cinematography

Sound in films

SOUND IN FLIMS

In the sherlock Holmes opening scene, the music starts off very slow and very gloomy, the piano tune is quite dull. then at the 15 second mark you can hear a faint sound of horse footsteps galloping, this is known as ambient sound, which means background sound. Very gradually the horses footsteps start to increase in volume which means that the horses are getting closer. As the footsteps get louder and faster more instruments start to join into the music, making it more louder and and fast paced. The opening scene is a chase scene so the building up of the music enhances the chase scene, making it seem as the chase is intensifying. The music in this is the only non-diegetic sound in this clip, which means it is the only sound that is added to the clip its an actual sound that has come from the video itself.



Glossary 

Diegetic - Sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film.

Non-Diegetic - Sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has ben implied to be present in the action.

Ambient - Ambient is background sound.

SFX - SFX is Sound Effects.

Genre - Genre is what type of music it is etc. - hip hop, classical, reggae.....

Theme music - Theme music is is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the intro, during title sequence and/or ending credits.

Sound bridges - Sound bridges are a piece of music that links one scene to another

Voice over - A voice over is a voice that is speaking over a scene, possibly describing what is happening in that specific scene

Synchronous Sound - This is when a sound effect is matched with another technical event or action.

Asynchronous Sound - This is when a sound originates from outside of the diegetic reality of the film.

Contrapuntal - This is a noise or sound effect which doesn't match the visuals, often to create alternate meaning.

Mood - What type of music it is. Etc - happy, sad.....

Musical score - the musical script that gets played through out the whole piece

Tone - tone is the how the music is ETC - hard, soft....

Selective sound -  This is used to highlight certain things/ characters

Silence - No sound at all to create an atmosphere.