More to the YouTube exercise

Recently I rewrote a post from 2011 in generic form in order to compensate for the problems arising from deleted YouTube videos: link to that post. I discussed three of the five options from the original post.

Here are the other two.

To begin, a reminder of task, goals, etc.:

Task: describe different visual tracks as they relate to a single audio track (different performances of the same musical composition).
Goals: Make students aware of their learned viewing habits and provide early practice in describing sound in relation to image.
Justification: The format aids practice of some basic skills while isolating that work from the complex narrative contexts of feature films. The limits of the musical text make the sound track act as a control, against which to compare different collections of images. Tempo remains a variable in the audio track as well.
Procedure: Begin by playing a recording of the composition without any video track. Point out or discuss simple formal articulations, so that markers will be available to aid detailed analysis and discussion of the video examples.

Version no. 4: compare tempos (speed) of different musical performances.

Here the task is to describe and evaluate the effect of different tempos in two audio tracks on their visual tracks. (Ideally, this would be done with the same visual track and different music performances, but those clips would most likely have to be newly prepared by the instructor.)

Version no. 5: filmed performances.

These are of two types: single camera and static image; multiple cameras and subsequently edited. Students who are musicians can be particularly sensitive to the editing and can thus be prompted to analyze a clip or compare two or more.

Note that these two options involve more than one video track and therefore are really variants of the commutation test from Hearing the Movies, chapter 1.

Film music and psychology (articles by Si-Liu Tan)

Here is another interesting twist on the commutation test: shifting the same music from apparently diegetic to apparently non-diegetic status.

On the Oxford University Press blog (link),  [Link checked on 3-08-2024.] Professor Si-Liu Tan reports on an experiment she ran with collaborators Matthew Spackman and Elizabeth Wakefield. They used a scene from Minority Report (2002) in which the two lead characters are in a mall attempting to evade the police while "Moon River" is played softly (so it would seem to be diegetic, coming from the mall's sound system). The researchers re-recorded "Moon River" to play louder and more crisply, trying thereby to simulate non-diegetic music. As a foil to that, they also played non-diegetic generic chase music.

Experiment participants listened to these different versions. Questions focused on the relationship between the two characters, and results showed surprisingly different reactions to "Moon River" depending on its presumed diegetic or non-diegetic status.

Professor Tan says it was

not our intention to draw any grand conclusions about the definitive and predictable effects of diegetic versus nondiegetic music. . . . The specific effects of migrating a piece of music from diegetic to nondiegetic depend on the unique interplay of music and moving images. However, our study suggests that the diegetic/nondiegetic distinction is perceptually salient to a general film audience. In some cases, it may lead to dramatically different perceptions of the tension of a scene, the attitudes, motives, and relationships of characters, and other judgments fundamental to one’s understanding of the unfolding film narrative. 

Using YouTube for comparison exercises (update)

I wrote here about the utility of YouTube for elementary comparison exercises that draw on audiovisual analysis. Students can practice some basic skills very early in semester (as they read Hearing the Movies, chapter 1) while isolating that work from the complex narrative contexts of feature films. The pedagogical goal—making students aware of their learned viewing habits—is crucial to studying film music and sound productively.

Alas, much has happened since 2011, when that post was made. Specifically, three of the post's five video clips have been deleted from YouTube. Because of this unpredictability, I have rewritten the 2011 post here in generic form.

Task: describe different visual tracks as they relate to a single audio track (different performances of the same musical composition).

Goals: Make students aware of their learned viewing habits and provide early practice in describing sound in relation to image.

Justification: The format aids practice of some basic skills while isolating that work from the complex narrative contexts of feature films. The limits of the musical text make the sound track act as a control, against which to compare different collections of images. Tempo remains a variable in the audio track as well.

Procedure: Begin by playing a recording of the composition without any video track. Point out or discuss simple formal articulations, so that markers will be available to aid detailed analysis and discussion of the video examples.

Version no. 1: the static image.

These are of course very easy to construct. A portrait of the composer, an image of an appropriate ensemble, or reproduction of an LP or CD cover will do, all preferably with some black space surrounding the image. It is also not difficult to find videos like this on YouTube, undoubtedly because they require the least effort on the part of the person wanting to post a dub of a recording. 

