Film Sound
Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, Singin' in the Rain

Steven Shaviro
November 3, 2011

History of the Hollywood Musical

• Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer
• Busby Berkeley (1930s)
• Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (later 1930s)
• MGM: the Arthur Freed unit (1940s and 1950s)
• Dancers: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse
• Directors: Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen
• Lavish production values, in Technicolor
• Dramatic integration of musical numbers
• Decline of the musical in the 1960s and 1970s
• Recent revival of the genre (Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Dreamgirls)

Singin' in the Rain (1952): Celebrating Film Sound

• A meta-musical, about coming of sound to Hollywood
• Sound isn't just something added to the images...
• Rather, sound changes the very nature of the film.

The Dueling Cavalier Vs.The Dancing Cavalier

• The Dueling Cavalier
• Ludicrously stilted
• Ridiculous-sounding dialogue
• Actors' gestures are exaggerated & unbelievable
• Sound capture problems
• Trouble when sound and image go out of sync
• The Dancing Cavalier
• Sweepingly fluid
• Elaborate technicolor sets (anachronism)
• Fluid dance movements synchronized to music
• Dialogue filled with fast, witty repartee

Singin' in the Rain: Techniques of the Musical

• Visibility of technologies of sound reproduction
• Where to hide the microphone?
• Need to capture sound from all directions
• Early technical problems with film sound
• Dubbing, synchronization, etc.
• Re-recording in the studio, matching lips to sounds
• Lina (Jean Hagen) up front, Kathy (Debbie Reynolds) behind the curtain
• Multiple levels of relation between sound and image
• Relation of sound to motion (the dance numbers)

Singin' in the Rain: Spectacle and Themes

• Problem of the voice: Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont
• Sound contradicts image: initial narration by Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), accompanied by flashback
• Soundstage artifice: when Don woos Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds)
• Performance as artifice: Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), "Make 'Em Laugh"
• Body as expression (Gene Kelly, "Singin' in the Rain" number)
• Ballet: the "Broadway Melody" number (Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse)

History of Film Sound

• Traditions of musical theater (from ancient Greek drama through Italian opera to 19th-century melodrama & vaudeville)
• First sound film: The Jazz Singer (October 1927)
• Period of transition (1927-1931)
• Early sound effects, influence of radio
• Stereophonic sound (1950s)
• Dolby, surround sound, multi-channel sound (1970s)
• Digital sound (1990s)

Basic Elements of Film Sound

• Speech and the Human Voice
• Onscreen Dialogue
• Offscreen voices
• Voiceover, Narration, etc.
• Music
• Diegetic Music
• Background Music (non-diegetic)
• Use of music in Musicals
• Noise and Sound Effects
• Naturalistic
• Exaggerated

Relations of Sound and Image

• How does sound relate to image?
• Does the sound merely accompany, or support, the image?
• Or are sound and image of equal weight?
• Continuity of sounds and continuity of images
• How do sounds and images relate to their sources?
• The image is a (2D) copy, separate from the (3D) thing of which it is an image
• But, even when we listen to a recording, we hear actual sounds, rather than just copies of the sounds

Sources of Film Sound

• Synchronous (onscreen) vs.asynchronous (offscreen) sound (cf. use of offscreen space)
• Parallelism vs.counterpoint of sound to image
• Diegetic vs. nondiegetic sound
• DIEGESIS = the world of the film's story, the world of the narrative
• DIEGETIC = existing in the world of the film's story
• Most movie music is nondiegetic, because we hear it but the characters in the world of the film don't
• Intermediate and ambiguous cases
• Are voiceovers diegetic or not?

Techniques of Film Sound

• Importance of sound design
• Sound recording on the set, simultaneous with shooting
• Postproduction sound editing, along with image editing
• Introduction of sound effects (foley), music, etc.
• Postsynchronous sound (as opposed to natural sound)
• Looping, re-recording, automated dialogue replacement
• Final sound mixing, once the image track is complete
• Our sense of the scene is largely guided by the sound
• Example: Movie-watching scene in Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)

Voice in Film

• Importance of human speech & dialogue
• Sound perspective: apparent distance of sound source
• Most film dialogue remains close -- even when visuals are not close-ups
• Alternative:overlapping dialogue, at various distances
• Uncanny, inhuman voices (e.g. HAL in 2001)
• Voice-off: offscreen, but within the diegesis
• Voiceover narration: not heard within the diegesis
• Sound synchronization appears "natural," but is in fact manufactured in the editing room
• Most natural-sounding dialogue is post-synchronized

Music in Sound Film

• Source music, music within the diegesis
• Non-diegetic narrative music: background music, underscoring
• Pre-recorded music (e.g. popular songs on soundtracks)
• Cue: music designed for a particular spot in the film
• Motives: musical themes associated with particular characters or situations, & repeated throughout film
• Nondiegetic music guides our emotional responses
• Counterexample: music that sets the "wrong" mood: fight/chase scene from The Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano, 1989)

Sound Effects

• Sound effects usually seem "natural" or "realistic"...
• ...But they are among the most carefully manufactured elements of film: constructed, rather than reproduced
• Density of sound effects in recent Hollywood films, compared to older films
• Sound effects help to give an impression of depth (three-dimensionality)
• Deliberate exaggerations of various sonic elements (traffic, gunshots, etc.)

Examples of Film Sound (1):
Final Battle Scene from Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

• Constant background noise of wind and rain
• Conversation and preparations, interrupted by pauses
• Sound perspective: approaching horses' hooves; bandits' battle cries
• The battle itself: abrupt sounds punctuating the action
• Gunshot

Examples of Film Sound (2):
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)

• Sound and material objects
• Walking on various surfaces
• Everyday objects (chairs)
• Ambient sound (traffic & other city sounds)
• Sound & gadgetry (the intercom system)
• Sound and space
• Sound and distance (footsteps: man approaches down long corridor)
• Glass (muffles sound; separates sound from sight)
• Role of diegetic music in remolding space