Academic literature on the topic 'Film Sound Analysis'

The theme of the artistic image of the city in film has been repeatedly considered in film studies from both historical and cultural perspectives. However, two aspects of the study of the theme remain virtually unexplored because they are associated with a professional analysis of such a specific area of filmmaking as sound directing. The first aspect is the role of the city in films as both visual and audio space; the second aspect is the significance of urban sounds in the creation of the inner world of a film character.
 This essay explores the director's vision of urban space and the possibilities of sound directing in the formation of the inner world of a character and his/her various mental conditions - through the use of sound textures of the urban environment. The author analyses several films about Georgia's capital Tbilisi, produced in different time periods. The vivid "sound face" of Tbilisi allows one to follow changes in the aesthetic approaches to the use of the city's sounds for the formation of the image of film characters in the cultural and historical context of particular films. The essay concludes that the urban space, with its huge range of sound phenomena, contributes to the formation of a polyphonic phonogram which could bring a film's semantics to higher aesthetic and intellectual levelsl.

This article examines the role that sound plays in making fictions perceptually real to film audiences, whether these fictions are realist or non-realist in content and narrative form. I will argue that some aspects of film sound practices and the kind of experiences they trigger are related to basic rules of human perception, whereas others are more properly explained in relation to how aesthetic devices, including sound, are used to characterise the fiction and thereby make it perceptually real to its audience. Finally, I will argue that not all genres can be defined by a simple taxonomy of sounds. Apart from an account of the kinds of sounds that typically appear in a specific genre, a genre analysis of sound may also benefit from a functionalist approach that focuses on how sounds can make both realist and non-realist aspects of genres sound real to audiences.

In this paper I analyse the soundtracks of fifty horror film trailers, combining formal analysis of the soundtracks with quantitative methods to describe and analyse how sound creates a dominant emotional tone for audiences through the use of different types of sounds (dialogue, music, and sound effects) and the different sound envelopes of affective events. The results show that horror trailers have a three-part structure that involves establishing the narrative, emotionally engaging the audience, and communicating marketing information. The soundtrack is organised in such a way that different functions are handled by different components in different segments of the soundtrack: dialogue bears responsibility for what we know and the sound for what we feel. Music is employed in a limited number of ways that are ironic, clichéd, and rarely contribute to the dominant emotional tone. Different types of sonic affective events fulfil different roles within horror trailers in relation to narrative, emotion, and marketing. I identify two features not previously discussed in relation to quantitative analysis of film soundtracks: an affective event based on the reactions of characters in horror trailers and the presence of nonlinear features in the sound design of affective events.

The history of film sound has usually been configured as a series of technological upheavals. In every case, the story has been told through technological innovations, as if changes in technology were alone responsible for the development of new sound strategies. The approach offered here differs markedly from these previous treatments of sound. Instead of concentrating on technological shifts, this article stresses technical decisions made by the soundmen and directors responsible for developing Hollywood’s standard approach to sound. Through succinct analysis of two key films, The First Auto (Warner, 1927) and It Happened One Night (Columbia, 1934), along with briefer treatment of The Big Trail (Fox, 1930), a distinction is made between “shot-by-shot” treatment of sound and “scene-by-scene” treatment of sound. The systematic use of sound in It Happened One Night to establish and maintain a coherent sense of place gives rise to recognition of the increasingly common use of what the article terms “establishing sound.” Parallel to Hollywood’s familiar technique of introducing each scene with an “establishing shot,” the use of establishing sound offers filmmakers an additional method of locating auditors and maintaining their relationship to the film.