Show without warning the class about the static image, as the goal is for students to be placed in the position where they pay attention to their attention. Once they guess that the image is probably not going to change, attention shifts away from it to the music. A point of discussion could be to relate the starkness of the background to the audiovisual sparseness of a video clip that is only music.

Version no. 2: a slide show of images.

Questions to consider: How are changes to a new image timed to the music track? Are music and image completely, partly, or not synchronized? What is the effect of any lack of synchronization @ important form articulations in the music? (If images had changed at those moments, the images would suddenly have seemed relatively "important", leading to speculation about reasons for that importance. Something similar happens when a slide is onscreen noticeably longer than others.) What kind of narrative content (or expectation for narrative continuity) is provoked by the slide show? (It is not important to come up with answers -- what is important is to notice the fact of imposing—or trying to impose—narrative continuity on the images.)

Version 3: a different slide show of images for comparison.

Here students should be free to consider questions of both intention and design and to evaluate. Is the second version better done, more effective, than the first, and if so, how is that achieved? Does either version show signs of a rhetorical goal (point of view that is being pushed)?

These are three of the five options I presented in the 2011 post; I discuss the other two here: link. Of course, the different tasks can be mixed and matched or selected as the needs of a class dictate. The three presented here "flip" the commutation test from Hearing the Movies, chapter 1, by making the music the same but changing the video track. This is undoubtedly a more primitive exercise than our study of different musics for the “temptation” scene in Psycho (pp. 30-33), but the ability to think of a specific piece (or passage) of music as the benchmark against which to examine changes in the image track is a skill that is routinely called on in more sophisticated analysis, as well.

Jonathan Godsall on pre-existing music

Jonathan Godsall has written a very good blog post for The Avid Listener (a publisher's blog from W. W. Norton). Link to "Listening to Beethoven in and through The King’s Speech" (2010).  [link updated on 3-08-2024]   Godsall focuses on the use of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, second movement, for the film's climactic scene. Compact and accessible, the post has film and music clips. It even has questions at the end.

All in all, the post as it stands would make an excellent lesson plan, and might be used as early as Chapter 1 in connection with the commutation test (pp. 30-33). Godsall's second discussion question, in fact, is "Can you think of another real or hypothetical use of pre-existing music that might be considered inappropriate? What are the arguments for and against this?"

Link to a complete list of "Music and Media" posts to The Avid Listener.

Designing Sound

This essay by Douglas Murray is a guest article on the site Designing Sound, a multi-author blog for sound design professionals. Much of the site's content will probably not be very accessible or even of much interest to others.

Murray's piece is the exception. The article is on background sound (ambient or environmental sound) and is especially rich with information. It is also very accessible, and could easily be read even in conjunction with Hearing the Movies, chapter 1.

For example, where we say

If the foreground shows us where to direct attention, the background provides a sense of presence, of a continuous, uniform space that joins the sound and image edits into the appearance of a unified physical place, a “world.”  (HtM, 11)

Murray writes that

Movies essentially need to have background sound at all times. By adding background sounds to a scene we define what the scene is, where we are, and what’s happening around us, even off screen. 

and

Whether consciously listened to, or subconsciously heard, background sounds define the space, the time and the mood of the scene. 

Where we write

A background sound common to a series of shots helps convince us that each piece of dialogue comes from the same space—although, in fact, dialogue is typically edited along with the images and is often rerecorded after the fact.

Murray says

BG sounds even define the duration of the scene. We connect shots together in our mind if they have continuous sounds running behind them. For example, if we see a sequence of shots accompanied by a steady background sound, we will gather the shots together in our minds as being from the same time and place.

And, when Murray describes the function of background in this way,

Even though we hear [ambient] sounds, and can often describe what we heard if asked, we aren’t focusing on the background sounds in a scene because we are engaged in the characters and story.

That sounds pretty much the same as our description:

The foreground/background structure ensures that narratively important figures are placed in the foreground [—] image and sound tracks are arranged in such a way that we know what to pay attention to, what is important in order for us to understand the narrative. 

Here are some other observations from the article (quotes are slightly edited).

