For this week’s scrutiny, I would like to use Bill Nichols’ writing in Engaging Cinema as a lens through which to dig deeper into a moment from Stories We Tell. This same moment was discussed on page 60 of Amelie Hastie’s The Vulnerable Spectator piece, centering around the clip from 1:26:56 to 1:28:11. As Hastie describes, this sequence uses a voice-over technique in which we hear Sarah read an e-mail to Harry about her vision for the film and what its core messages would be about: namely, the “discrepancies of stories,” “the fact that the truth about the past is often ephemeral,” and that stories usually “end up with shifts and fictions in them, mostly unintended” (Hastie 60). As this voice-over plays, the viewer is finally given a transparent look at the fictional visual elements of the documentary that were previously implied to be truths or at least much more subtly incorporated into the film’s narrative. We see the younger Polley family eating at the dinner table through the lens of a “home video,” followed immediately by an outside view of adult Sarah directing the camerawoman where to move and how to shoot. We see young actors prepping for their scenes and, poignantly, Sarah in the same room as the actor playing her deceased mother, speaking with her directly and revealing the depths of the fabrication.

Some may feel deceived by this decision, the rug pulled out from under them in the last third of the film as many of the “home videos” they believed in and connected with emotionally are revealed to be fake. While watching the documentary, I had doubts early in the film that any family did so much filming around the home, especially when video cameras were heavy and unwieldy, let alone that they captured such beautifully composed and Normal Rockwell-esque moments so consistently, yet I still felt a strange sense of betrayal when the true mechanisms of the fabricated “home video” moments were revealed. In a way, I think this is a fair reaction. Most people go into a documentary about actual events expecting to be told the truth, facts and objective perspectives. Having it shown so plainly near the end of the film that this is not strictly true can be upsetting, not because we aren’t aware of the tricks of the trade behind even “factual” films, but because we want to believe in the illusion created by the filmmaker, even if we are aware of our own willful naivety.

However, this is by no means a condemnation of using purposefully-crafted, fictional elements such as fake “home videos” in order to better convey a story or message. This is where I would like to bring in Nichols’ piece in order to better examine why exactly this technique not only works, but is a valid form of “documentation” that is, at times, more “truthful” than objective fact.

As the very core of the documentary itself seems to point out, the “truth” can become a bit tricky when the very human element of memories comes in. No one person will remember the exact same things about an event, person, or time after all. For example, nearly every account of Diane’s reaction to her pregnancy with Sarah contradicts each other, with some claiming she was ecstatic while others claim she was distraught. However, this doesn’t mean that any account was necessarily right or wrong. Maybe some people misunderstood Diane’s emotions but believe entirely that they correctly interpreted her reaction. Maybe Diane herself fluctuated between excitement and dread, warring between having a child with someone she loved and having a child with a man who wasn’t her husband. Maybe some people are simply misremembering after many years of separation from the moment. Maybe Diane allowed different facets of herself to be revealed at different times, to different people. The point is that as the documentary says, each individual has a unique perspective on any event, has their own truth, and in combining all of these truths into one overarching narrative you will inevitably get something that is both entirely truthful and entirely false. In a way, this is exactly the same balance taking place in the visuals of the documentary, including the use of directed, scripted videos in place of actual home movies.

It makes sense for a documentary about the conflicting personal truths and falsehoods of an event to embrace the same thought for its visuals. It does utilize actual photos and videos of Diane and Sarah’s family throughout, keeping that core element of factual, objective truth. However, what the fake home movies add to the documentary is a visual enforcement of the words spoken throughout, a fantasy of what the stories told actually look like in the mind of Sarah. In imagining the scene of a memory told by another person, we are left with a video that is both “truth” at its heart—in both the memory and in Sarah’s emotional vision of it—as well as a lie completely fabricated and inherently different from that memory, since it could never be perfectly replicated, let alone by someone who was either very young at the time or not yet born at all. However, I suppose my argument regarding all this is if that actually matters to the impact of the film?

