So, this is my initial thoughts and what i've learnt from reading this book and what I can take away from it to apply to my essay that I'll begin writing when Christine goes on holiday.
- Music can be attributed to a character to explain feelings without words, and these can take on all 3 styles of diegesis:
> Diegetic (Where the sound or music is taking place in the narrative)
> Non-diegetic (Where the sound or music is only heard by the audience)
> Meta-diegetic (Where the sound or music is only heard by the one character, e.g. Alan is on a first date with long-time crush Greta. In the restaurant, a band plays romantic music. The date ends up being disastrous. Later in the film, Alan's best friend Paul brings up Gretta's name and the music heard in the restaurant begins to play as Alan recognises her name.
"Gérard Genette defines the diegesis as "the spatiotemporal universe referred to by the primary narration.[Gérard Genette, "D'un récit baroque," in Figures, v. II (Paris: Seuil, 1969)] Etienne Souriau, a filmologue, elaborated upon this definition in terms of cinema specifically:
Diegesis, diegetic: all that belongs, "by inference," to the narrated story, to the world supposed or proposed by the film's fiction. Ex: (a) Two sequences projected consecutively can represent two scenes separated in the diegesis by a long interval (several hours or years of diegetic time). (b) Two adjoining studio sets can represent locations supposedly hundreds of feet apart in diegetic space. (c) Sometimes there are two actors (e.g. a child and an adult, or a start and a stuntman or double) to successively depict the same diegetic character. [Etienne Souriau, ed., L'Univers filmique (Paris 1953)]
Genette's and Souriau's definitions would agree that the diegesis means the space-time universe and it's inhabitants referred to by the principal filmic narration. Sauriau's application to cinema brings out some important details. First, he takes care to furnish examples of both spatial and temporal diegetization of filmic elements. Second, he includes the phrase "by inference" ("dans l'intelligibilité), whose importance will presently become clear. At this point, then, we may summarize and define "diegesis" as being the narratively implied spatiotemporal world of the actions and characters." Gorbman, P21
"On which narrative level do we read this music? It is certainly not diegetic, for the forty-piece orchestra that plays is no where to be seen, or inferred, in the filmic space of the cafe. In a certain sense, we may hear it as both nondiegetic-for it's lack of a narrative source-and metadiegetic- since the scene's conversation seems to trigger X's memory of the romance and the song that went with it; wordlessly, he 'takes over' part of the film's narration and we are privileged to read his musical thoughts." Gorbman, P. 23
The second occasion is as Officer Brody is throwing bait in to the water to lure the shark out. No music is played for a very obvious reason and that is to scare the audience. The fact that we haven't heard that iconic music playing means we are in a more relaxed position and we aren't expecting to see the shark anytime soon but out of no where, the shark jumps out of the water and almost takes Officer Brody's hand off. I think that leads nicely on to the next point...
"A structural silence occurs where sound previously present in a film is later absent at structurally corresponding points. The film thus encourages us to expect the (musical) sound as before, so that when in fact there is no music, we are aware of it's absence." Gorbman, P. 19
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never underestimate the power of silence. Silence can be used just as effectively as music and can be used to show a lack of communication between characters that punctuates a previous scene, where an argument happened for instance. That's not complete lack of sound by the way, there still needs to be diegetic sound in the scene to get across the tension between characters. Let me give a quick example:
Bob and Jill had an argument the night before. Bob wakes up the next morning and goes in to the kitchen to see Jill sitting at the breakfast bar waiting for the toast to pop up. Bob switches on the kettle and sits at the far end of the breakfast bar. Neither of them say a word. All that can be heard is the kettle going and toaster ready to pop up.
I suppose you could play somber music here also to show that their relationship is falling apart but if non-diegetic music has been played in other scenes, the total lack of music will pack more of a punch to the scene, rather than adding the music. The audience will connect that there is no music because of their blazing row the scene prior.
"For example, Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) begins with a title shot, "1909," accompanied by busy, cheery music in a major key. The first sequence follows, introducing the two protagonists as young boys, playing boys' games - depicted as harmless - which involve various degrees of trickery and petty theft. The next sequence takes place six years later, when they have graduated into "real"crime. Its corresponding introductory title shot, "1915," is not accompanied by music. The silence suggests a loss of frivolity, a fall from the childhood games of innocence that had initiated the two into their lives as criminals." Gorbman, P. 19
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just got a good quote that isn't from any academic and it won't be used to prove a point as it comes from my girlfriend. Although if I do find a scholoarly quote that says near enough the same thing, I may use that instead.
"cause we were all saying how dificult it is to communicate with people when its not face to face.. like through calls or emails and how not seeing the expression on sombodys face allows you to interpret a sentance in a completely different way to its intention" Christine Phillips
So basically, even in real life, sound without image can lead to puzzlement, much like in films. If there is a highly charged chase scene with no sound, it would not have the same effect as it would with diegetic or non-diegetic sound added to it. Interesting to think, isn't it?
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- Music can resemble the action on screen also and therefore compliment the scene to help deliver the mood to the audience. For example, high energetic non-diegetic music could be played over a fight scene or a car chase scene to get the audiences adrenaline up so that we feel the same sort of emotion as our characters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTFv8zaoFdI
Diegetic music can also be used to get the audience's emotion going as well, more commonly found in romantic films but can also be applied to other genre's as well...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFzFj7Mlit4
Diegetic sound can also be used to make an audience feel the desired emotion for the scene. In this example it uses non-diegetic music to get the emotions started and then it thrusts in the diegetic sound of the car engines roaring as soon as the car chase begins.
