Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Film Sound
THEORY AND PRACTICE
Edited by Elisabeth Weis and John Belton
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
4qqs
PRESS
NEW YORK
((
K'r
SOUND
t77
ments,
segregated rn.rvloyal-individual , rnilmate
intimate voices, and made them speak
"'"D' rsgrsgdrcu'
to us
sepamtely it'
in vocal,@o*,c_Ie'-u*hnn fho"o
ir, imarort
-^.,-J^ ..j,
isorared +-ir
detair-sounds
wil
:1ryjt]v
uo*1,6o-@j*n""
@intr-'ffi
BELA BALAZS
i;;ffi
lG-
;,il';:
:::1,1 ,.rr"
speaks'to
us from.the
sound screen-
our tgFI9SryiPlIIlFBF
It is the business of the sound film togggt$or us
theacousticlandscapeinwhichwelive,thespeechothingsandtnelnnand
human speech'
mate whisperi.tgs o nae; all that has speechbeyond
incessantly influand
life
of
powers
conversational
vast
the
,p"f., to us wi
o the sea
muttering
the
rom
'"., *a directs our thoughts and emotions,
o
gentle
to
the
machinery
of
roar
the
to the din o a great city,-om
,patler
autumn rain oria windowpane. The meanng o a floorboard creaking in a'
deserted room, a bullet whistling past our ear, the deathwatch beetle ticking
in old furniture, and the forest spring tinkling over the stones. sensitive lyrical poets always could hear these significant sounds of life and describe them
in words. lt is for the sound hlm to let them speak to us more directly rom
the screen,
Disco-very of Noise
The sounds of our day-to-day life we hitherto perceived merely as a confused noise, as a formless nrass of (rather as an unmusical person may
listen to a symphony; at best he may be able to distinguish the leading melody, the rest will fuse into a chaotic clamor. @
analvze even,chaotj noisg_withroU! grr and rgrd the score of lie's svmphony" Our ear will hear the diferent voices in the general babble and distinguish their character
It is an old maxim
that
.i;;;;;J;;,
lli"n"ily
u.nungl,
Only when the sound film will have resolved noise into its ele-
t:
',r!
::
't.:l
:li
ii
,ri
,:j
:tl
l,:i
Silence
''
,{
'.1
Silence, too, is aq 4p11q1[ efe . but only where sounds can be heard. The
presentation of silence is one of the most specific
kind o
n" other art can reproduce silence, neither painting norFJ;qlgture, neither literature nor lhe"silent ilm could do.so. Even on the stffience appears only rarely as a dramatic effect and then only for short moments. Rdio plays cannot make us feel the depths o silence at all, because when no
,ll
Jm.
..
'fi
i.::i
:,,
,.1
;6].nlll;ffi,i;'iit;;
, - r rL ^ ^^*^
^. ll
ffi
il";ffiffi-Wq.$J
cdmmon to them
was
*iF. *hi'n
all.
119
noise of the alien world reaches us rom bevond its boundaries. A completely soundless space on the contrary n"ffiffiffiffirete,
and
quite real to our perception; we eel it to be weightless and unsubstantial,
or what we merely see is only a vision. We accept seen space as real only
when it contains sounds as well, or these give it the dimension of depih.
On the stage, a silence which is the reverse of speech may have
a dramaturgical function, as for instance if a noisy company suddenly falls
silent when a new character appealg._Ert such a ritnn. cannot last longer
than a few seconds, otherwise itcurdlej as it were and seems to stop the
performance. On the stage, the effeif-silence cannot be drawn out or made
to last.
In the ilm. silence can be extremely vivid and varied, for although it has no voice, it
. A silent
glance can speak volumes; its soundlessness makes it more expressive because the facial movements of a silent igure may explain thegggggfor the
silence, make us feel its weight, ih menace, its tension. ln the film, silence
a
Sound-Explaining Pictures
rience.
4--
thetopoahighmountain-wehearthetappingofawoodcutter'saxear
awag-then
uo*'in the vlley, i{ we can hear the crack of a whip a mile
I'tB,
tti"S
blows'
" "
;;th"s time into fragments with sledsehammer
ffi";;l;;
large
very
a
in
sounds
distant
heaivery
can
"'Jn" ,.Sst_when we
hear right across it and the
i, ou, o*n i we cn
,irl
',':
,ri
,.
j,
r.:,
roundaboul
But the siteni film could reproduce silence only by
touch o
not
does
the
dialogue
o{
cessation
siage
theatricai
means. On the
the
stage is
o
space
the
in gr""t emotional experien-ce o silnce, because
is
essentialy.q*qplqe-exp9qf
silence
expgrience
i" tnar for that, and the
is a rnere
How do we peceive silence? By hearing nothing? That
experience
the
than
positive
more
experences
But i a moming breeze blows
;:;;." Dea people do not know what it is'the
neighboring vilage, if rom
the sound of a cock crowing over to us from
','',li
sound can have the inverse efect. The close-up_of a listener's face can
I" LUl.Ts
cance of some sound*'noise if we had not
.s"i,n d
e;-
K
120
((
BELA BALAZS
synchronous Sound
j:i"1'$,,,j,: j:::'ir*
ii.,i:*:i:ffi:*:i#:,fi:::
it shy and retiring and musr remain ,.irJy
audible.