The article pinpoints peculiarities of sound editing in movies basing on analysis of partitions of popular films of40-90s; the most frequent principles of sound track arrangement are examined for the first time. The stuff selection is conditioned by measure of popularity of screen works in question. Due to talent of such famous composers as I. Dunaevsky, S. Prokofiev, A. Khachaturian, A. Pakhmutova, A. Petrov et al and their ability to hear plastic imagery, to comprehend filmic atmosphere music plays an extremely important part in these films. Many songs from these films are still in circulation even now. Thorough sound design and editing are of great significance in film production. The author comes to conclusion, that rondo as a musical form and leit-motif as a principle of musical stuff development form a dominant principle of sound stuff arrangement. The two fundamentally tighten the structure of the film. Since original music affords to accentuate sound effects in the most adequate way, it seems perfect to call to a composer for creating original music. The author assumes, that the choice of sound arrangement principle in cinema depends on deliberate conception of the film, wrought out by the helmer, composer, and supervising sound editor. The screen works property is closely bound with attentive partition editing.

This paper presents frequency analyses of sounds produced by traditional Malay musical instrument “kompang”. Kompang is used to produce exotic sound especially certain grand ceremony. In order to produce sound, different types of skins are used especially made from polymer (used x-ray film) and animal skins. However, the sound produced by a polymeric skin is not similar with the sound produced using an animal skin. Therefore, this present work investigated the effect of such skins on the sound produced and as a result affecting the sound quality. Appropriated software is used to conduct the frequency analyses in order to investigate whether the polymeric skin can be a replaceable skin in replacing an animal skin. It is found two different skin materials have their own sound characteristics and it is also indicated that lower peak sound frequency produced by animal skin compared with the polymeric skin.

Plot is one of the important elements contained in narrative literary works. Plots in literary works, films, stories, or other narratives are sequences of several events, and each of these events influences subsequent events. Now, the film is considered as a powerful communication medium for the masses that are being targeted, because of its audio-visual nature, that is, vivid images and sounds. With pictures and sound, movies can tell a lot in a short time. This study focuses on the analysis of how the plot is used in the film The Theory of Everything. Thus, the aim is to describe the plot in the film The Theory of Everything.This research used a descriptive qualitative method. First, the writer categorizes several fragments of a sentence, dialogue, and scene. Next, look for, analysis, and interpret it to obtain the plot structure in accordance with the theory. From the results of the analysis obtained the answer that the film is told in its entirety starting from exposition, rising action, climax, and falling action. And the film closes with a closed ending. So the film goes forward or progressive plot. The authors hope that the results of this study will benefit future researchers who are interested in the work of literature in the form of films, especially in the plot. Keywords: Film, plot

Kock and Louven (in this issue) examined the effects of music, sound effects, full sound design (music and sound effects) and no sound on self-reported measures of immersion and suspense in real time, as viewers watched very brief original films. This commentary discusses the method, analysis, and implications of their findings within the broader context of the state of the art of film music research, and future directions for investigations in this area.

Taking the example of two 1960s popular spy films this paper explores how social semiotics can make a contribution to the analysis of film music. Following other scholars who have sought to create inventories of sound meanings to help us break down the way that music communicates, this paper explores how we can draw on the principles of Hallidayan functional grammar to present an inventory of meaning potentials in sound. This provides one useful way to describe the semiotic resources available to composers to allow them to communicate quite specific ideas, attitudes and identities through combinations of different sounds and sound qualities, by presenting them as systems of meaning rather than as lists of connotations. Here we apply this to the different uses of music and sound in Dr No and The Ipcress Files which allows us to show how we can reveal different ideologies of spying.