Sure, we may be left feeling betrayed and suspicious of the documentary’s factual merit once we realize that a large chunk of the visuals given as truth were actually fake, but until that point the fake clips do their job within the film. This is a story about stories, and a very personal narrative within a family, not a documentary claiming to have all the facts about an objective issue that can be followed with statistics and news reports like an opioid crisis or the devastation caused by a hurricane. It is inherently based in emotion and personal testimony, and the goal of the film seems to me to be an emotional, reflective one. As Sarah herself states, it’s a film made to bring her mother back to life, to learn about her and the decisions she made that so deeply affected their entire family and those around her. For viewers outside of that bubble, I would suggest that it is a film meant to impact emotionally, to prompt reflection on one’s own story, the stories of the people around them, and how the interplay of lies and truths are present in everything, particularly interpersonal relationships. In order to connect with the audience enough to achieve this goal, in order to prompt a genuine emotional response, scenes were fabricated to better illustrate the situations and persons involved, as well as their relationships. These scenes, fictional as they are, better humanize and endear the audience to the “players” in the story through rhetorical devices.

This is where Nichols’ own words really become relevant to this analysis of Stories We Tell. As he states in Engaging Cinema on page 99, “Like the classic art of oratory, rhetorical film discourse serves to move or affect, persuade or convince the audience. Persuasiveness is not necessarily identical to persuasion: a documentary may move viewers or arouse feelings more than persuade them of the soundness of a specific argument.” We as the audience are persuaded to feel a certain way about Diane, Sarah, and their family’s stories rather than to examine the factual “truths” of what happened. Nichols continues this train of thought on page 100, saying that these types of films “do not make literal arguments. They draw us into a particular perspective on the world and invite us to experience the world in a distinct way.” He continues later on the page to say that “often there is no clear-cut solution to a real-life problem, and logic alone cannot persuade. In this case, the premises or assumptions that lead individuals to take up different positions may derive from values and beliefs. Here, rhetoric takes priority over pure logic.” In this way, the “logic” or “facts” of this documentary are instead the values and beliefs of the family, the emotions conveyed, and the fabricated home movies are just another device in communicating these persuasive elements.

Nichols himself explains how this technique is so effective on page 101, when he states that “for rhetorical purposes the appearance of logic may do the job as well as actual logic.” He continues this thought on page 102 by saying that “the anecdotes, impressions, or proofs may, in fact, be true, but most important for rhetorical discourse is that they convey the impression of truthfulness.” This is exactly the phenomenon that the scripted “home videos” accomplish. Even after realizing that the videos are essentially fake, we still see the impression of truthfulness that they were created with and that they leave behind on the audience. We are being told a story. If the objective truth of the stories cannot be shown through actual home videos, a close approximation or visualized personal truth still makes a deeply emotional impact—in some ways, possibly even more so than actual videos of the moments would! The fabrications are purposefully directed, with intentional compositions and emotive actors all working towards a specific tone and message, and it could be argued that such an approach conveys the intended emotions of the memories better than hypothetical, actual home videos would have. After all, there’s a reason life lessons are often taught through fictional stories rather than retellings of actual events—sometimes the truth is more clearly found in fiction.

Questions:

• At what moment did you realize that fake “home movies” were being shown in the documentary? How did you feel when you realized this? Do you think this is an effective technique and is it “credible” in a documentary-style film?

• In what ways does Stories We Tell follow the three principles of good rhetorical discourse (credible, convincing, compelling)? In which ways does it intentionally break or challenge these principles?

• What six modes of organization from Nichols’ reading do you see most clearly in Stories We Tell? What about in Cameraperson? Do you think these chosen modes were the best choices for these particular narratives?

Sources:

Hastie, Amelie. “The Vulnerable Spectator: Vagaries of Memory, Verities of Form.” Film Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 2, 2013, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2014.67.2.59. Accessed 1 November 2020.

Nichols, Bill. Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies. W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.

Stories We Tell. Dir. Sarah Polley. Mongrel Media, 2012. OSU Secured Media Library. Web. 1 November 2020.

In order to set the scene for a discussion regarding the different “spaces” inherent to the world of cinema dictated at least in part by sound, I will focus first on Mary Ann Doane’s writing in “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” and move on to relevant insights from John Belton’s “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound” and Jean-Pierre Geuens’ “Sound.” While moving through the readings for this week, I was fascinated by the authors’ careful dissections of how sound used in cinema creates different “layers” of cinematic space and engagement for the audience. The clearest and most insightful groundwork analysis of this phenomenon is in my opinion Doane’s “The Voice in Cinema,” so that reading will act as the core of my examination.

