Sound

I have looked at sound in movies as it is one of the biggest developmental in cinema because of the effect it has to create emotion or atmosphere in a scene. There are 3 main types of key sound elements in film;-Dialogue, Music and Sound effects.

These can be categorized into two key terms;-Diegetic sound and Non-diegetic sound. Diegetic sounds are sounds which the characters in the film are able to hear whereas Non-diegetic sounds are sounds that the characters cant hear. Diegetic sounds for example are the dialogue and sound effects in the film, for example someone knocking on a door can be heard by both the characters and the audience, but Non-diegetic sounds are the background music that only the audience can hear such as music in the background to create tension or anxiety. Non-diegetic sound is categorized into two types, parallel and contrapuntal sound. Parallel sound matches the images on the screen for example someone rushing around in a panic we would expect to hear fast paced music to match the speed of the film.. Whereas contrapuntal sound doesn't match the images and doesn't flow with the scene a good example of this is used in the film Insidious when the song Tiptoe through the Tulips, a happy, cheerful tune, is played during quite a scary part of the film, this has the effect of unnerving the audience and pushes them out of there comfort zone and makes it hard to predict what will happen next.

There are another 2 types of sound; on and off screen sound. On screen sound is sound where we can see the source on the screen whereas off screen sound are sounds that are out of shot, this has the effect of increasing the size of the "world of the film".