The Audiovisual Chord: Embodied Listening in Film

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Funding
Contents
1: Introduction
Part I: From Bresson Towards a Phenomenological Approach to Film and Film Sound: Phenomenology Delivers a Useful Theoretical Framework
2: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”
A Man Escaped or The Wind Blows Wherever It Pleases
The Opening Scene of A Man Escaped
A Focus on the Audience’s Experience
Bresson’s Inner Style
The Use of Sound in A Man Escaped, in the Writings of Truffaut, Bordwell and Thompson, and Chion
François Truffaut: A Break with the Canon of Classical Cinema, Moving with Instead of Identifying with the Character
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson: Sound Anticipates and Guides Our Expectations
Michel Chion: Topography of Sounds
Reading the Critics and Scholars, a Question Arises
Bresson as a Phenomenologist?
Le cinématographe as a Writing in Movement with Moving Images and Sounds
References
3: Audiovisual Perception: The Audiovisual Contract, Heautonomy of Sound and Image and Filmic Listening
Some Different Approaches to the Intertwining of Sound and Image
A Fragment of A Man Escaped as Starting Point
Different Perspectives from Which to Analyse Sound in Film
Michel Chion: Audio-Vision
Gilles Deleuze: The Heautonomous Sound
The Filmic Listening of Véronique Campan
References
4: Phenomenology, an Introduction
Phenomenology as Theoretical Framework for Film Sound?
Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl
Husserl’s Static Phenomenology
How Does This Work for Sound?
Franz Brentano: Sound as a Mental Phenomenon
Husserl’s Genetic Phenomenology
How We Can Relate Inner Time-Consciousness to Sound in Film and to Film as a Time-Object?
The Difference Between an Event and an Experience in Bresson’s A Man Escaped
Perception of Another Body: Husserl’s Concept of Paarung (Pairing or Coupling)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
One’s Body as a Being-in-the-World and a Being-Towards-the-World
The Body Schema as an Experience of the Body in the World and the Body as a Knot of Significations
A Pre-reflective Intentionality of the Body
Bodily Resonance and the Situatedness of the Body in Space
The Lived Space and Concrete and Abstract Movements Evoking Spaces
The World as the Primordial Unity of All Our Experiences, Revealed by Passive Synthesis
Bresson’s Cinématographe and the Cinématographer as “Metteur en ordre”
References
Part II: A Phenomenological Approach to the Experience and Perception of Film Sound and Film Yields New Insights: Thinking in Movement, Auditory Spaces and the Audiovisual Chord
References
5: A Phenomenological Approach to Audiovisual Experience in Practice
A Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound with the Body of the Listener/Spectator at the Centre of His/Her Experience
Case Studies
Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989)
Sound and Listening in Elephant
Walking
Gunshots
Car Noise as Sonic Event, Sound Environment or Sonic Field?
Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Audiovisual Experience Without Hierarchy Between Sound and Image? Sensory Information Evoking a Life-World
Listening to /Sound/ in an Audiovisual Context
Michel Chion
Walter Murch
Phenomenological Approaches to Film, /Sound/ and Music
A Phenomenological Approach to Film
A Phenomenological Approach to /Sound/
Don Ihde: Listening and Voice—A Phenomenology of Sound
Roland Barthes: Panic Listening
Embodied Listening and Bodily Felt Sound: Listening from Within
A Phenomenological Approach to Music
Merleau-Ponty and Cinema
References
6: Thinking in Movement, and Different Ways to Create Space in Film Sound
The Body as the Centre of a Film Experience: Transmodality of the Felt (Film) Sound and the Film as a Whole
How to Develop a Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound with the Body at the Centre of the Audiovisual Experience and thus, Perception
A Phenomenological Approach Must Start from Experience
Listening as an “Entrance Gate” in Film Theory
Sound in Film as a Dynamic Transmodal Movement
Sound as a Dynamic Movement: Forms of Vitality (Daniel Stern) and Effort Theory (Rudolf von Laban)
Forms of Vitality at the Basis of a Thinking in Movement
The Dynamic Body Schema as a Being-in-the-World and Being-Towards-the-World
John Hull, the Whole-Body-Seer: Do We Need Sight to Create Space?
How Is Listening Related to the Body Schema?
