While the visuality of a film often attracts the audience’s eyes, sound is also an important element of a film as it further advances the storyline. Filmmakers are forced to make decisions about the sounds used and include a mixture of speech, music, and noise, as sound affects how the audience perceives the film. For example, filmmakers strategically focus on the loudness of a noise, which is related to the amplitude, and it has an influence on perceived distance. The louder the sound is, the closer the audience assumes the producer of that noise to be. Additionally filmmakers make decisions regarding the pitch, which is the perceived highness or lowness of the sound, and the timbre, the harmonic components of a sound that affect the tone, in order to create a certain effect in their film. Sound also influences how the viewers perceive silence. An example from FILM ART is the conflict between Dumbledore and Voldermort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Silence is purposely present in between Voldermort’s attacks, in order for the actual attacks to appear extremely loud. This enables the audience to interpret the attacks as extreme and violent. 

I was particularly fascinated with how dialogue is incorporated into films. It is at first recorded during the actual filming but is later altered in the studio with a process called automated dialogue recording. During this process, the actors watch the footage from the scenes and re-speak their lines. This improves the audio quality and can also incorporate any necessary dialogue changes. Just as the scenes in films are edited together in order to smoothly create one continuous piece, the sounds are also edited in order to make the dialogue more clear and add or change existing sounds. The tone of the dialogue also emphasizes important moments. The soundscape in a shot influences what the viewers will feel when they watch the scene, so it is crucial for the filmmakers to think carefully about how they want their film to be perceived. 

Additionally, sound shapes the viewers’ expectations. For example, if someone is sitting inside a room and hears yelling outside the door, we then expect to see the person yelling in the next shot. It creates tension within the audience, and also illustrates the characters’ emotions. 

Sound also has an influence on the mise-en-scène of a scene. Sound shapes what the audience visualizes, as the music or dialogue in a scene can change how a character is viewed. For instance, if melancholic music covers a scene, the audience will feel empathy towards the character. Without the music, the audience may not be able to feel those specific emotions.