Soundtrack, The - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2007

The Coen brothers' approach to film-making places them among a minority of film-makers that integrate aural ingredients from the beginning of the film-making process. The Coens established this mode of production as standard practice in their second film, Raising Arizona (1987), a comedy told primarily through repetition and cartoon-like exaggeration. To help communicate these basic elements, the Coens asked their regular sound personnel to construct a soundtrack that emphasized them. As a result, many of the aural ingredients recur throughout the film, reinforcing events or a sense of place. Music and effects also strengthen the rapid, and often chaotic, pace of events. Moreover, the dialogue accentuates the larger-than-life characters and helps situate their rustic nature. Through Raising Arizona the Coens not only demonstrate how sound can be integral to the film-making process, but they also show how another mode of production can challenge the long-standing dominance of image as the primary storyteller.

One of the most profound differences between film sound design and game sound design is that where film contains linear visual footage against which any number of sounds can be synchronized and blended, a game triggers individual sounds based on events occurring in the game at non-specified times. Broadly speaking, films are about emotional immersion within a narrative, where video games concern physical immersion in a universe of action and reaction. Games therefore require a radically different production philosophy from that of film, yet one that replicates the involvement of a dedicated audio post-production phase at the end of the project. This period would allow consideration of all the elements of music, dialogue and sound effects as fully integrated parts of the final game. Post-production sound design and mixing are therefore where video games can finally begin to articulate themselves with a similar sound design language to that of film.

The intricate deployment of all the elements of sound music, dialogue, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, as well as the intervals of silence in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky offers a complex multidimensional experience, creating in each viewer a unique response to sound. This article analyses the soundscape of Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker in order to understand the techniques employed, and how the use of sound creates a unique perceptual awareness in the audience. Rather than attempting to reveal meanings and symbols in the film, this article explores how, through a sensitivity to the possibilities of sound in film, it is possible to transcend the confines of its traditional uses and enable in its perceiver the freedom to engage that allows for the individual's own sensitivity and subconscious mind to take an active role in creating a personal connection and meaning.

For each issue we invite comments from members of our editorial board and others on matters raised in this journal. We launch this thread with a short piece by Gustavo Costantini, whose review of the New York Music and Moving Image conference appears in this issue.