Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
74 M PS E . O R G difference between them is that while the screen, much like our own eyesight, can only show us what's in front of the camera, the "mise en scene," sound has the potential to enlarge the film world beyond the frame and put the audience aurally inside of it. This is done through sound design. "...sound design creates embodied meaning through perceptual and narrative immersion." (Coëgnarts and Kravanja, 2015) The multimodal nature of cinema and of our senses suggests that in the future, we may not even research sound and image in cinema separately; "Our senses, it seems, rarely work in isolation, suggesting our perceptual system seeks verification of the reality-status of an event through cross-modal confirmation, and so promotes the view that human beings are profoundly multimodal creatures." Adding that "Accruing evidence suggests audition also wields the capacity to shape visual perception. Shams, Kamitani, and Shimojo, for example, note multiple ways audition alters vision, particularly in the temporal domain." (Ward, 2015) Narrative immersion vs perceptual immersion. n "Art in Noise: An Embodied Simulation Account of Cinematic Sound Design," Mark S. Ward describes the distinction between perceptual design and narrative design; "Perceptual design and narrative design are forms of immersion achieved by different routes. Perceptual immersion inducts core affect, mood, and feeling-states within the body of the audience through (mostly) pre-attentional, nonconscious mechanisms which process multimodal information whilst narrative immersion structures emotion and meta-emotion through (mostly) attentional, conscious mechanisms. From a functional perspective, perceptual immersion is the abstraction and simulation of physical experience whilst narrative immersion is the abstraction and simulation of social experience." (Ward, 2015) According to Ward then, perceptual immersion gives rise to narrative immersion. What this means for us filmmakers is that while the narrative design is done mostly by the scriptwriter, the editor, the composer, and the director, who ultimately design the plot and narrative structure of the film (the social experience of the film's characters within the diegesis). The way that narrative is experienced or perceived by the audience, that is, the physical experience of the film's characters within the diegesis, is designed mostly by the sound department and the camera department. The sound designer is responsible for the sonic perceptual design, that is how the film is perceived by our ears, and the cinematographer for the visual perceptual design, or what is perceived by our eyes. And the more the audience is perceptually engaged with the film, the greater the narrative immersion is going to be. Film sound design is perceptual design. n "Art in Noise," Mark S. Ward rightly points out that film sound studies tend to focus on speech and music and that few theorise the worth of sound effects, Foley, and ambiences. Some authors even refer to these groups of sounds as "noises," which is a red flag for me any time I'm reading literature about sound design. He adds that "The praxis of sound design, from an historical perspective, exhibits a tendency toward techniques and technologies with greater and greater immersive characteristics in the production of an aesthetic experience." He proposes grouping sound effects, Foley, and ambiences under the umbrella of "perceptual realism"; "The term 'perceptual realism' (Grimshaw; Langkjaer) has emerged in contemporary writings as a rallying point by which to approach cinematic sound. Perceptual realism denotes the manipulation of basic rules of human perception to create coherent units of meaning during the practice of sound design." (Ward, 2015) It is important to differentiate between perceptual realism and realism; "This perceptual realism is different from realism in terms of content, as the basic lifelike qualities of persons, objects, and movements are not related to whether persons, objects, and movements occur in a realistic or a nonrealistic fictional world." (Langkjær, B., 2010) Perceptual realism means there is a realistic correspondence between elements in the diegesis. And not a correspondence between those elements and how they sound in real life. If we import to our DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), a recording of I I We get to decide what sonic information coming from the film is relevant and salient at any given time.