Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 57 Train sounds begin to come up in the mix again, this time louder, more metallic and piercing than before, evoking Michael's disturbed state and the voices in Michael's head. The mix's loudness and the psychological tension build up until the moment he shoots Sollozzo in the head. A great example of PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE IS TIMBRE can be found in The Conversation (1974). As Chattah points out, "Throughout the film, the nondiegetic piano score captures Harry's private reality through changes in timbre. PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE IS TIMBRE. [0:09:20 - 0:10:20] Toward the film's end, Harry realizes his apartment has been tapped. Infuriated, he searches for the recording device. Once more, the distorted piano timbre signals his nervous tension." [1:50:30-1:51:00] (Chattah, J., 2015). Larson Guerra (2010) similarly proposes a linearity schema where sounds are more rational when they are more realistic and more emotional as they get more unrealistic through reverb, EQ, experimental recording and any other processes that alter the sound from how it is usually perceived. From his scheme, we can produce the EMOTIONAL STATE IS ALTERATION (OF SOUND) conceptual metaphor. Let's use it to analyse and compare two scenes where this correlation between the alteration of sound and the emotional state of the characters is prompted. In Jonás Cuarón's Desierto (2015), a film where I was responsible for recording and editing the Foley, there is a scene at [0:05:00] where Moises (Gael Garcia Bernal) jumps down the truck and walks to the front side of the truck to inspect the condition of the engine. The character is in a relatively calm state and the footsteps aren't altered from the way I recorded them. They are only informing us about the weight of Moises and the quality of the terrain. Now let's compare these footsteps with the footsteps at the end of Better Call Saul S6 E10, Something Unforgivable (2020) at [0:59:20]. Here the footsteps become louder than normal and progressively lower in pitch as Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) walks outside of the frame and the editor cuts to black, informing us of the highly aggravated state he is in. We've looked at examples of conceptual metaphors we use in films for structural congruence and semantic congruence. Now let's look at an example of a correlation also suggested by Chattah that we use to establish syntactic congruence; the CLOSURE IN NARRATIVE IS CLOSURE IN MUSIC conceptual metaphor. Chattah proposes the use of path and expectation schemas to describe how music is often used to create a sense of closure in films. "The PATH schema is analogous to the LINEARITY schema in its one-dimensional structure, yet features additional components such as a 'source' and a 'goal,' as well as associated experiential responses." (Chattah, 2015). Cox explains that "our experience of actual motion along paths includes the experiences of anticipation, presence, and memory in relation to specific points along the path (...) The meaning of the 'goal' of a path thus includes not only its spatial location 'ahead,' and our 'approach' and eventual 'arrival' at that location, but also the experience of 'anticipation,' 'desire,' and eventual 'achievement' and 'satisfaction' for the moving observer." (Cox, 1999). The CLOSURE IN NARRATIVE IS CLOSURE IN MUSIC conceptual metaphor can be applied to sound design to create, meet, or frustrate the audience's expectations. "The CLOSURE IN NARRATIVE IS CLOSURE IN MUSIC conceptual metaphor is mediated by the notion of musical cadence, where appearance of tonic reflects closure, while avoidance of the tonic reflects lack of closure." (Chattah, 2015). Mentioning the ending of Amadeus (1984) points out that "Salieri concludes his narration with an account of Mozart's funeral, the music closes a large-scale narrative unit (an entire film in this case) providing the much-desired tonic chord." (Chattah, 2015). The ending sequence in Amadeus is a great sequence to analyse. Not only does it use music to close the narrative but it does it in a masterful way. Contrary to the anempathetic music in the scene from A Clockwork Orange (1971) that we analysed in the summer article "Film Sound as Perceptual Access to the Diegesis," the music here is completely empathetic and it appears as if the images were edited against the music and not the other way around. Right at the cut at [02:52:34], we hear the penultimate measure of "Lacrimosa" as we see the common pit where Mozart was buried. The lyrics of the chorus sing ("Aaa-...-") and when the chorus sings the last bar ("...-men") the picture cuts to a shot of a crucifix upside-down in the lap of the priest who's been listening to Salieri. While the last bar of "Lacrimosa" is playing, the camera tilts up to show the griefing