The Creation of Space from the Perspective of a Body Schema
The Contribution of the Auditory Space to the Filmic Space
The Auditory Space Within Le Cinématographe of Bresson
Filmic Space Constituted from Within and from Without
Exploring Auditory Spaces in Some Case Studies
La ville Louvre (1990) by Nicolas Philibert: “Spaces Speak”
The First Sequence from Elephant (1989) by Alan Clarke: The Experience of a Space
Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004) by Michelangelo Antonioni
A(n) (Auditory) Space Experienced During the Feast of St Johns in the Piazza Navona in Rome Described: The Auditory Space as a Surrounding Sphere
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983): Spaces Created in the Mind, Expressed as Invisible Spaces in Sound
Cold Mountain (Anthony Mingella, 2003) and It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan, 2016) Experiential Inner Spaces
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Immersion as a Loss of Spatial Referentiality, When Inner and External Spaces Merge
Exploring the Auditory Space as a (Inter)Human Sphere
In Film Experience, the Audience Creates the (Virtual) Filmic Space
References
7: The Audiovisual Chord, an Invitation to the Audience to Interact
From Fragmented Appearances to a Whole
The Audiovisual Chord in Film as a Co-Respondence of Movements
The Audiovisual Chord as a Tool in Film Composition
Case Studies
Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock and Là-bas (2006) by Chantal Akerman
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007): Polychrony and Polytopy— The Audiovisual Chord as Part of the Film as a Whole
The Audiovisual Chord, a Structuring Element in Film Composition: A Man Escaped by Bresson
Portrait of a Lady on Fire by Céline Sciamma: The Starting Knot for the Creation of Her Film and the Importance of Forms of Vitality in the Experience of an Audiovisual Chord
References
Part III: The Audiovisual Chord with the Body as the Sense of Movement at the Centre of the Listener/Spectator’s Film Experience, in the Perspective of Film as an Audiovisual Composition: Revisiting Early Sound Film, Film Sound, Film Editing and the Process of Film-Making
An Innovative Perspective in the History of Sound Film?
8: Embodied Listening, Felt Sound and the Audiovisual Chord in Film History
The Beginnings of the Sound Film
Exploring the Possibilities of the Sound Film
Enthusiasm (1931) by Dziga Vertov: The Importance of Synchronicity, the Superimposition of Spaces and Sound as an Energetic Movement
Asynchronism (1929) and The Deserter (1933) by Vsevolod Pudovkin: Combining Sound and Image in Film Versus Sound and Image in Real Life, and the Possibility of Using Sound to Reveal Inner Space
Counterpoint and the Montage of Attraction in Alexander Nevsky (1938) by Sergei Eisenstein
Jean Vigo: Zero for Conduct (Zéro de conduite, 1933)
Béla Balázs, “Tonfilm” (1930): /Sound/ and Space
M (1931) by Fritz Lang
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles: Spaces and the Importance of the Ear in Editing
Space, Movement and Rhythm as the Most Important Elements in Early Sound Films
References
9: The Audiovisual Chord in Relation to Film as an Audiovisual Composition
Sound as a Natural Partner of Image in Film as an Audiovisual Composition
Rhythm and Time at the Basis of Film as an Audiovisual Composition
Possible Constellations of the Audiovisual Chord as Compositional Strategies
Overview of Possible Audiovisual Chords
Synchresis
Synchronicity But Different Life-Worlds Referring to Different Characters or Events
The Observer at the Same Spot, But Different Life-worlds Presented in Sound and Image
The Audiovisual Chord Revealing the Body Schema and the Being-in-the-World and Towards-the-World of a Character
The Audiovisual Chord from an Auditory Perspective
Inner and External Spaces Combine in the Audiovisual Chord
The Importance of Elaborated Audiovisual Chords in the Transmission of an Experience: Three Monkeys (2008) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan as Case Study
References
10: The Importance of Embodied (Panic) Listening in Film as an Audiovisual Composition
Music and /Sound/ as Two Different Filmic Elements that Choreograph the Listener/Spectator Differently
Overview of Spaces
Case Study: Gerry (2002) by Gus Van Sant
Case Study: Institute Benjamenta (1996) by the Quay Brothers
Music as a Felt Sound in Film
The Organisation of the Forms of Vitality at the Basis of a Musical Composition
The Musical Composition Within the Film Composition
Listening to Film with a Resonant Body
References
11: A Phenomenological Approach to Film Sound and Film at the Basis of Film-Making
How to Implement the Proposed Key Concepts and Tools in Film-Making?
Positing Experience at the Basis of Film-Making
(Na het verdwijnen) (2018) by Maï Calon
Erpe Mere (2019) by Noemi Osselaer
Taking a Sound Perspective as a Compositional Strategy to Create a Film as a Whole
The Day That Was White (2021) by Wannes Vanspauwen
Because We Are Visual (2010) by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes
Environs (2020) by Bas Verbruggen
Film-Making from Within
Anemone (2006), Juliette (2007), Venus vs. Me (2010) and Past Imperfect (2016) by Nathalie Teirlinck
L’infini (2014) and Girl (2018) by Lukas Dhont
Conclusion
References
Websites
Index