An interpretative methodology for understanding meaning in cinema since the 1950s, auteur analysis is an approach to film studies in which an individual, usually the director, is studied as the author of her or his films. The principal argument of this thesis is that proponents of auteurism have privileged examination of the visual components in a film-maker’s body of work, neglecting the potentially significant role played by sound. The thesis seeks to address this problematic imbalance by interrogating the creative use of sound in the films written and directed by Rolf de Heer, asking the question, “Does his use of sound make Rolf de Heer an aural auteur?” In so far as the term ‘aural’ encompasses everything in the film that is heard by the audience, the analysis seeks to discover if de Heer has, as Peter Wollen suggests of the auteur and her or his directing of the visual components (1968, 1972 and 1998), unconsciously left a detectable aural signature on his films. The thesis delivers an innovative outcome by demonstrating that auteur analysis that goes beyond the mise-en-scène (i.e. visuals) is productive and worthwhile as an interpretive response to film. De Heer’s use of the aural point of view and binaural sound recording, his interest in providing a ‘voice’ for marginalised people, his self-penned song lyrics, his close and early collaboration with composer Graham Tardif and sound designer Jim Currie, his ‘hands-on’ approach to sound recording and sound editing and his predilection for making films about sound are all shown to be examples of de Heer’s aural auteurism. As well as the three published (or accepted for publication) interviews with de Heer, Tardif and Currie, the dissertation consists of seven papers refereed and published (or accepted for publication) in journals and international conference proceedings, a literature review and a unifying essay. The papers presented are close textual analyses of de Heer’s films which, when considered as a whole, support the thesis’ overall argument and serve as a comprehensive auteur analysis, the first such sustained study of his work, and the first with an emphasis on the aural.

Detta kandidatarbete undersöker ljudbilder i film och vad som påverkar ljudbildens mättnad. Med stort fokus på Walter Murchs Dense Clarity, Clear Density (2005) bryter vi ner uppbyggnaden av en ljudbild för att få bättre förståelse kring detta. Med en egenframtagen analysmetod som fokuserar på filmers ljudbild analyserar vi scener ifrån flertalet filmer och tv-program, hittar mönster kring deras ljudläggning och hur det påverkar ljudbilden. Därefter bygger vi upp en lista med förhållningspunkter för olika typer av ljudbilder. Resultatet av undersökningen blir en förklaring av hur man uppnår olika former av ljudbilder i film och varför det blir så.

Fait unique dans l’histoire du cinéma, les partitions du gigantesque cycle dischronique qu’est la saga Star Wars, couvrant une période très étirée de vingt-huit ans, sont toutes de la main de John Williams. Cette constance compositionnelle devrait a priori faire des deux trilogies (1977-1983 et 1999-2005) un tout cohérent et unifié, d’autant que George Lucas envisage les six épisodes comme une seule et même entité. Pourtant, l’unité musicale de l’hexalogie et la signature musicale « starwarsienne » sont loin d’aller de soi, prenant la forme d’un idéal dénué de fondements solides réels.En adoptant une approche comparative transversale et en faisant varier différentes échelles d’analyse (épisode, trilogie, saga), la présente thèse a ainsi pour projet de montrer de quelles manières le matériau musical, les pratiques compositionnelles de Williams, mais aussi le traitement et l’intégration de la partition au sein du complexe audio-visuel font l’objet de profondes transformations entre les deux trilogies. Notre recherche interroge également dans quelle mesure et selon quelles modalités ces changements dans l’écriture musicale et l’utilisation de la partition dans les différents épisodes sont liés aux mutations des techniques cinématographiques, en particulier aux bouleversements dunumérique. Mettant à profit l’exploitation de sources manuscrites inédites et d’entretiens personnels réalisés auprès de l’orchestrateur principal de Williams, Conrad Pope, et de son music editor Kenneth Wannberg, notre travail met en oeuvre une interdisciplinarité affirmée au croisement de l’analyse musicale, de l’histoire du cinéma et des technologies<br>The scores of the Star Wars saga, a gigantic dischronic cycle spanning over a long period of twentyeight years, are all composed by John Williams, a unique configuration in cinema history. This compositional consistency should theoretically establish the two trilogies (1977-1983 and 1999-2005) as a coherent and unified whole, especially as George Lucas considers the six episodes as one single entity. Nevertheless, the hexalogy’s musical unity and the existence of a Star Wars musical signature are far from self-evident, instead taking the form of an ideal devoid of real, solid foundations.By adopting a comparative cross-disciplinary approach and by resorting to different scales of analysis (episode, trilogy, saga), this dissertation aims to show in which ways the musical material, Williams’ compositional practice as well as the use and integration of the score within the audiovisual complex are subjected to profound transformations between the two trilogies. This research also questions how and to what extent these changes in Williams’s writing and the score’s treatment in the different episodes are related to the mutations of film techniques, especially those of the digital age.Drawing on unreleased hand-written sources and personal interviews conducted with Williams’ main orchestrator, Conrad Pope, and his music editor, Kenneth Wannberg, this dissertation implements a firm interdisciplinarity at the intersection of musical analysis, cinema and technology history

