Monday, May 5, 2014

"The ear favors no particular 'point of view.'"

In film, this statement applies tenfold. Whether diegetic (within the film, e.g. - dialogue) or nondiegetic (outside of the film, e.g. - narration), sound can tell a story from various perspectives, regardless of what the camera is doing.
Let's examine Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM (1960):
In the infamous dance sequence with Moira Shearer, the music takes a different turn. We are presented with a radio (diegetic) blasting music. While this scene seems to suggest little more than a ruse to get Shearer’s character on her own, the sound structure of the scene tells of much more going on psychologically within Mark’s world. As he starts to enact his rather twisted plan, this diegetic music inexplicably fades out. There’s no explanation given within the visuals of the film; the sound simply zones out. It is however replaced with the piano melody that has gradually become a leitmotif for an impending murder which proceeds to get louder and louder. This music's existence suggests that Mark is actually scoring his snuff films in his own head, making a number of sections within the score come under that ever complex description of meta-diegetic. If his past is haunting him with voices that the viewers can hear, surely the viewer can also hear his cinematic autuerism deciding on his own musical scoring?

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