MISEA

Measuring the impact of sound effects and ambiances on audiences in certain key paradigms

Sound Design for Film can be understood as the art of creating the audio component of an audio visual experience, with the conscious intentionality of supporting narrative, eliciting emotion, imparting meaning, and transforming the experiential quality of viewing. Except for occasional references to extraordinary films over history that have used sound in interesting ways, film theory most often puts sound in a supportive role, focusing on mimesis and diegesis. Another exception is with music, since music theory and cognition are a vast field of study unto themselves. But sound effects, ambiances, and particularly mixing are largely ignored. When film sound theory is addressed, it is most often done from a visual perspective, using the construct of diegesis as a fundamental paradigm or addressing sound semiotics as giving sonic signifiers to the image, making the image more potent or “real”.

So, in this project the starting question is: How we can liberate film sound (dialogue, sound fx, music and mixing) from image paradigms theoretically, and then bring it back into conversation with image on equal grounds?