that
is
As in the sirent
ilm so in the sound film, scarcely p"r."pti:;;;mate
things can be conveyed with all the secrecy o the unnoticd
Nii,ing ;
silenced in order to demonstrate such
"urrnrropp"r.
sounds
for at r,""r-.",iv.,.'
yet be kept intimate. The-general
din can go on, it may even drown com_
pletely a sound like the soft piping of
u -or"q"iio,'uu, *n can get quite close
to the source o the sound wiin ne
-icropnon'and with our
ear and hear
it nevertheless.
ln a close-up in which the surroundings are not visible, a sound that seeps
nto the shot sometimes impresses us as mysterious, simply because we cannot se irs, gpurFe. It produces the tension arising from curiosi! and expectaon. Sometimes the audience does not know what the sound is they hear,
but the character in the ilm can hear it, turn, his face toward the sound, and
see'its source beore the audience does. This handling of picture and sound
provides rich opportunities for effects o tension and surprise.
esgbrqnqus-sQugd (that is, when there is discrepancy between the things heard and the things seen in the ilm) can acquire considerable importance. I the sound or voice is not tied up with a picture of its
source, it may grow beyond the dimensions o the latter. Then it is no longer
the voice or sound o some chance thing, but appears as a pronouncement
o universal validity. . . . The surest means by which a director can convey
the patho,s- or svmbolical significance of sound or.voice is precisely to use it
.#8-'
asthchronously.
lntimacy of Sound
Acoustic cose-ups make
us
\27
--*il
sg':-S:*"lylg:1nl"q'-u
the film r..nn.unnot
:y,:E}-r,_ti{jfhitnin
r
it is.immediately beside the things
,':1
r1
$
,$
,'d
.H
,$
H
"1ff
tR
fl
(t
,(
122
BELA BALAZS
123
tenor toward the sound and the spectators tense in their seats. The camera,
too, turns toward the sound. And behold the hiss is that of a kettle boiling
on the gas-ring.
Such surprising disappointnents may be tragic too. In such cases
the slow approach and the slow recognition of the sound may cause a ar
more terrif5ring tension than the approach of something seen and therefore
instantly recognized. The roar of an approaching flood or landslide, approaching cries of grie or tenor which we discern and distinguish only gradually, impress us with the inevitabili of an approaching catastrope with
almost inesistible intensity. These great possibilies o dramac effeci are due
to the fact that such a slow and gradual process o recognition can symbolize
the desperate resistance of the consciousness to understanding u t"uty ruhi.h
is already audible but which the consciousness is reluctant to accept.
on photographs. But we very rarely hear the sounds of nature and o life
wilhout seeing something.
s&lgjbeutgQug!_lbinqs rom sounds we,hear. This defective education of
our hearing can be used or many surprising efects in the sound film. We
hear a hiss in the darkness. A snake? A human face on the screen turns in
Auditive culture can be incresed like any other and the sQun! film is very
suitable to educate our ear. There are however definiteffi
ilities of finding our way about the world purely by sound, without any visual impressions. The reason for this is that sounds throw no shadows-in
other words that so,unds cann_o_! Etqdlgs S3pe9*ln_pgqe. Things which we
see we must see side by side; if we do not, one of them covers up the other
so that it cannot be seen. Visual impressions do not blend with each other.
Sounds are different; if several of them are present at the same time, they
merge into one common composite sound. We can see the dimension o
space and see a direction in it. But we cannot hear either dimension or direction. A quite unusual, rare sensitivi$ of.ear, the so-called absolute-is required to distinguish the several sounds which make up a composite noise.
But their place in space, the direction of their source cannot be discerned
even by a perfect ear, if no visual impression is present to help.
It is one of the basic form-problems of the radio play that sound
alone cannot represent space and hence cannot alone represent a stage.
It is dificult to localize sound and a ilm director must take this fact into account. l three people are talking together in a film and they are placerJ so
:::
'r
ri!
rii!
ril
t,i!
'il*
,,ii4
j.1
:i:
i:l
't
rl:
iil
t24
|:
BELA BALAZS
that we cannot see the movements of their mouths and if they do not accompany their words by gestures, it is almost impossible to know which o
them is talking, unless the voices are very diferent. For sounds cannot be
beamed as precisely as light can be directed by a reflector. There are no
such straight and concentrated sound beams as there are rays of light.
The shapes of visible.things hae several sides, right side and left
side, front and back. Sound has no such aspects, a sound strip will not tell
us from which side the shot was made.
I25
fixed, immutable, permanent distance between spectator and actor is elimiot only as spectators,
but as listeners, too, we are transfened from our seats to the space in which
the events depicted on the screen are taking place"
g$pl'Ely
';i
,1
'::
il
,,ii4
.,rl
:;i
:i