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:23:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 6323.pdf: 10772992 bytes, checksum: 813a1652f063e5d074e1dbf75a29212c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-29<br>Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais<br>This work aims to discuss the cinema of Carlos Reygadas, with the focuses on the importance of sound and its dynamics within the long duration take, a procedure that strongly characterizes the style of this director. Initially, excerpts from films Japón (2002), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007) were analyzed to highlight the formation of a stylistic corpus and a predominantly contemplative and sensory conception of cinema. Then we elected Silent Light as a conductive thread of a broader analysis in relation to the main crop. Therefore, we had as main references studies by David Bordwell (2008) on traditional directors of the plan-sequence, as well as the categories and theoretical assumptions of Michel Chion (1994, 2009) on the uses of sound in cinema.<br>Esta dissertação tem por objetivo discutir o cinema de Carlos Reygadas, sob um recorte que se concentra especificamente na importância do som e de sua dinâmica no interior dos planos de longa duração, procedimento que caracteriza fortemente o estilo deste diretor. Inicialmente, trecho dos filmes Japón (2002), Batalha no Céu (2005) e Luz Silenciosa (2007) foram analisados para salientar a conformação de um corpus estilístico e de uma concepção de cinema de caráter predominantemente contemplativo e sensorial. Em seguida, elegemos Luz Silenciosa como o fio condutor de uma análise mais abrangente em relação ao principal recorte. Para tanto, tivemos como principais referências os estudos de David Bordwell (2008) sobre tradicionais diretores do plano-sequência, bem como as categorias e pressupostos teóricos de Michel Chion (1994; 2009) sobre usos do som no cinema.

碩士<br>輔仁大學<br>音樂學系<br>104<br>The author produced the background music and sound effects for the animation “The Last Belle”, and wrote this thesis to analyze the composing techniques and the concepts of the music production. The analysis is described in three different sections: the production of the film scoring, the design of the sound effects and the practice of audio mixing. In the section of the film scoring, the author described the composing concepts and techniques by orchestration, tonality, and the use of musical themes. In the analysis of the sound effects, the author chose several important sections from the animation to demonstrate the use of the sound effects, and to illustrate how the different categories of the sound effects are used in the different scenes. The practice of the audio recording and mixing is analyzed in two parts, which include the set-up of the metronome in order to synchronize the audio and video during the recording, and the audio mixing of the dialogues, sound effects and the recording of the real and virtual instruments. Also, the author also collected audio mixing references and documented the procedures of the audio mixing of this project in order to systematically represent the concepts of the audio mixing. In the conclusion, I summed up the concepts used in the musical composition and reviewed the problems happened during the process of the production in the hope to improve my composing techniques; moreover, to utilize these skills and concepts in the future.

