JCM312/Sound

Purposes of sound on television

Television lists four "purposes of sound on television":

1. Capturing viewer attention.
2. Manipulating viewer understanding of the image.
3. Maintaining televisual flow.
4. Maintaining continuity within individual scenes.

All groups: sound exercises

In class, we'll view a Dodge commercial and examples of how sound can manipulate viewer understanding of the image--that is, can change its meaning.

1. As a group, choose a well-known song that, if laid over the commercial, would change its meaning. (No R-rated songs, please.) We'll find an excerpt of it online and lay it over the commercial. Be prepared to explain to the class how your song changes the commercial's meaning.
2. Think back to the Chevrolet commercial that we broke down and the shot of Mother, salesman, Father, son in the car. As a group, pretend you're doing ADR (and what is ADR?) for this shot and write dialogue that illustrates how sound editors can manipulate sound perspective to alter our understanding of a scene (somewhat like the sound editor of Wonder Years did in Figure 8.6, but do not copy that example).
   • Illustrate how sound and time could be manipulated in this shot with some other dialogue.
   • Finally, include audio that illustrates the difference between diegetic vs. nondiegetic sound.

Types of sound

1. Back Group: What are the three main types of sound in TV production and how do digital audio workstations mirror those three types? (See Ugly Betty ProTools layout for music editor.)
2. Front Group: What is "public domain" music? What are "master rights"? How do master rights apply to DVD releases of TV programs?

Sound technology

1. Front Group: Explain these terms in the context of digital audio: sampling, dynamic range, and frequency response.
2. Back Group: What are the different types of microphone pick-up patterns? How do they affect sound perspective? (Ugly Betty example?)

Bibliography

1. Butler, Jeremy G. Television: Critical Methods and Applications. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007.

External links

• Dodge commercial
• Sound chapter illustrations
• George Burns, direct address
• Bernie Mac direct address
• Damages sound-time manipulation

Diegetic and nondiegetic sound

1. First, a review question, from the chapter on narrative form: what is a diegesis?
   • So, what is diegetic sound?
2. Bordwell/Thompson's Table 7.2 "Temporal Relations of Sound Cinema" (p. 289, 8th edition) divides film sound into diegetic and nondiegetic categories. Then it divides the diegetic/nondiegetic categories into different uses of time (hence, "temporal"). This results in six different ways in which time, diegetic space and sound interact (listed below). Provide an example from a film we've seen (or just make up an example) for each.
   1. Group 4: Diegetic nonsimultaneous, sound earlier than image.
   2. Diegetic simultaneous.
   3. Group 1: Diegetic nonsimultaneous, sound later than image.
   4. Group 2: Nondiegetic nonsimultaneous, sound earlier than image.
   5. Nondiegetic simultaneous.
   6. Group 3: Nondiegetic nonsimultaneous, sound later than image.
3. Considering the categories above, what types of sound are in the Traffic example?

Bibliography

1. Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical Methods and Applications (New York: Routledge, 2011).
2. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

External links

1. Classical Hollywood sound examples
2. Film Art examples
   • Traffic example
   • A Man Escaped example