Presentation - Cinema "soundtrack"

Introduction

In movie industry terminology usage, soundtrack is a contraction of "sound track" and is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production.

"If you can't believe a little in what you see on the screen, it's not worth wasting your time on cinema." - Serge Daney

In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives." - John Berger

What is Soundtrack?

• it can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game
• it was commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.

Original of the Soundtrack

• it came into public in the early 1950s
• first conceived by movie companies as a promotional gimmick for new films
• it was commercially available recordings were labeled
• it advertised as "original motion picture soundtrack."
• such recordings are made from a film's music track, because they usually consist of the isolated music from a film

Types of Soundtrack

• Musical film soundtracks which concentrate primarily on the songs
• Film scores which showcase the background music from non-musicals
• Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of non-musicals
• Video game soundtracks are often released after a game's release, usually consisting of the   background music from the game's levels, menus, title screens, promo material (such as    entire songs that only segments of which were used in the game), cut-screens and occasionally sound-effects used in the game.
• Albums of pop songs heard in whole or part in the background of musicals

 

Key Quotes:

1.         "Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls." – Ingmar Bergman

2.         "Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms." - Alfred Hitchcock

3.         "Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading." – Igor Stravinsky

        http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_definition_of_cinema
 

4.         Recorded musical accompaniments to silent film were generally felt to be inferior to the attractiveness of live music, which had long been a vital part of the cinemagoing experiences.

The Hollywood Film Music Reader, Mervyn Cooke

 

5.         The sounds of recording by the variable density method are as follows – microphone, which converts the sound vibrations into a system of electric currents.

The Hollywood Film Music Reader, Mervyn Cooke

 
                                              
Samuel Beam

• he was born on July 26, 1974
• his better known by his stage and recording name Iron & Wine
• he was an American singer-songwriter
• he occasionally tours with a full band
• the name Iron & Wine is taken from a dietary supplement named "Beef Iron & Wine" that he found in a general store while shooting a film.

Case study: Flightless bird, American Mouth

 

^{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euHGXlYrLNk}

"Flightless Bird, American Mouth"

• it was created by Iron & Wine and aroused further attention of audiences at that time
• it was chosen for inclusion in the movie by star Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella Swan
• the soundtrack won a 2009 American Music Award for Favorite Soundtrack.

Benefits of Soundtrack

l   To arouse further attention of the viewers

l   "Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society's porous face." So that soundtrack as a best way for movie makers to further arouses audience’s attention in the spectacle.

l   To help audiences engaging more and enjoy more in the screen.

l   To remind audiences back to their own memories.

References:

1.     The Hollywood Film Music Reader, Mervyn Cooke, Oxford University Press, 2010.
2.     Spectacular Narratives, Geoff King, I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2000
3.     http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_definition_of_cinema
4.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundtrack

User Generated Digital Media

“Leave Brittany Alone” Blog Questions:

How many viewers are estimated to have watched the you tube video?
It is about 40 million people to have watched the youtube video.
(Actually viewers are 41,986,898)

How would you rate the video?
I am not really love the video. Since I am not sure what’s going on and what are the details of the video. So it can’t arouse my further attention to the video.

Is it of high quality in technical terms? Is it interesting aesthetically e.g. camera angles, use of light, the narrative, and so on?

It seems no technique at all. Because it was only forced on one shoot at the beginning to the end. In the process, it cannot saw any techniques, such as no camera angles, no use of light that used in the video.


Does it raise interesting socio-cultural issues?
In the past, only mass media to make us widely known about the issues. But nowadays, we could change our role from passive to active. We could upload our own comments or point of views to media sharing platforms, such as youtube to leave our comments to particular issues. It could enhance the interaction between up loaders and viewers. It also aroused further attention to the viewers to discuss more on the issues.

Do you think deserved the attention that it received from the Internet community?
I think that is a good way to arouse our attention to daily issues which received from Internet community. As a citizen, we have our own responsibility to pay attention to concern the thing that happened surrounding us. As the time goes by, Internet community becomes a part of our lives and we cannot live without Internet. We can absorb different kinds of information through Internet and arouse public concerns on such particular issues.  Therefore, Internet community provides a good way for us to learn more and to think more.

Briefly describe the video
It is about a man who dressing up likes a woman and sitting on the bed. He was cried and yelled to the camera that complained that the paparazzi should leave Britney Spears alone as they bordered the life of Britney Spears. It is obviously arouse the attention of the public to concern more about the side effects of paparazzi and think more about the privacy.

Find at least one interesting video, based on Crocker’s or Bus Uncle, and upload it to your blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-O3KEL-yA0

Report some positive and negative comments about this new ability for computer users to make and widely distribute and respond to online films (such as the above three videos). (eg see Leadbeater, We-think, xviii;  Burgess and Green, Youtube, Cambridge: Polity, 2009, 10…, 21-30). 

Positive:
It is great that provide a new way for the public to present comments and own points of view to the internet. It encourages the interaction and communication between the up loaders and the viewers. Since the internet provided the public platform for those who are interested in the issues to discuss more and present the ideas directly.

Negative:
The privacy of the people was to make known to the public. Since everyone have their own right to upload clips or photos freely without asking holders’ permission, so it will invade the privacy of public. Otherwise, it is definitely resulting in the property rights will be invaded.  The public could watch different kinds of video clips freely and without any charges. Clips’ owners will lose the benefits by selling such clips to earn money.

Social networks and online identites

On your blog write a two paragraph report on a class member who has an interesting set of online identities (you may use pseudonyms ie fake names)

  Contemporary understandings of identity are changing. Nowadays identity is thought of in more complex terms:

 “In sum, the selves that we have are composed of multiple identities and contradictory experiences. In late-modern society, it is almost impossible to have a fully unified, completed and coherent ‘self’; rather, we all tend to have fleeting, multiple and contradictory selves”

(Charles Cheung “Presentations of Self on Personal Homepages”, p45)

“Cherri” is internet addicted. She loves to visit different kinds of websites and search variety of interesting information. For example, she always visit “HK Golden” to read those posts who uploaded by the public. She always tells me it was really interesting and deserves to read. As she found that, internet is a world which full of curiosity. She could beneficial from the Internet to satisfy her own curiosity.

Otherwise, she also loves to use social networks to communicate and interact with others. She always uses social networks to chat with friends or families, to follow the update news of friends and to read some of the gossips. Nowadays, social networks – facebook or msn being a new trend for the communications between people. Also, everyone wants to share their own stuff online and without permission to let everyone knowing their privacy.