The Soundtrack - Volume 1 Issue 1, Ebooks (various), kino
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ISSN 1751-4193
1.1
The Soundtrack
The Soundtrack
Volume 1 Number 1 – 2007
The scope of
The Soundtrack
focuses on the aural elements which
combine with moving images. It regards the sounds which accompany
the visuals not as a combination of disparate disciplines, but as a unified
and coherent entity. It assumes that irrespective of industrial
determinants, the soundtrack is perceived as a continuum by the
audience; that music, dialogue, effects and atmospheres are instruments
in the sonification of the film, analogous perhaps to the strings, brass,
woodwinds and percussion in an orchestra. The journal is rigorous
academically yet accessible to all interested readers.
Journal Editors
Stephen Deutsch (chair)
The Media School, Bournemouth
University
Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset BH12 5BB
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1202 965102
Larry Sider
The School of Sound, London
Editorial Board
Rick Altman – University of Iowa, USA
Haim Bresheeth – University of East London, UK
John Broomhall – Audio Director, UK
Michael Chanan – Roehampton University, UK
Michel Chion – Author and Composer, France
Ian Christie – Birkbeck College University of London, UK
Gustavo Costantini – University of Buenos Aires, Sound Designer and
Composer, Argentina
Rebecca Coyle – Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia
Ian Cross – University of Cambridge, UK
Claudia Gorbman – University of Washington, Tacoma, USA
Philip Hayward – Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Walter Murch – Editor and Sound Designer, USA
Rens Machielse – Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), Holland
Roberto Perpignani – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Film
Editor, Italy
Gianluca Sergi – University of Nottingham, UK
Sean Street – Bournemouth University, UK
Randy Thom – Sound Designer, USA
Elisabeth Weis – Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA
Dominic Power
The National Film & Television School,
Beaconsfield
The Soundtrack
is published three times a year by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall
Road, Bristol. BS16 1JG, UK. The current subscription rates are (personal) £33
and £210 (institutional). Postage within the UK is free whereas it is £9 for the
rest of Europe and £12 elsewhere. Advertising enquiries should be a addressed
to: marketing@intellectbooks.com
© 2007 Intellect Ltd. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal
use or the internal or personal use of specific clients is granted by Intellect Ltd for
libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) in
the UK or the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) Transactional Reporting Service
in the USA provided that the base fee is paid directly to the relevant organization.
ISSN 1751-4193
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
4edge Ltd. Hockley. www.4edge.co.uk
 Notes for Contributors
The Soundtrack
would like to invite papers in the following generic areas:
•
How technological developments impact upon soundtrack aesthetics
• The intersection of music & sound in film
• The training of film composers and sound designers
• Early sound cinema
• Sound for European silent film
• Issues of cognition and the soundtrack
• Notable works and practices
• Musique Concréte and Film
• Sound in interactive media
• Representations of reality and fantasy through sound
• The relationship between picture editing and the soundtrack
In addition to the scholarly contribution of academics, the journal will give voice
to the development of professional practice. As such, we aim to include in each
issue select contributions from recognised practitioners in the field, who may
include composers, sound designers, directors, etc. Each issue of the journal will
also include a short compilation of book and film reviews relating to recently
released publications and artefacts. The electronic version of the journal affords
contributors the opportunity to present original work as QT movies embedded
into text.
Submission Details
Contributions (5000–6000 words for Major Papers, 1000–3000 words for reviews
and shorter articles) should include original work of a research or developmental
nature and/or proposed new methods or ideas that are clearly and thoroughly
presented and argued.
Articles should be original and not be under consideration by any other
publication. They should be written in a clear and concise style and should not
normally exceed 8000 words in length. Contributions should be submitted electro-
nically. The referencing should be in Harvard format, with endnotes rather than
footnotes. The article should be accompanied by a series of Metadata, including:
Article title; author(s)’ name(s), affiliation address and biography; abstract;
keywords; and references. All material will be read on a Macintosh computer and
should be submitted in Word
®
using the OSX platform.
The Journal is academic and major articles are usually refereed. However, we
also intend to publish non-refereed papers of a more polemical and exploratory
nature. Anonymity is accorded to authors and referees. There are normally two
referees, chosen for their expertise within the subject area. They are asked to
comment on comprehensibility, originality and scholarly worth of the article sub-
mitted. The referees’ comments and any additional comments the Editor may wish
to add that require amendments will then need to be acted on for the article to
receive further consideration by the Editor before it may be published in the
journal.
For the electronic version of the journal, copyright cleared audio and video
extracts should be sent separately on CD or DVD in Quicktime
®
Movie format.
Each extract should be labelled identically in both the text and movie folder.
Further detailed information regarding submissions is available from the
under
Notes for Contributors
.
capable of being read on a Macintosh computer
 The Soundtrack Volume 1 Number 1 © 2007 Intellect Ltd
Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/st.1.1.3/2
Editorial
Prof. Stephen Deutsch
FRSA
The Media School, Bournemouth University
This new journal engages in an uncommon discourse. As its name suggests,
its focus is on the combination of all of the aural elements of moving
pictures as a coherent entity.