Textual Analysis:

To discuss the power of sound in cinema, I’ll start with arguments surrounding its birth. Silent film compensated for the lack of sound with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, but suffered from a distinct separation effect on the audience between what they were watching and what they were hearing. There was no opportunity for complete immersion because they were left too aware of their own bodies in the space of the theater, of the heartbeat in their ears and the shuffling and coughing of the audience around them. Some writers, like Jean-Pierre Geuens, claim that cinema lost a part of itself when it moved away from silent film as audio and dialogue became crutches for moving plot along and explaining emotions and interactions, when the exaggerated movements and expressions of the human body were sometimes equally if not more effective. However, the inclusion of sound allowed for something else that visuals alone could not: total immersion of the phantasmatic body.

According to Doane, when it comes to cinema there are three types of space put into play: that of the limitless diegesis found within the film itself, the visible frame acting as a window of sorts into the diegesis space, and the space of the theater or room in which the film is being watched and heard. Sound plays out in these spaces in a different way than the visuals. In the diegesis itself, audio expands the world by giving us context clues and interactions of the off-screen environment; in the camera frame, it connects to the visuals and works to unify the different aspects of the film into a cohesive whole; and in the audience space, it envelopes the viewers and links their sense of hearing directly to the film’s spatial environment. Somewhere between these three spaces, a crucial fourth space is created in the phantasmatic body.

The phantasmatic body is a non-physical body in which the audience can experience the entirety of the film’s world through an immersive space. This body is created through harmony and coherence of the audience’s senses, using visuals and audio in tandem to create a fuller and more organic sensation of being within the film’s world, of believing its authenticity. The visual space of the film seen in the frame can only go so far in convincing an audience of its reality, but it can be artificially expanded to give the illusion of a wider world and a sense of reality through sound. Audio creates this implication through the physical “environment” of the film’s space, carefully using ambient sound and dialogue to give the illusion of atmosphere and a world in the film beyond what we see on camera. Jean-Pierre Geuens explains this well, stating that although we may be visually focused on one area or scene, background sounds “imply an ever-receding landscape of human activity beyond that which is visually available….other sounds, from people and things we do not see, complete the picture so to speak, testifying to the presence of an entire world out there” (205).

Thanks to this “extended film world” stretching beyond the scope of the screen, cinema can take advantage of techniques such as “voice-off” in order to strengthen this sense of imagined environmental space and better guide the narrative. By hearing the voice or movements of a character who is not visible within the frame, we are made aware of another presence in the diegesis of the film, existing in that scene’s same space even if they are not visible. This placement within the film world’s space unconsciously encourages the idea of a singular, coherent and unbroken phantasmic space to the audience, a sort of “blank” that they are encouraged to fill in themselves with the information given, creating a uniquely personal revelation.

Although voice-off works well for expanding the world of the diegesis, it must be employed carefully or risk breaking audience immersion. If this immersion-breaking is done in a purposeful manner, however, it can function as a method for conveying voice outside of the strictly “real” diegesis: a character’s inner thoughts, the voice of a character outside of the visual timeline offering narration, the words of a higher power, and so on. The voice “displays what is inaccessible to the image, what exceeds the visible” (324). The extreme way in which this technique bends the “laws” of film dialogue and diegesis gives these voice-offs a format for speaking directly to the audience without having to filter through a character,

In “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound,” John Belton supports the use of voice-off audio to lend to the diegetic world, pointing out that more often than not the audio will be connected to a sensible source that “explains” its appearance, whether that be seen directly on screen at a later time, explained by character dialogue, or just alluded to through context and audience fill-in. He points out that this phenomenon is another example of the audience interacting with a pocket of non-real space created purely by sound, and that by using imagination to fill in the visual gaps, a “reality of a different order” is created that doesn’t correspond “directly to ‘objective reality’ but rather to a secondary representation of it” (334). Images become credible to their audience through being convincing in their reality; even clearly “unreal” worlds of animation typically follow some laws of physics and humanly recognizable levels of interaction. However, sounds must only be passingly recognizable as the “real” in that they support the visuals and the story without needing such scrutinization for authenticity. Sound strives to give the audience the audio they need to understand the visual and the story, not the audio of our real world.

