Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 03: Sound, Voice, Music

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10468/1435
It is a moment of rupture, when we become aware of the potential of film sound to reveal, and break out of, the apparatus to which it has been assigned. This special issue of Alphaville aims to be just one such moment, in which film sound, voice and music are singled out by the analysis in ways that both reveal their profound imbrication in the textual whole and shed light on the apparatus. Edited by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine, University College Cork.

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Beneath sci-fi sound: primer, science fiction sound design, and American independent cinema
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Johnston, Nessa
    Primer is a very low budget science-fiction film that deals with the subject of time travel; however, it looks and sounds quite distinctively different from other films associated with the genre. While Hollywood blockbuster sci-fi relies on “sound spectacle” as a key attraction, in contrast Primer sounds “lo-fi” and screen-centred, mixed to two channel stereo rather than the now industry-standard 5.1 surround sound. Although this is partly a consequence of the economics of its production, the aesthetic approach to the soundtrack is what makes Primer formally distinctive. Including a brief exploration of the role of sound design in science-fiction cinema more broadly, I analyse aspects of Primer’s soundtrack and sound-image relations to demonstrate how the soundplays around with time rather than space, substituting the spatial playfulness of big-budget Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster sound with temporal playfulness, in keeping with its time-travel theme. I argue that Primer’s aesthetic approach to the soundtrack is “anti-spectacle”, working with its mise-en-scène to emphasise the mundane and everyday instead of the fantastical, in an attempt to lend credibility and “realism” to its time-travel conceit. Finally, with reference to scholarship on American independent cinema, I will demonstrate how Primer’s stylistic approach to the soundtrack is configured as a marketable identifier of its “indie”-ness.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir, by Robert Miklitsch
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Wren, James A.; Murphy, Jill