"In standard narrative filmmaking, the rhythm and mood of diegetic music that "coincidentally" plays with a scene has been made to match the scene's mood and pace with an uncanny consistency. This practice in fact implies a departure of diegetic music from it's naturalistic independence and a movement towards the action-imitating roles we might more readily expect of nondiegetic music." Gorbman, P. 24
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music can also be used to counteract actions taking place in a scene. The example used in the book, I know, lazy but i'm bloody hungry, is upbeat diegetic music being played at a party as the protagonist receives a letter saying her lover had died. The upbeat music shows no respect to the information that we have just been told and continues to be upbeat and happy. One example that I have come across before that has used this technique beofre was in my favourite episode of Skins where Sid's dad has died and he tells his best mate and breaks down in the middle of a concert. The music isn't really, well, super upbeat but it slightly contradicts the emotion we are witnessing but at the same time, it sort of makes the music "fit" the emotion some how.
That leads me on to my next lesson, that whatever music you put to a scene will cause some sort of emotional response to resonate with your audience. Of course, it's a case of finding the music to give the audience the response you want them to have. It's no good having a masked murderer chase a teenager around a house if you put benny hill music over it, as it's not going to scare your audience, it'll more than likely have them laughing. Now obviously in this example i'm referring to non-diegetic, compared to the diegetic sound of the Skins example which also applies to any music working with a scene.
"What we may indeed remark about the special expressive effect of diegetic music is its capacity to create irony, in a more 'natural' way than nondiegetic music. Imagine, for instance, that the heroine is enjoying herself at a party; people dance and shout to a lively jitterbug. Suddenly a message arrives for her saying her fiance has just been killed. As a close-up shows us the note, the gay music continues to to revel on the soundtrack, 'unaware' of its ironic commentary on her lover's death. Now imagine the scene conceived differently. Instead of being at a party, the heroine sits at home chatting with a neighbour. The unfortunate telegram arrives, and a nondiegetic rendition of the jitterbug accompanies the close-up. Now this seems a shocking exercise in sheer style and narrative self-consciousness. Even though we know that the narrator has been equally responsible for the music/image irony in the party scene, "his" creative effrontery strikes us with greater force in the second case-even puzzlement. By taking music meant as extranarrative comment and rendering it diegetic in the first example, the narration motivates, naturalizes the music, makes its disparity with the filmed events acceptable." Gorbman, P. 23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, confirmation of something I realised before. Sound has the ability to cover edits, or as Gorbman puts it, "it provides temporal continuity to two spatially discontinuous shots..." in reference to two characters entering a saloon in Public Enemy (1931). In that scene, it is diegetic music that provides the bridge between the cuts. You hear a piano playing from inside and then it cuts to them walking through the doors and the music bridges the gap to make it look seamless and all taking place at the same time.
"What in a film makes it possible for us to infer that characters and space exist even when they do not appear on screen, to infer a logically continuous universe, when the film presents only a series of two-dimensional compositions - discrete and discontinuous shots? In other words, how do the perceived sounds and images, all editied and spliced together, give usthe impression of some 'real' world they are supposedly extracted from? We seem to have the capacity to impose continuity on filmed images and sounds before us - a capacity to take Kuleshov's mini-sequence composed of of a shot of a man's face followed by a shot of a bowl of soup followed by a shot of the man again, and to say that the man stands near the table and is looking at the food (even before jumping to the connotative level on which we perceive him expressing hunger). From three fragments of a supposed reality, we infer, reconstruct, the diegesis; all narrative representation presents us the subject from which we derive the fable." Gorbman. P. 21
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Disscussing a segment from François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1961):
"Let us now perform a commutation on the bicycling segment by changing the music on the soundtrack. First, if we put the music into a minor mode, a sadder, darker, more remote feeling comes upon the scene. Later in the film the melody does in fact appear in minor; and, especially by contrast to its previous statement in major, it gives all the more poignancy to the mood of its scene. Or we might change the tempo of the music. If played much faster, allegro staccato, this music will add an energy, an allégresse to the three character's bicycling, and perhaps even an optimism not previously suggested in Delerue's score." Gorbman, P. 17
"What would a musical silence do to the bicyclers' promenade? Interestingly, this depends on what kind of silence is imposed. A diegetic musical silence might consist of the characters wending their way along the road to the sole sound of pedals and gears creaking. In this sort of scene, which conventionally demands background music, diegetic sound with no music can function effectively to make the diegetic space more immediate, more palpable, in the absence of that Muzak-like overlay so often thrust on the spectator's consciousness. (It also emphasizes that the characters are not speaking, where there is no music to mitigate this verbal silence.) Conventional practice has made an anchor of background music, such that it dictates what the viewer's response to the images ought to be. Remove it from a scene whose emotional content is not explicit and you risk confronting the audience with an image they might fail to interpret." Gorbman, P.18
That's a quote-riffic post there and all the decent quotes I think from what I have read from it. I'll take a break now, may make some food and then get cracking on the next book about sound. Balls, there's one more quote for this book:
"For French critic-musician Michel Chion, struck by narrative cinema's frequent use of diegetic music for ironic effects, such music is not only "unaware" of the dramatic situation, but "indifferent" - or, as he puts it, "anempathetic." Gorbman, P. 24
OK, that's it now, i'm taking an hour 1/2 break from work....
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