With a few but notable exceptions, academic and professional journals
relating to the sonic elements of film concentrate separately upon its aural
constituents (we use the term ‘film’ generically here to represent all types
of moving images). There are journals on film music and film sound, and
within each type of publication, there are articles on disparate subjects
such as Foley, atmospheres, orchestration, harmony, etc. Most of these dis-
cussions centre entirely on their subjects, with cursory references to their
integration with other sonic elements. Chief among these sorts are those
books and journals on film music, most of which describe music as a sepa-
rate activity from film, applied to images most often at the very end of the
production process by composers normally resident outside the filmic
world.
This journal regards the sound that accompanies visuals not merely as
a combination of disparate disciplines, but as a unified and coherent entity.
It assumes that, irrespective of industrial determinants, the soundtrack is
perceived by an audience as such a unity; that music, dialogue, effects and
atmospheres are heard as interdependent layers in the sonification of the
film. We often can identify the individual sonic elements when they
appear, but we are more aware of the blending they produce when sounding
together, much as we are when we hear an orchestra.
1
It will not go without notice that the editorial board of this journal
includes names of several persons who are pre-eminent practitioners and
scholars in this area, many of whom have contributed significant work
that has enriched our understanding of sound and the moving image.
Presumptuous then for this journal to begin with an article which seems
to neglect much of the collective weight of previous scholarship and
replaces it with a new model; a polemic perhaps, intended to provoke dis-
cussion and to test the methods by which the soundtrack is produced and
understood.
The purpose of this lead article, therefore, is to set out our stall, to suggest
just such a taxonomy, and to await comment. Its first focus is primarily on
music within this model. The role of non-musical devices and practices
will be discussed in the next issue.
To begin, one can posit a definition of the word ‘soundtrack’. For the
purposes of this discussion, a soundtrack is
intentional
sound that accom-
panies moving images in narrative film.
2
This intentionality does not
exclude sounds that are captured accidentally (such as the ambient noise
1. Several composers
and musicologists
would contend that
the instruments
themselves
are
the
content of a musical
score (viz. the
klangfarbenmelodie
as
developed by Anton
von Webern
(1883–1945) and the
Sonic Arts composers
who followed him).
However, we believe
that most composers
and listeners regard
the rhetorical content
(the notes) of the
music to be more
prominent in the
listener’s perceptual
map than the
instruments that
play them.
2. How the soundtrack
operates in
non-narrative film is
an area of interest
to this journal, for
which subject
articles are very
welcome
(ed.)
.
ST 1 (1) 3–13 © Intellect Ltd 2007
3
3. After all, directors can
choose to replace the
sound. Indicative of
this choice is the
habitual replacement
in narrative film of
exterior dialogue
through the post-
production practice of
ADR (automatic
dialogue replacement).
most often associated with documentary footage); rather it suggests that
any such sounds, however recorded, are deliberately presented with
images by film-makers.
3
All elements of the soundtrack operate on the
viewer in complex ways, both emotionally and cognitively. Recognition of
this potential to alter a viewer’s reading of a film might encourage direc-
tors to become more mindful of a soundtrack’s content, especially of its
musical elements, which, as we shall see below, are likely to affect the
emotional environment through which the viewer experiences film.
A soundtrack comprises two different (but not mutually exclusive) ele-
ments:
Literal Sounds
, which encourage us to believe what we see, and
Emotive Sounds
, which encourage us to feel something about what we are
seeing.
Literal Sounds
help us to engage with the narrative and to accept what
we see as a metaphor for ‘real’ actions and events, defining the physical
boundaries of the film’. Such sounds help the viewer to understand the
physical rules of the film’s world. We see someone speak and hear their
words in synch with their lips. We see someone move across a room and
hear their footsteps on the wooden floor. A bolt of lightning tears across
the sky and we hear it crackle. Sounds that are synchronous with move-
ment and the audience’s expectation of congruence with image help us to
enter the ‘reality’ of the narrative. Such sounds can be emotive as well: a
baby crying, an unanswered and persistent telephone, shouts and crashes
off-camera, etc. In
Point Blank
(Boorman, 1967), Lee Marvin’s relentless
anger is carried to us through his footsteps.
Wo r d s
, either as voice over or lip synch, act as a link with the diegesis
of a film as well as to its emotional implications.
Heightened FX
fuses literality and emotion into single gesture.
In Raiders
of the Lost Ark
(Spielberg, 1981), the lorry driven by the villain, Major Toht
(Ronald Lacey) sounds unremarkably like a lorry. When the hero, Indiana
Jones (Harrison Ford) takes the wheel, the confident and regal sound of a
lion’s roar is blended subtly into the engine noise; encouraging us to see
him differently through our ears.
Emotive Sounds
, therefore, encourage us to read film through a visceral
filter of varying density. What we feel about what we see can change the
T
HE
S
OUNDTRACK
I
NTENTIONAL
S
OUND
THAT
A
CCOMPANIES
M
OVING
I
MAGES
L
ITERAL
S
OUNDS
E
NCOURAGING
US
TO
B
ELIEVE
WHAT
WE
SEE
E
MOTIVE
S
OUNDS
E
NCOURAGING
US
TO
F
EEL
S
OMETHING
ABOUT
WHAT
WE
ARE
S
EEING
W
ORDS
S
YNC
& V.O.
A
TMOS
& FX
I
MPLICATIONS
OF
R
EALITY
H
EIGHTENED
FX
B
RIDGES
T
HINKING
& F
EELING
M
USIC
E
MOTIONAL
S
IGNIFICATION
4
Stephen Deutsch
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