Belton continues this point by comparing the inherently artificial capabilities of sound to the relatively ”truthful” visuals of the camera, since the camera directly records and reproduces the images set before it faithfully, despite any intentional distortion. Although this is perhaps less true nowadays after CGI has reached the point of indistinguishability from reality, it is significant that sound itself has always been in a “lesser” state of wholeness or authenticity, since the audible elements of a film—dialogue, sound effects, and music—can and often are recorded separately before being edited and mixed together into the overall soundtrack. Jean-Pierre Geuens offers a rebuttal for any that may take offense to this depiction of sound as negative, pointing to the important distinction explained by what Ernst Gombrich said about painting: “What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanisms of certain effects. His is a psychological problem—that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that no one individual shape [on the painting itself] corresponds to what we call ‘reality’”(216). This metaphor is great for describing why “artificial” does not necessarily mean “lesser” and how the purely constructed can evoke incredibly genuine emotions and reactions, just as much so as the “real.”

This play of artificiality and the authentic is present throughout all aspects of cinematic sound use, notably in how creators decide to use sound when deciding between the objectively real or the fictionally exaggerated. Is it better to vary the dialogue volume between a long shot and a close-up as actual sound would, for authenticity, or is the clarity of dialogue worth the disparity between angle changes? The answer, I think, lies in the immersive power of each decision and finding a balance at the highest point of audience acceptance. As Geuens states, “…the creative use of sound effects rests in keeping open a small but definite gap not only between the audio and the images but also between reality and the film” (206).

This same idea is expanded upon by Geuens when he lays out his analysis of how we as humans take in the sound arounds us in our everyday lives, and learn to categorize them into a hierarchy of prioritization and attention depending on our familiarity with said sounds. Cinema uses this fact of human function to mimic reality and create atmosphere but also to emphasize the key audio cues in a film. An example is muting the background sound in Deadwood and focusing entirely on heightened dialogue in order to emphasize that we should be paying attention to the words: a key driving force in understanding the series’ many unfolding plots and interactions. Similarly, M brings attention to important sounds by balancing unnerving silence with sudden, jarring, and attention-grabbing bursts of noise, such as shouts, gongs or car horns. This once again rides the balance of reality and fiction, citing how we filter sound in order to make audio decisions, while utilizing artificiality to emphasize the most important aspects.

A fascinating aspect of sound artificiality pointed out by Geuens is how the music score of a film also affects the phantasmic body of the audience and the space they immerse themselves in. Sometimes the score is a helpful supplement to the tone and events of a film, but despite being entirely artificial, this aspect is powerful enough that all too often it is used as a crutch instead for a weak cinematic setup. If the score goes further than strengthening an already powerful narrative and visual arrangement and instead fills in crucial gaps left in either aspect with an “instructed emotion” for the audience, then the reliance on the score has gone too far. Geuens claims that using the emotional pull of music in such a way is just using it as a “jumping off material for the release of vague emotional sentiments connected to our own experience of [emotion or situation]” (209). In short, he explains that music and sound are often used to take advantage of an audience’s existing emotions due to outside circumstances and use them to cover for the visual and story mistakes in a film, which would be more glaring if the audience was purely focused on visuals. Making sure that a film would hold strong on its own even if the sound and score were taken away is a good method for rooting out core issues and better conveying emotion to the audience in their immersive space.

All of the above analyses make it clear that while the visual is often placed above the audible in terms of cinematic worth, with sound often thought of as an after-thought for an existing image, its worth and impact in narrative cinema is invaluable. Sound is rarely if ever entirely absent, and if it is then it is pointedly and noticeably so in an effort to contrast the tone of the moments when sound is utilized. Hearing is a sense unlike sight in that it can receive information on a much wider plane—from any direction at any time, from within the body or outside of it—and Doane makes an interesting point about its power in a “hallucinatory” sense, in that it may be the most appropriate for creating a new sense of immersive space for those encased within its influence. The third space that Doane earlier mentioned, that of the theater or room around the audience itself, can become transformed into a cocoon of audio from behind and above and to the side, crafting a sort of imaginary space outside of what is the strictly real. Through cohesion between the sound and visuals of the film, such unity grounds the spectator in the world of the film through their phantasmic body, stepping into the illusion and letting their senses accept a fake reality, at least for a while. It’s interesting to think about the commentary regarding mise-en-scene and how through the power of sound in a real space, it can transcend the world of the film itself and touch the physical body of the audience to elevate their reception to another level of depth.