• When the background sound changes with each shot, then we experience each shot as in its own place and time. 
• [Expected environmental] sounds are not likely to attract a lot of conscious attention, but there would be a sense of absence if they or some other plausible sounds were lacking, especially at the beginning of the scene while we are orienting ourselves to the new situation. 
• A marvelous side benefit of putting in these expected sounds is that the sound designer can think “musically” and use this palette of sounds the way a composer uses the available instruments in an ensemble.
• Absence of sound can create a tension like holding one’s breath. 
• Two tasks for the sound designer: Establish the location, then direct the audience’s point of view by withholding most sounds and selectively presenting just the desired sounds. 
• Dynamics may be a sound designer's enemy in backgrounds. Our ears prick up when we hear sudden changes in sound level and we attend to the new sound, assessing the threat or import of this sudden change. So a loud sound like a car by or dog bark or door slam can take you right out of the movie.
• Remember that the mixer will probably play your beautifully designed atmosphere track at an ephemeral or subliminal level, so that just a whiff of it bleeds into audibility. . . . This practice is so widespread that mixing a background track to a more than subliminal level becomes some sort of statement. Low level backgrounds are a convention today — perhaps to a fault.

Words and Music in Sleepless in Seattle

In her note for the soundtrack CD, Nora Ephron, the director of Sleepless in Seattle, writes that "We had made a movie in which the words were as important as the pictures, and we wanted songs in which the words were as important as the music."

Song quotations can be used in a variety of ways, in both diegetic and nondiegetic contexts: as style topics, as references to time or place, to establish mood or pace—in other words, in all the same ways as original instrumental underscore. Beyond that, quotations involving a song's title or lyrics can make obvious references that are the verbal analogue to mickey-mousing—such as "In the Wee Small Hours of the Night" when Annie goes downstairs, unable to sleep beside a snoring Walter. Instrumental quotations, however, depend on a fund of cultural knowledge in viewers.

In this film, Ephron and her music director make sure that we always "get the connection": as she puts it using as an example "Bye Bye Blackbird," which eventually acquires considerable importance in the underscore as well: "'No one here can love or understand me' [Joe] Cocker sings, as Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan sit alone in the moonlight 3000 miles apart from one another; and as we cut back and forth between them, the music becomes the link, almost as if the song is going through both their minds."

Cue list for Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle has been a staple in my film classes from the time of its VHS release in 1993. One scene in particular—the one we call "Second Botched Meeting" in HtM, chapter 1—has remained valuable as an introduction to detailed soundtrack construction in service of narrative. However, I never did not get around to making a cue sheet for the entire film. That omission has now been filled. A PDF file is available here: Sleepless in Seattle cue list. NOTE: This link has been updated as of 30 June 2023.

As typically happens, I found the musical component of the film more complex than I remembered it from viewing. Nora Ephron's early films are well-known for their song quotations, of course, but Sleepless in Seattle also contains four original songs by Marc Shaiman, only one of which is in the credits list: "A Wink and a Smile." The other three are instrumental underscore cues that are written in traditional song form, and developed in later cues. I did not have access to a studio cue sheet and so I gave those three my own labels: "Sam & Jonah," "Magic," and "Anticipation." "Anticipation" is the music in the first part of the "Second Botched Meeting" scene and "Magic" is the slower music for the second part.

Thanks to University of Chicago professor Berthold Hoeckner for noticing and asking about the first appearance of "Magic," early in the film as Annie (Meg Ryan's character) tries on her mother's wedding dress. That alone wouldn't have been enough; but "Magic" is developed at length in scenes starting with Annie's computer search (about 50:00), so that it clearly is an associative theme (leitmotif) by the time of the "Second Botched Meeting."

I learned two things from this: (1) the fact that "Magic" is developed as a tango supports re-hearing the original version as a slow, nostalgic waltz; (2) "Magic" does indeed work as we describe it—empathically mirroring Annie's deflation in mood—but it adds to the moment the idea of the magic of first meeting.

Week 1 lectures (2010)

This post was ported from the defunct blog Hearing the Movies II. These are Jim's description of class lectures and activities for the beginning of spring semester 2010. Later entries can be found under the "pedagogy" tag.