碩士<br>輔仁大學<br>音樂學系<br>105<br>Animations and video games have been developing rapidly in recent years. With such development, it has made soundtrack creation and sound-effect design being highly valued. In 2016, the author proceeded to work on the soundtrack creation for the animations The Voyage and Trick, and for the video game The Shadow of Rifog. Through the practical creation experience, I have been able to deeply study the connotation about the animations and video games, as well as the analysis about the soundtrack creation and sound effects design. The process of research is divided into two parts: technical literature exploration and soundtrack analysis. In the technical literature exploration, firstly the author gathered all the related information about animations and films which may influence and affect the visual works; and then he analyzed all the details about the music describing the tableau of the animation, telling the cultural spirit behind the story, portraying the inner world of each character in the animation and the series connection of each section of the story. Exploring the related information of the development of video games, the author has found that the development trend of today's video music is going towards the directions of performance art and original soundtrack distribution, led the orchestra compilation into the soundtrack creation. Finally, the results of the technical literature exploration can be applied to the actual soundtrack creation. As to the soundtrack analysis, the author uses minimalism style with different tricks working on the animation soundtrack creation. And in the sound effects design, he mainly works with the hard sound effects, designed sounds effects, and ambience three types of design. As for the music structure, he works with repeated motive, main instrument conversion, tone transfer, harmony movement and interval change. However, in the part of the video music creation, he deals with the different scenes of the soundtrack, the section analysis of the music structure, the analysis of each melody theme, and the instrumental configuration and harmonious change. With all the practical experiences of the soundtrack creation, in addition to music creation technique in the animations and video games, the author has learned that the more important thing is the teamwork and communication and coordination ability. This experience can not only be poured into the future of other creative application, but also can be provided for other music creators for reference in practical application.

Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects presents institutions, individuals and networks who have ensured experimental films and Expanded Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s are not consigned to oblivion. Through a comparison of recent international case studies from festivals, museums, and gallery spaces, the book analyzes their new contexts, and describes the affective reception of those events. The study asks: what is the relationship between an aesthetic experience and memory at the point where film archives, cinema, and exhibition practices intersect? What can we learn from re-screenings, re-enactments, and found footage works, that are using archival material? How does the affective experience of the images, sounds and music resonate today? Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects proposes a theoretical framework from the perspective of the performative practice of programming, curating, and reconstructing, bringing in insights from original interviews with cultural agents together with an interdisciplinary academic discourse.

This volume explores the history and evolution of film music studies from the silent film to the sound film era. It examines the relevance of various theories, including ontological, feminist, queer, critical and apparatus theories, in film studies and analyzes the influence of theater or opera music on the development of film soundtrack. It also discusses the history of video game music and presents two case studies involving the analysis of the musical scores for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.

French Musical Culture and the Coming of Sound Cinema examines film music practices in France during a period of widespread artistic and creative experimentation: the transition from silent to synchronized sound film. While this period in Hollywood has been examined from a range of scholarly perspectives, the transition to sound in France—and the unique interactions between French sound cinema and French musical discourses—remains underexplored. In France, debates about sound cinema were fierce and widespread, and many filmmakers addressed theoretical questions about the potential of the new technology head-on, articulating their responses to these questions both in writing and in their films. Music played an integral role in the debate. Lewis argues that debates about sound film had a powerful effect on French musical culture of the early 1930s, and that diverse French musical styles and traditions—from Les Six, to the opera house, to the popular music-hall—played a crucial role in shaping the cinematic soundscape. Filmmakers experimented with music’s role in sound cinema within a range of genres, including avant-garde surrealist cinema (Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau), recorded theater (Marcel Pagnol), early poetic realism (Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo), and the film musical (René Clair). Lewis’s analysis of the experiments undertaken in these few important years in French cinematic history encourages readers to challenge commonly held assumptions of how genres, media, and artistic forms relate to one another, and how these relationships are renegotiated during moments of technological change.

Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2012) and Peter Delpeut’s Lyrical Nitrate (1991) are collage works made up of decayed silent-era film fragments. The films approach sound in contrasting ways: Lyrical Nitrate uses old 78 rpm recordings of operatic music as musical accompaniment to its decayed images, whereas Decasia uses a specially commissioned score and exists not only in DVD format but also as an elaborately staged performance piece. This chapter is an investigation of the role of the soundtrack within both films’ repurposing strategy, comparing and contrasting their sonic approaches, using a Chion-esque idea of “audio-vision” in an effort to understand their aesthetic workings. Despite the material heterogeneity of film sound and film image, the spectator takes in the experience as a synthesis. Yet beyond representational strategies the materiality of sounds and images in the pre- and postdigital ages is arguably the subject of exploration unifying this comparative analysis.

