Enoch Yee-lok Tam

FILM 2017:Introdction to Film and Media Arts

 Story, plot and narrative
◦ Story: All the events
◦ Plot: Events and description
◦ Narrative: Events with causal relationship

 Classical Hollywood Narrative

◦ Narrative: Closed, all issued resolved
◦ Character: Goal to archieve
◦ High production values

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 Film genre
◦ What is film genre: Set of formulas and devices
◦ Why film genre: Efficient and recognizable by the mass audience

 Set of devices
◦ Iconography
◦ Plot
◦ Character
◦ Setting
◦ Narrative structure: resolving conflicts

 Genre mixing and anti-genre

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 Three main types
◦ Speech: Dialogue / monologue
◦ Music
◦ Noise (sound effects): background noise and sound

 Three Properties: loudness, pitch, timbre

 Three dimensions: rhythm, space, and time

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 Diegesis
◦ fictional world of the film

 Diegetic sound
◦ Any sound (voice, musical passage, or sound effect, etc.)
presented as originating from a source within the film’s world.

◦ Dialogue: external expression of a character

◦ Internal monologue: internal thought of a character

 Dialogue: A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella

 Monologue: A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
 From dialogue to monologue: Ashes of Time (23:40)

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 Non-diegetic sound
◦ Sound that does NOT come from the fictional world
of the film

◦ Music added to enhance the film’s action

◦ Voiceover in documentaries

◦ The opening sequence of Gallants (打擂台)

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 Films can blur the two to play with viewers’
expectations

◦ Mulholland Drive

◦ Blazing Saddles

◦ Out of the Dark

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 Sound perspective
◦ Spatial distance and placement of a sound source.

◦ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDiWGXFZR7g

◦ Long-shot image, close-up sound

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/pcote/clips/
cheating-sound-perspective-in-touch-of-evil.mov

 Multiple-track sound systems can strongly imply

a sound’s distance and placement

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 Diegetic sound can be either on-screen or off-
screen, depending on whether its source is inside
the frame or outside the frame.

 On-screen sound: source of sound is on-screen

 Off-screen sound: the source of sound is off-

screen

 Oldboy

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 Synchronous sound
◦ Sound which matches the image
◦ Usually in dialogue/talk, i.e., “lipsynched”

 Asynchronous sound
◦ Sound that does not match temporally with the
movements occurring on screen

◦ 39 Steps

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 Sound bridge
◦ Sound from the previous scene linger briefly while
the image is already presenting the next scene

◦ Or the sound from the next scene appears earlier in

the previous scene

◦ Creates smooth transitions.

◦ The Matrix

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 Musical numbers
◦ Song sequences that featured characters singing and/or dancing
◦ Commonly used in the promotion of features films

 Classical Hollywood musicals insert visual spectacles that have

no narrative function into the film via musical numbers

 Singing and dancing are very common in mainstream Indian

films.

 3 Idiots

 The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲)

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 Pay attention to the image on the screen

 Indicator for the psychology of character

 Background music: good at expressing

emotion

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 Seven principles of film music suggested by
Claudia Gorbman in Unheard Melodies
◦ Invisibility
◦ Inaudibility
◦ Signifier of emotion
◦ Narrative cueing
◦ Continuity: fill the gap between shots
◦ Unity: repetition and variation (like theme song)

◦ Breaking the rules: A given film score may violate any of

the principles above, providing the violation is at the
service of the other principles.

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 Narrative cueing: creating suspense or tension
◦ Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
◦ Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

 Signifier of emotion
◦ Jerry Zucker’s Ghost

 Reveal the psychology of character

◦ Zhang Yimou’s Ju Dou

 Deepen the theme by theme music

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 Film music does not always necessary to
match with the emotion / narrative of the film

 Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs

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 Spatial Dimension of Sound
◦ Non-diegetic sound
◦ Diegetic sound
 Sound Perspective
 On-screen or Off-screen Sound

 Temporal dimension of sound

◦ Synchronous and asynchronous sound
◦ Sound bridge

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 Musical numbers

 Gorbman’s Seven Principles

 Contrapuntal Film Music

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 In the selected clip of Yi Yi, identify and
describe an instance of:
1. Diegetic on-screen sound
2. Diegetic off-screen sound
3. Non-diegetic sound
4. Sound bridge

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 MC: 30%

 Identification (fill in the blank): 30%

 Short questions: 40%

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