Film, a Sound Art


Book Description

The author argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise--it enacts a process of audio-viewing. The audiovisual makes use of tropes, devices, techniques, and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema. This book considers developments in technology, aesthetic trends, and individual artistic style that recast the history of film as the evolution of a truly audiovisual language. It also explores the intersection of auditory and visual realms. The author describes the effects of audio-visual combinations claiming, for example, that the silent era (which he terms "deaf cinema") did not end with the advent of sound technology but continues to function underneath and within later films. He also discusses cinematic experiences ranging from Dolby multitrack in action films and the eerie tricycle of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining to the way actors from different nations use their voices and words.




Film Sound


Book Description

The only comprehensive book on film sound, this anthology makes available for the first time and in a single volume major essays by the most respected film historians, aestheticians, and theorists of the past sixty years.




Audio-vision


Book Description

Deals with issue of sound in audio-visual images




Words on Screen


Book Description

Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.




Music in Cinema


Book Description

Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other. The first section of the book examines film music in historical perspective, and the second section addresses the theoretical implications of the crossover between art forms. Chion discusses a vast variety of films across eras, genres, and continents, embracing all the different genres of music that filmmakers have used to tell their stories. Beginning with live accompaniment of silent films in early movie houses, the book analyzes Al Jolson’s performance in The Jazz Singer, the zither in The Third Man, Godard’s patchwork sound editing, the synthesizer welcoming the flying saucer in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Kinshasa orchestra in Felicité, among many more. Chion considers both original scores and incorporation of preexisting works, including the use and reuse of particular composers across cinematic traditions, the introduction of popular music such as jazz and rock, and directors’ attraction to atonal and dissonant music as well as musique concrète, of which he is a composer. Wide-ranging and original, Music in Cinema offers a welcoming overview for students and general readers as well as refreshingly new and valuable perspectives for film scholars.




Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound


Book Description

ADR and looping --




The Foley Grail


Book Description

Master classic and cutting-edge Foley techniques that will allow you to create rich, convincing sound for any medium, be it film, television, radio, podcasts, animation, or games. In The Foley Grail, Second Edition award-winning Foley artist Vanessa Theme Ament teaches you how Foley is designed, crafted, and edited for any project, right down to the nuts and bolts of spotting, cueing, and performing sounds. Various renowned sound artists provide a treasure trove of shortcuts, hot tips, and other tricks of the trade. This new edition features: Entirely new chapters dedicated to Foley in games, television, broadcasting, and animation, as well as what is new in sound for media education All new sound "recipes" that include proven Foley methods you can immediately use on your own projects New case studies from well-known films, shows, games, and animations Interviews with current sound artists from across the globe An extensive companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/ament) featuring video demonstrations of Foley artists at work, video tutorials of specific Foley techniques, lectures from the author, and much more




Alan Parsons' Art & Science of Sound Recording


Book Description

(Technical Reference). More than simply the book of the award-winning DVD set, Art & Science of Sound Recording, the Book takes legendary engineer, producer, and artist Alan Parsons' approaches to sound recording to the next level. In book form, Parsons has the space to include more technical background information, more detailed diagrams, plus a complete set of course notes on each of the 24 topics, from "The Brief History of Recording" to the now-classic "Dealing with Disasters." Written with the DVD's coproducer, musician, and author Julian Colbeck, ASSR, the Book offers readers a classic "big picture" view of modern recording technology in conjunction with an almost encyclopedic list of specific techniques, processes, and equipment. For all its heft and authority authored by a man trained at London's famed Abbey Road studios in the 1970s ASSR, the Book is also written in plain English and is packed with priceless anecdotes from Alan Parsons' own career working with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and countless others. Not just informative, but also highly entertaining and inspirational, ASSR, the Book is the perfect platform on which to build expertise in the art and science of sound recording.




Art of the Cut


Book Description

This is the second volume of the widely acclaimed Art of the Cut book published in 2017. This follow-up text expands on its predecessor with wisdom from more than 360 interviews with the world’s best editors (including nearly every Oscar winner from the last 30 years). Because editing is a highly subjective art form, and one that is critical to the success of motion picture storytelling, it requires side-by-side comparisons of the many techniques and solutions used by a wide range of editors from around the world. That is why this book compares and contrasts methodologies from a wide array of diverse voices and organizes that information so that it is easily digested and understood. There is no one way to approach editorial problems, so this book allows readers to see multiple solutions from multiple editors. The interviews contained within are carefully curated into topics that are most important to film editors and those who aspire to become film editors. The questions asked, and the organization of the book, are not merely an academic or theoretical view of the art of editing but rather the practical advice and methodologies of actual working film and TV editors, bringing benefits to both students and professional readers. The book is supplemented by a collection of downloadable online exclusive chapters, which cover additional topics ranging from Choosing the Project to VFX. In addition to the supplementary chapters, access to the full-color, full-resolution images printed in the book—and other exclusive images—is included.




The Voice in Cinema


Book Description

Chion analyzes imaginative uses of the human voice by directors like Lang, Hitchcock, Ophuls, Duras, and de Palma.