Belton contradicts Doane’s views in this regard, stating that sound is a secondary characteristic of film, and cannot be considered whole or complete on its own. According to him, sound only achieves authenticity when it is successfully paired with visuals that make sense of its presence. He cites dubbing, in which the dialogue does not match up to the visuals of the characters’ mouths, and its negative reception, as an example of sound’s secondary functioning and necessary connection to visuals for audience acceptance. Jean-Pierre Geuens, on the other hand, supports Doane’s claims in saying that sound in film ceased being a mere accessory long ago, and instead has become an equal partner to it. On an intellectual level, I personally see sound as a primary aspect of film on equal footing with visuals, but I do admit that as an animator I think I do have a tendency to award more attention and significance to a film’s visuals over its audio, which I would like to work on amending.

Viewings Analysis:

In regards to the media viewed this week, it’s clear that the audio of both M and Deadwood interacts well with the aforementioned texts, as many of the above discussion points can be found in either viewing. In M, we see this put into action at the very start of the film, when a loud, jarring gong sound is used to signify the beginning of the program and catch our attention in a startling way, boosting the sound of the film to the top of our hierarchical attentions. Immediately following this, we see an example of director Fritz Lang’s audio preference for eerie, unsettling silences interspersed with equally abrupt bursts of noise that demand audience attention, which is used repeatedly to show a clear divide between the fearful silence of death and the loud passion of life.

Another interesting audio aspect that Lang incorporates is that of the voice-off used both in dialogue and sound effects. He utilizes dialogue to narrate over and explain actions, such as when the police chief details his officers’ busy schedule and exhaustion with an almost illustrative montage of the officers playing alongside it. Lang also uses voice-off to lead the camera from one moment or setting into another through cohesive narrative connection, such as Elsie’s mother shouting for her daughter with increasing desperation as we switch visuals through different locations, ending on the ominous shot of the child’s ball bouncing to a stop. In using voice-off in these ways, especially in the 1930s, Lang pushed the boundaries of what film audio did for its story, better immersing the audience in the smooth continuation of the narrative not through objective reality or explanatory audio-visual dialogue, but in truly connecting the visuals to the deeper meanings and themes of what the story is discussing.

Throughout M, it’s clear that Lang put careful thought and significance into his sound design decisions, particularly so because he was so reluctant to include sound at all. He realized he could use sound as an expressive substitute for the exaggerated motions and expressions of the silent film era, distorting the diegetic world and audience’s perception of it through purposeful use of audio cues. A solid example of this is the moment in which we see a beggar cover his ears at the grating, squeaky start-up of a music machine. As soon as he claps his hands over his ears, the music stops and silence sinks in for both him and the audience, further immersing us in the film and putting us into the scene itself in his spot. This moment sets a precedence for a later shot in which the killer tries to plug his own ears to stop the incessant whistling that follows him, only for it to continue and for the audience to realize that the tune is in his mind and not actually present in his environment.

The killer’s signature whistling itself is a prime example of all that sound is narratively capable of. The tune he whistles is in reference to a terrifying and violent scene in another play, so those familiar with that connection will feel uneasy at the implications of its use. Those who aren’t familiar with it quickly learn to associate the upbeat melody with violence and death—it becomes a sort of intrinsic norm or symbol that tells us upon its arrival that an attempt at murder is soon to follow.

Interestingly, the whistling of the murderer and the singing of the children at the very beginning of the film are the only uses of music throughout the entire narrative, linking music as a device to the child murders and a horrifying loss of life. This choice to forego music as a backdrop throughout the film leaves the audience nervously balancing between large chunks of film that are either constant dialogue or total, staticky silence. This use of highly contrasted sound keeps the on-edge atmosphere of the situation at the forefront of the narrative while also making the audience unnervingly aware of the “reality” of the plot, of its base in actual real-world events. Even sound effects are used sparingly, often to emphasize key parts of the story such as pounding footsteps or the heavy panting of the killer hiding away from both the law and the criminal underworld.

