Research: Sound

There are many types of sound, used in film to establish narrative and impact the audience by stirring their thoughts and emotions in different directions. I have mentioned before that you have diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Some other simple sound techniques include dialogue, voice-over, score, and sound bridge. However there are also many more complex ways of describing how sound is edited in a film.

Non-simultaneous Sound: Sound which takes place earlier in the story, prior to the current images. In the film 'Rent' we see the main character, Roger, running around New York although instead of hearing the bustle of the streets all we hear is the earlier answering machine messages based on previous events.

Direct Sound: Sound recorded at the time of filming. In the scene from 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby' no post-synchronous sound or non-diegetic music is used so the main sound in this scene is the dialogue which is therefore emphasised by the absence of other sounds. 

Synchronous Sound: Sound that matches the action and movement being viewed. As an example, in 'The Pianist' the main character is playing the piano which as an audience, we can hear simultaneously, at the same time he plays.

Post-synchronisation Dubbing: Sound which has been added after a scene has been filmed (added during post-production). In one of the scenes from 'Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope', there is hardly any sound within it, and in retrospect most of the movie, which we can say is synchronous. In fact a lot of the sound is very clearly edited in post-production because of the nature of the sounds e.g. droids, futuristic gun sounds, explosions and sirens- all of which are dubbed post-synchronously. Together with non-diegetic sounds, suspense is built in this sequence.

Off-screen Sound: Sound which is implied to be audible within a scene but which remains off -screen while the action takes place. In 'The Boondock Saints' the detectives dialogue acts as background noise to introduce the FBI agent to the case whilst non-diegetic (off-screen) sound is used when the detective speaks to undermine the claims he makes.

Sound Perspective: The distance of a sound source, variant in pitch and volume. If you look at some clips from 'Moulin Rouge!'they shows a lack of sound perspective. What we see is that the further the camera moves away from the character, the way we hear the character singing doesn't change (which would be the case in a realistic situation). However, in 'Touch of Evil' sound perspective is used a lot more realistically where we find the closer the camera is to the characters, the more audible the sound of cars and footsteps becomes.

Sonic Flashback: The technique of using sound from earlier in the film during a later scene. At the end of the film 'The Sixth Sense' the main character, Malcolm, begins to realise he is dead. During this, he hears an earlier conversation he had with a young boy (in his head). A sonic flashback can be used to show a characters' thought process, either emotional or psychological.