Soundz

Sound is such a powerful element in cinema. The reading describes examples such as how things in a horror film wouldn't be necessarily scary because the sound is a major element that works with the overall mood of the film. A jump scare like in the stair-case scene in Psycho wouldn't be nearly as horrifying if there wasn't that shrill screeching soundtrack to accompany the scene. The article addresses this concept as the audiovisual illusion. The sound in cinema is utilized to focus the audience's attention to a certain thing happening in the film. It could be the pop of a balloon or the squealing tires of a police car off in the distance. Music is also used as a device to get the audience to feel what certain characters are feeling such as fear or sorrow. A sad, slow melody may be played in a film like Babel, but Psycho has a shocking score that causes the audience to be as scared as the killer's victim is in the film.

It is crazy to think that the human ear can work faster than a human eye. The reaction time to a sound being quicker than an image at first seems crazy but after thinking of things that have shocked me in my lifetime, usually it has been more from a sound rather than a quick image. The reading goes on to describe how sound temporalizes images on screen, mainly in such ways as tempo, definition, how it's sustained, etc. The examples of how sound can mess with a viewer's mind, such as in the Empire Strikes Back example, really blew my mind. I actually went back and looked at scenes form the film on Youtube haha. Also, the examples of deaf people being able to visualize faster than normal people is really interesting. I've heard true life stories of things like that. I've also heard about how some blind people develop better hearing over time. The article really shows how important sound is in cinema. It frustrates me to know that a lot of student films overlook sound quality and focus more on image quality. A movie could be shot beautifully but if the sound recording/sound mixing/score is bad then the film could end up being a piece of crap.