Kristin Park
2/15/10
Theory Midterm

The purpose of cinema has been debated from its conception. Rudolf Arnheim claims film becomes art when it is different from the real. He believes the purpose of cinema is to transform reality into art, showcasing the process of filmmaking and creating imperfect representations of reality in a way that the human eye could never see by itself. Sound has, in fact, proved to aid film in achieving it’s purpose according to Arnheim, despite his fears that it would make films too close to reality and our “experience of the real” without adding to the overall experience. We can see this by looking at Francis Ford-Coppola’s The Conversation.
Sound is consistently used in ways that don’t support the illusion of reality. There are multiple times throughout The Conversation that Harry recalls the conversation the narrative is driven by. During these times, we, as viewers, are shown the two people having the actual conversation as we hear it. It’s quite clear that the purpose of these shots is to represent the inner workings of Harry’s mind. He is thinking about what he heard and analyzing it in the context of what he knows at the time. This makes us completely aware that we are watching a film, because we are not Harry, and we are not remembering something; we are watching it on a screen. Also, Harry never actually saw the man and the woman having the conversation the way it is shot. He was lounging on a park bench and sitting in a van full of sound equipment listening. There would be no close-ups and only one angle in Harry’s thoughts. One specific time the conversation is played is when he is lying on his cot in his office. The visual of Harry with the recording sounds on top of it portray the idea that Harry is always thinking about his work. He’s worried about the safety of the couple he taped. He thinks he missed something that could give him an idea of why he was hired to tape them. This is all information given to us by sound.

Sound not only creates a relationship between the hero and the viewers, but it links the shots in the scene mentioned above. Without the recording over the shot of Harry, we would not hear his thoughts. He would simply be lying there thinking, unreachable by the audience. By linking the shots, the story forms, and our minds piece together the scene.
That being said, I believe these scenes point out the medium as a whole, but contrary to Arnheim’s theory, it brings attention to the subject matter. Arnheim believes that by pointing out that you are watching a film, you draw attention away from the subject matter and put it on film as a medium. I think unreal sounds bring attention to the subject matter. Even more specifically, Michel Chion, author of Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, says, “Speech is no longer central to films.” More important are the sound effects, the aspects of a film that give more information to the viewers than almost any other aspect (155). Even in the scene where sound is being used in the way Arnheim approved of, the scene when Harry leaves the directors office and steps into the elevator full of wind, our focus is not on the medium. We are inside Harry’s paranoid mind, hearing his nervousness. No dialogue could make us feel this way. I believe that a good soundtrack will cause us to take a step away from the content and look at the film as a whole. We are much quicker to associate a quick sound with something we see verses a 30-second clip of a non-diagetic song.

Foley artists dispel this fear of recreating reality on a daily basis. These men and women create “real” sounds from things that are completely unrelated to the visuals. For instance, using cornstarch instead of snow when matching sound to a shot of a man walking down the street in the winter. Chion calls this reassociation of sound and image “rendered” sound. It creates a sound that seems more “real” than a man walking in actual snow (xix). These “real” sounds are may enhance our experience of the real, but it is unavoidable, because our mind makes sense of the things around us. Sounds are simply parts of the whole that add up to create meaning.

Arnheim says that our minds create meaning out of anything, so anything we put on screen will unconsciously be made into a type of reality. If this is accurate, it is only reasonable to assume the same will be true of sound. Our mind organizes the world around us, so to deny cinema the use of a material that does the same thing for a viewer as visuals do is illogical. He believes sound makes the film experience too real, but the same could be said of visuals if a soundscape were made first. Putting the two together doesn’t make it any more real than if we imagined the sounds for ourselves, it simply directs the mind. And if it is realistic, it is unavoidable, because as human beings, we connect things. We make order out of chaos by relating things to each other, something Arnheim accepted but somehow ignored when it came to sound. This doesn’t make us passive viewers; it makes us human. Even with sound directing your response, viewers actively pick up on sound cues and figure out the meaning behind their placement in the film.

With sound comes the question of reality, and Arnheim believes that cinema shouldn’t recreate the everyday world; a poor imitation of reality is not art. While closely observing films like The Conversation, we see that we are obviously watching a film. However, when we think more broadly, the effects the film has on viewers are very real. We know Harry isn’t hearing his recording of the conversation while he’s screwing a hole in the hotel wall in the murder scene. The combination of the sound and visuals shows us that he’s thinking about it. At the same time, sound does not make a film more realistic, it makes the effects on the viewers much more real. Is a good imitation of reality art? Perhaps we will never know Arnheim’s answer to this question.

In films, there are multiple views of “reality” in the context of the film. Chion writes about two different types of cinematic views. One, spatial designation of the term, is the special location from which the scene is presented. This is like the audience’s view. The second, subjective designation, is the when a specific character sees what the way the audience sees (89). In both situations, sound is used in the same way the camera is, to direct your attention. In the subjective designation, sound often gives incite into the character, his or her feelings, and the way they view the world. It is not real to be seeing things through another person’s perspective. In the realm of sound, this would be like hearing Harry’s thoughts in the second to last scene as he figures out what happened. In a war movie, this would be the equivalent of hearing a soldier’s breathing and footsteps, and perhaps the branches as they brush against him as he runs by.

Sound used as more subtle punctuation, replacing the disruptive manner in which it was done in silent films. Where in the days of silent film, things such as physical gesturing or an intertitle was used to emphasize something, now it is done with a sound effect. The burden of making a sound visible formerly fell to the actors and was jarring in the narrative sense. Sound effects are slipped into the background in the form of a barking dog offscreen or a grandfather clock chiming on set. Little details like this are what sets film apart as an art form. Theater doesn’t have this capability. This technology calls attention to itself in that a barking dog is unreal if you don’t have such a pet. The same goes for the clock. It becomes realistic because they are usually sounds that we can associate with even if they are not a part of our daily lives.

J. Dudley Andrew, author of The Major Film Theories, describes the ways in which Arnheim saw as suitable uses of sound. An example of this is when Harry walks out of the director’s office and gets in an elevator with one of the subjects of his recording. A strange wind sound, completely without a visual or insinuated source, is heard. It is this clash of sound and visuals, creating a feeling of suspense, that Arnheim appreciated and thought brought attention to the medium. At the same time, shots with sound that doesn’t clash with the visuals can create the same kind of feelings. The murder scene in which Harry sees a bloody hand wipe up against the glass and hears a scream is accompanied by non-diagetic clashing, high-pitched violins.

Chion says that “images and sounds [are] like strangers who make acquaintance on a journey and afterwards cannot separate (xvii).” They are each fulfilling a purpose by themselves, but together, they enhance the cinematic experience. While Arnheim’s ideas as to why sound is unnecessary in cinema are valid in certain situations, they are illogical when looking at cinema as a whole. Now that we have pushed the film medium and have seen the many ways in which sound can function, movies would never quite be the same without the pairing.

Reference:

Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. Oxford University Press: New York, 1976.

Work Cited

Chion, Michel. Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994.