The final use of sound I want to discuss regarding M is the ending of the film, in which we see the grieving mothers of the murdered girls crying in court. The mother speaking to the audience says that everyone needs to keep a closer eye on the children, and even before she is finished speaking the screen fades to black. Through this method, Lang disconnects the visuals of the narrative from the audience and returns the viewers to their own bodies, out of the immersive space, just enough to bring that final message out of the world of the film and into reality, asking watchers to take it as a word of advice spoken directly to them from the grieving mothers.

As for the sound design used in Deadwood, I would like to bring attention to the techniques used consistently throughout the series, and how establishing those methods as the baseline created the perfect setup for the contrasting music score present at the end of this week’s episode.

In the very first scene of this week’s episode, we are given a perfect example of the usual Deadwood audio setup: a low hum of background movements and dialogue to set up atmosphere and context, with all of it muted just enough for the dialogue spoken by the focus characters to stand out and be clearly heard and emphasized. In this setup, pertinent sounds in the “foreground” of the bubble of space, where the camera is focused, are also accentuated, such as the sharp clatter of poker chips being dropped onto the table. Sound that is significant or “close” to the camera is always strengthened so we stay in the moment and know what to pay attention to.

Another common audio mechanic used in Deadwood is the previously discussed “off-voice” technique, particularly for sound effects. We see it employed in the aforementioned clatter of poker chips at 01:45, where we know through intrinsic context and the environment that Bill Hickock is playing poker at the saloon table and that he’s throwing down a bet, even if we don’t see the chips themselves. Shortly after, around 3:33, this technique is used again for the loud, rhythmic hammering of Seth building up his shop, wherein we hear the noise before the camera reveals to us where the sound is originating from. This technique is used often throughout the series, either to keep visual attention elsewhere while informing us of a simultaneous action or to lead us into a new moment, such as when Mrs. Garret is off-camera, but we transition into her room through the audio cue of a crash of glass at 17:12, only to see the casualty is her bottle of laudanum.

The audience faces further sound immersion in Deadwood through frequent use of volume adjustment for environmental noise, most obviously in exterior scenes versus interior scenes. When Bill Hickock walks up to Seth hammering away at his shop, we hear dogs barking in the background, crickets chirping, and Bill’s footsteps crunching in the dirt. This atmospheric noise never drowns out the characters’ voices, but it is loud enough to be clearly noticeable. However, when we switch over to the next scene in which Bill returns to his room, the same environmental noise can be heard, now muffled through the walls and windows. This connects the two spaces and tells us that the scene is likely taking place right after the previous one, in terms of time. The shift in volume allows the viewer to sink into a quieter mood for the next scene, and to better focus on the characters’ dialogue and tense tones.

The final portion of Deadwood’s audio that I would like to discuss for this week would be the striking shift into musical score at 53:40. Deadwood is a series driven by its dialogue and atmospheric sound, and aside from the opening title, I honestly can’t recall a time when a music score was brought into the narrative, or at least not one powerful enough for conscious notice. When Bill Hickock is shot at the end of the episode, the ever-present atmospheric sound dies away to be replaced by the intense music score, overpowering dialogue and ambient sound entirely. This is significant, because through audio cue alone we the audience are being told that this is an important turning point in the narrative. It is also an emotional influencer, immersing us this time not in the physical environment of Deadwood, but instead in the inner turmoil, alarm, and grief of Seth, Jane, and the entire town. The music conveys the rising tension, and like a rush of blood pounding in your ears it drowns out everything else until the music is all you hear. The chilling rise of ominous notes feels like a setup for what’s to come next in the story, as we switch visuals between Bill’s bleeding body, the man riding into down with a decapitated Native American head, and the diseased Andy twitching in bed. The music itself is taking over the narrative and saying, “Here’s where fate takes a turn. Here’s where it all begins.”

…Well, that was entirely too lengthy of an analysis! Apologies. I do have a few questions for the class to discuss regarding the use of sound in film and particularly its use in our viewings this week. Namely:

1. Do you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with the readings for this week and their views on how important (or unimportant) sound is to a film? What specific claims or discussions?
2. What do you think of the “phantasmagoric” spaces created through sound in cinema? How crucial are they to the immersive elements and storytelling of films?
3. What do you think are some of the most powerful uses of sound design exhibited in the films/viewings we’ve had so far this semester? Why?