The chapter critically reappraises the work of the British experimental filmmaker John Smith, drawing on analyses of key films and interview material to explore his use of sound, music and voice. Smith’s films often engage self-reflexively with how sound creates or accepts meaning within an audiovisual context. Influenced by structural film practice of the 1960s and 1970s, and underpinned by a Brechtian concern with the politics of representation, Smith’s often humorous work both foregrounds and deconstructs the sound-image relations at work in dominant modes of cinematic representation. This analysis of Smith’s work identifies the political dynamic of the filmmaker’s use of sound, and addresses what is at stake—for both Smith and his audience—in the self-reflexive concern with audiovisual modes of representation. Examined within this context are Smith’s creative focus on the production of meaning and how this relates to aspects of musicality and abstraction in his work.

This book examines different kinds of analogies, mutual influences, integrations, and collaborations of the audio and the visual in different art forms. The contributions, written by key theoreticians and practitioners, represent state-of-the-art case studies in contemporary art, integrating music, sound, and image with key figure of modern thinking constitute a foundation for the discussion. It thus emphasizes avant-garde and experimental tendencies, while analyzing them in historical, theoretical, and critical frameworks. The book is organized around three core subjects, each of which constitutes one section of the book. The first concentrates on the interaction between seeing and hearing. Examples of classic and digital animation, video art, choreography, and music performance, which are motivated by the issue of eye versus ear perception are examined in this section. The second section explores experimental forms emanating from the expansion of the concepts of music and space to include environmental sounds, vibrating frequencies, language, human habitats, the human body, and more. The reader will find here an analysis of different manifestations of this aesthetic shift in sound art, fine art, contemporary dance, multimedia theatre, and cinema. The last section shows how the new light shed by modernism on the performative aspect of music has led it—together with sound, voice, and text—to become active in new ways in postmodern and contemporary art creation. In addition to examples of real-time performing arts such as music theatre, experimental theatre, and dance, it includes case studies that demonstrate performativity in visual poetry, short film, and cinema.

This book is concerned with summarizing and critiquing theories of the soundtrack from roughly 1929 until today. A theory of the soundtrack is concerned with what belongs to it, how it is effectively organized, how its status in a multimedia object affects the nature of the object, the tools available for its analysis, and the interpretive regime that the theory mandates for determining the meaning, sense, and structure that sound and music bring to film and other audiovisual media. Beyond that, a theory may also delineate the range of possible uses of sound (and music), classify the types of relations that films have used for image and sound, identify the central problems, and reflect on and describe effective uses of sound in film. This book does not provide an exhaustive historical survey but rather sketches out the range of theoretical approaches that have been applied to the soundtrack over time. For each approach, it presents the basic theoretical framework, considers explicit and implicit claims about the soundtrack, and then works to open the theories to new questions about film sound, often by putting the theories into dialogue with one another. The organization is both chronological and topical: the former in that the chapters move steadily from early film theory through models of the classical system to more recent critical theories; the latter in that the chapters highlight central issues for each generation: the problem of film itself, then of image and sound, then of adequate analytical-descriptive models, and finally of critical-interpretative models.

While new scholarship on Prokofiev and Eisenstein continues to emerge, there has been surprisingly little written about Prokofiev’s film scores as they relate to Eisenstein’s theories on music and sound. Eisenstein considered “sound imagery” to be as important as visual imagery in film, and with the advent of sound film in the late 1920s, he began writing essays on the subject. Many musicologists have expertly discussed Prokofiev’s music in Eisenstein’s films, and film historians have long considered Eisenstein’s theories on sound and how they function generally in his films. Until recently, however, very few scholars have attempted to merge a close reading of Eisenstein’s theories with an analysis of Prokofiev’s music. This chapter helps to bridge this gap in scholarship by examining Eisenstein’s late theories on music and sound from his essay “The Music of Landscape” in relation to Prokofiev’s score for Ivan the Terrible.

