of ideal femininity and obedient Others. In her ‘emotion picture’ Dirty Computer (2018), Monáe transforms history’s electric lady from obstinate object to empowered subject by unmasking homogenising operations of playback. Monáe lip syncs as multiple personae to showcase the material heterogeneity of her Black, queer, and feminist identities. Ultimately, Monáe’s hybrid personae mobilise Doane’s notion of the masquerade in their defiance of playback norms that would bind Monáe to racialised and gendered images.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43657744","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}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.1.03
Daniel Trocmé-Latter
Abstract:In Hans Zimmer’s score to The Lion King (1994), the “Dies irae” melody not only functions as a standard shorthand for death (as in many scores) but is also of underlying structural importance in several of the film’s cues. Thus, the tune retains a sense of secularized association with death while reclaiming some of its spiritual associations with the Requiem Mass.
{"title":"A Disney Requiem? Iterations of the “Dies irae” in the Score to The Lion King (1994)","authors":"Daniel Trocmé-Latter","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.1.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.1.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Hans Zimmer’s score to The Lion King (1994), the “Dies irae” melody not only functions as a standard shorthand for death (as in many scores) but is also of underlying structural importance in several of the film’s cues. Thus, the tune retains a sense of secularized association with death while reclaiming some of its spiritual associations with the Requiem Mass.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"43 1","pages":"38 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83680617","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}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.1.02
Obumneke S. Anyanwu, E. Sylvanus
Abstract:New Nollywood refers to a segment of Nigerian cinema that began in 2012. The industry is based in Lagos and focuses on Hollywood-style approaches to film and film music. Generally, very little has been written about technologies in the film music of Nigerian cinema. This article is the first to focus explicitly on the impact of modern music production technology in New Nollywood soundtracks. Adopting descriptive as well as survey and historical methods of research, this article reveals what the specific and available technologies for film music in New Nollywood were and currently are; how the practitioners have employed them; as well as how the effects of such technologies have shaped the industry’s cultural and economics choices. In addition to a review of the broad literature on cinema and film music, the methodology also relies on studio observation sessions with current industry practitioners as well as an analysis of the New Nollywood film The Bling Lagosians (2019). Taken together, findings reveal that the quality of New Nollywood film music is fluid and reflective of changes to the economic, cultural, and technological preferences of practitioners.
{"title":"Music Production Technology in New Nollywood Soundtracks: Context, Application, and the Effect of Globalization","authors":"Obumneke S. Anyanwu, E. Sylvanus","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:New Nollywood refers to a segment of Nigerian cinema that began in 2012. The industry is based in Lagos and focuses on Hollywood-style approaches to film and film music. Generally, very little has been written about technologies in the film music of Nigerian cinema. This article is the first to focus explicitly on the impact of modern music production technology in New Nollywood soundtracks. Adopting descriptive as well as survey and historical methods of research, this article reveals what the specific and available technologies for film music in New Nollywood were and currently are; how the practitioners have employed them; as well as how the effects of such technologies have shaped the industry’s cultural and economics choices. In addition to a review of the broad literature on cinema and film music, the methodology also relies on studio observation sessions with current industry practitioners as well as an analysis of the New Nollywood film The Bling Lagosians (2019). Taken together, findings reveal that the quality of New Nollywood film music is fluid and reflective of changes to the economic, cultural, and technological preferences of practitioners.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"35 1","pages":"22 - 37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81637136","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}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.5406/19407610.15.1.01
Katie Beisel Hollenbach
Abstract:This article demonstrates how American teenage girls used Frank Sinatra’s vulnerable celebrity persona during World War II, specifically his character in the 1943 film Higher and Higher, to cultivate fantasies in which they held power in their romantic relationships, a luxury they generally did not enjoy in their wartime realities.
摘要:本文展示了二战期间,美国少女如何利用弗兰克·辛纳屈(Frank Sinatra)脆弱的名人形象,尤其是他在1943年的电影《越高越高》(Higher and Higher)中扮演的角色,来培养她们在恋爱关系中拥有权力的幻想,这是她们在战时现实中通常无法享受到的奢侈品。
{"title":"Frank Sinatra and Constructions of Female Power and Fantasy in RKO’s Higher and Higher (1943)","authors":"Katie Beisel Hollenbach","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article demonstrates how American teenage girls used Frank Sinatra’s vulnerable celebrity persona during World War II, specifically his character in the 1943 film Higher and Higher, to cultivate fantasies in which they held power in their romantic relationships, a luxury they generally did not enjoy in their wartime realities.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"34 1","pages":"21 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73384985","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}
Abstract:Interrogating point of audition (POA) sound through the silences, noises, and closed captions of A Quiet Place’s critically lauded soundscapes, this article examines the ways point of audition aurally and rhetorically constructs deafness, technology, and the audio-viewer. In its sonic rendering of the post-apocalyptic world, A Quiet Place actively involves the audio-viewer in its fantastical conceit and ‘fantasy’ of deafness, folding the audience into the complex cyborgian politics and potential of the malfunctioning cochlear implant. This diegetic technological breakdown merges and tangles with the technology of the film, the point of audition sound highlighting the immersive capabilities and audist expectations of cinematic soundscapes. Yet, in this straining towards ‘immersion’, the uncaptioned silences of Regan’s point of audition further accentuate issues of access, raising questions of the composition and meaning of immersion and silence. Through the shades of silence and sharp whining feedback of A Quiet Place, this article ultimately details the possibilities and complications of analysing point of audition sound, in the process, illustrating the harmonic resonation of the studies of sound, deafness, and disability. This article is the winner of the 2020 Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award, selected by the Sound and Music Special Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in conjunction with Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.
{"title":"[Inaudible] Point of Audition Representations of Deafness and the Cochlear Implant in A Quiet Place (2018)","authors":"Gabrielle Berry","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2021.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2021.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Interrogating point of audition (POA) sound through the silences, noises, and closed captions of A Quiet Place’s critically lauded soundscapes, this article examines the ways point of audition aurally and rhetorically constructs deafness, technology, and the audio-viewer. In its sonic rendering of the post-apocalyptic world, A Quiet Place actively involves the audio-viewer in its fantastical conceit and ‘fantasy’ of deafness, folding the audience into the complex cyborgian politics and potential of the malfunctioning cochlear implant. This diegetic technological breakdown merges and tangles with the technology of the film, the point of audition sound highlighting the immersive capabilities and audist expectations of cinematic soundscapes. Yet, in this straining towards ‘immersion’, the uncaptioned silences of Regan’s point of audition further accentuate issues of access, raising questions of the composition and meaning of immersion and silence. Through the shades of silence and sharp whining feedback of A Quiet Place, this article ultimately details the possibilities and complications of analysing point of audition sound, in the process, illustrating the harmonic resonation of the studies of sound, deafness, and disability. This article is the winner of the 2020 Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award, selected by the Sound and Music Special Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in conjunction with Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"104 ","pages":"109 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41284441","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}