I used the following examples for my first week of lectures, which were keyed to Ch. 1 of Hearing the Movies:

I started with the scene from Catch Me If You Can (2002), discussed in the introduction to Part 1 (pp. 1-3) and again in Ch. 1 (pp. 7-8). I played the scene twice, with class discussion after each viewing. We then did a masking exercise, using the Second Botched Meeting sequence from Sleepless in Seattle, discussed on pp. 20-25. We first watched the sequence with no sound, and I had the students talk about what sort of sound they expected and why. We then watched the sequence with sound.

The second class—my class meets twice a week, 75 minutes for each class—we started with a masking exercise using the same scene from Sleepless, this time reversing the procedure, beginning by masking the image and then watching the sequence with image and sound. I led the class in discussion after each.

We then worked with part of the Waterloo Station sequence from The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), starting again with a masking exercise: first, no image (we did this twice); then, no sound track; then both together. In this case I divided the students into three groups and had the first group concentrate on the dialogue, the second group on the music, and the third on the effects. I instructed the first group to note the number and type of voices as well as tempo and dynamic of delivery; the second group to note the basic mood, tempo, dynamic and instrumentation for major points of change; and the third group to identify sound source or to describe sound as best as they could. I thought this example worked exceptionally well, and I would recommend the example.

The third example came from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), discussed on pp. 11-12. Here, I had the students discuss the five types of music in the sequence and how they differed in narrative function: 1. the atmospheric music as Frodo awakens (this music also appears at the very beginning of the film over the New Line Cinema logo); 2. the "mythic" music accompanying Gandalf's flashback; 3. pastoral music accompanying the appearance of Sam; 4. enchanted vocal music for Rivendell; 5. pastoral music accompanying appearance of Bilbo.

The final example was simply a viewing of Boston Common Scene from Good Will Hunting (1997), pp. 25-30. 

Masking Exercise

Here is a quotation from Dimitri Tiomkin that could serve to introduce the masking exercise:

To comprehend fully what music does for movies, one should see a picture before the music is added, and again after it has been scored. Not only are all the dramatic effects heightened, but in many instances the faces, voices, and even the personalities of the players are altered by the music.

Source: Dimitri Tiomkin, "Composing for Films," Films in Review 2.9 (1951): 21. (The full article runs pp. 17-22.)

First Week's Examples

I used the following examples for my first week of lectures, which were keyed to Ch. 1 of Hearing the Movies:  [Update 2 FEB 2018: location unchanged in the second edition]

I started with the scene from Catch Me If You Can (2002), discussed in the introduction to Part 1 (pp. 1-3) and again in Ch. 1 (pp. 7-8). I played the scene twice, with class discussion after each viewing. We then did a masking exercise, using the Second Botched Meeting sequence from Sleepless in Seattle, discussed on pp. 20-25. We first watched the sequence with no sound, and I had the students talk about what sort of sound they expected and why. We then watched the sequence with sound.

The second class—my class meets twice a week, 75 minutes for each class—we started with a masking exercise using the same scene from Sleepless, this time reversing the procedure, beginning by masking the image and then watching the sequence with image and sound. I led the class in discussion after each.

We then worked with part of the Waterloo Station sequence from The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), starting again with a masking exercise: first, no image (we did this twice); then, no sound track; then both together. In this case I divided the students into three groups and had the first group concentrate on the dialogue, the second group on the music, and the third on the effects. I instructed the first group to note the number and type of voices as well as tempo and dynamic of delivery; the second group to note the basic mood, tempo, dynamic and instrumentation for major points of change; and the third group to identify sound source or to describe sound as best as they could. I thought this example worked exceptionally well, and I would recommend the example.

The third example came from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), discussed on pp. 11-12. Here, I had the students discuss the five types of music in the sequence and how they differed in narrative function: 1. the atmospheric music as Frodo awakens (this music also appears at the very beginning of the film over the New Line Cinema logo); 2. the "mythic" music accompanying Gandalf's flashback; 3. pastoral music accompanying the appearance of Sam; 4. enchanted vocal music for Rivendell; 5. pastoral music accompanying appearance of Bilbo.

The final example was simply a viewing of Boston Common Scene from Good Will Hunting (1997), pp. 25-30.