Through this week’s reading, I realized that there were so many strategic sound placings or characteristics about sound that I had been taking for granted. For example, while I did realize the difference between maybe the major and minor chord of the music they decided to play in the background, I did not realize that loudness, pitch, and timbre all affected the way the audience perceived the film. Specifically, in relation to the loudness, I did not realize that it was editing and a technique to have the loudness of someone further away to be quieter because that is what people perceive in real life. By applying this technique, the films appear more realistic and allows the viewers to get more engrossed.

One specific thing that I was a little confused about was the difference between fidelity and diegetic/nondiegetic sound. The textbook offered the definition of fidelity to be the extent to which the sound is faithful to the source. An example of a sound being unfaithful to the source is if a dog barks on the screen and the production decides to put a car horn instead. However, I thought that this definition was very similar to a nondiegetic sound because the textbook defines a nondiegetic sound as one that are coming from a source outside the story world. An example of a nondiegetic sound that they offered is when the camera rapidly zooms out and a whoosh sound accompanies the zoom out. While the two types of sound still seem similar to me, I think that the main difference between them is their purpose. I found that the main purpose behind the lack of fidelity in sound would be for comedic effect or even to provide a smooth transition. On the other hand, I thought that the use of nondiegetic sounds could be to evoke a feeling in the viewers because they could use an orchestra or a band that is not shown on the screen depending on the timbre, loudness, and pitch that they wanted to utilize. However, I feel like I still may need to look into the difference.

Another aspect about sound that I found interesting from the reading is the fact that the soundtrack could be recorded before or after the rest of the film has already been shot. This was interesting to me because it specifically mentions La La Land, which is the film that I am writing my Sequence Analysis about. Specifically, the textbook mentioned how the soundtrack was filmed beforehand and the actors are miming to the pre-recorded track. I thought that this was interesting because it made me think if most musical based films were all pre-recorded tracks and if there is a drastic change in the feelings that are evoked in the audience between films with a pre-recorded vs. a post-recorded sound track. This also did get me thinking about how difficult it might have been for the orchestra and producers to match a sound track to the film if the recording was not done prior to the filming.