This chapter explores the transition from post-synch to direct sound in Spanish cinema through a particular emphasis on José Luis López Vázquez’s voice. This chapter shows the ways in which sound design marked a shift in register from a gestural and presentational acting style to a more Stanislavskian mode of performance that stressed interiority and the unspoken. It further argues that direct sound shaped and transformed Spanish performance, reconfiguring the relationship between body and space in cinema. The analysis of López Vázquez’s vocal performance thus casts a light on the limits between the embodiment and disembodiment of performance and sound, as well as providing a means of tracing the emerging acting styles of the 1970s. The presence (and absence) of López Vázquez's voice in his performances, and how these were determined by the synchronisation of sound in post-production, provide a valuable opportunity to understand how technology and acting are linked in complex ways.

This chapter discusses textual analysis as the best way to get to understand how a film produces meaning. It points out how close textual analysis enables the critical reader to get beneath the skin of the film by breaking it down into its main sequences or scenes, which reveal its formal, narrative structures, its pleasures, and its ideological messages. It also talks about close textual analysis that involves the assessment or deconstruction of shot, lighting, setting, performance, sound, editing, plot, and narrative. The chapter focuses on the close textual analysis of an early scene from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, which occurs at approximately 7 minutes into the film that shows Leon's cold-blooded shooting of Holden. It describes Blade Runner's scene that begins with a long, panoramic aerial shot of the futuristic metropolis.

This chapter proposes that the ascription of star speech (as a dynamic sound form) to the computer-animated film’s puppet performers contributes to the effect and impact of their many screen performances. This chapter takes the star voice to be a unique instrument of performance that lies at the cornerstone of computer-animated film acting, and begins by implicating the potency of the star voice within wider industrial discourses. These include local dubbing practices, sound technology, and the multiplication of star sound across a range of consumer and multi-media products. The formal and structural importance of the star voice to computer-animated film performance is illustrated through the work of prominent film sound theorist Michel Chion and his work on synchresis, a neologism produced out of the combination of “synchronism” and “synthesis”. By extending Chion’s account, this chapter uses descriptors derived from synchresis to outline three prominent synchretic unions operating at the level of character design. A significant innovation here is the development of a taxonomy of the star voice as it is inscribed formally into computer-animated films—anthropomorphic, autobiographic and acousmatic synchresis—which give new precision to the analysis of star voices in animation.

Through a close analysis of the 1930 version of La aldea maldita, this chapter reflects on the influences ushered in by Spain’s embrace of modernity. Touted as ‘Spain’s last silent film’ as well as its most important one, La aldea maldita presents a harsh, minimalist beauty that has long been praised by audiences and critics. The chapter shows that the acting style is influenced not just by trends of the time but also by the film’s relationship to sound: after the disastrous experience with the sonorisation of a previous film, Rey decided to film La aldea maldita as if it were silent, when in fact the first showing of the film included sound. It also addresses the performance in the version of this film, questioning the sense of anachronism that now pervades them and reflecting on attitudes to aesthetics, acting and the cinematic medium itself.

This chapter deals with the period of the mid-1930s, when Ozu had to face new challenges from the pressure of commercialism to the coming of sound technology. The main question addresses whether and how the director maintained his critical view of Japanese modernity while using mass-oriented genre formats. Firstly, the conversion to sound in the Japanese film industry is investigated in relation to how it influenced Ozu’s filmmaking. It is followed by a discussion of Ozu’s Kihachi series (such as An Inn in Tokyo (1935)) and woman’s films (such as Woman of Tokyo (1933) and Dragnet Girl (1933)), as an evidence of the director’s expanding generic interest from the middle class into the working class and women. These generic terms will be finally confirmed through textual analysis of Ozu’s films to examine how Ozu’s everyday realism, while working within the context of established generic formats (such as ‘failed moga’ narrative in woman’s film), remains as a critical view of the Japanese modernity.

This chapter considers Universal’s relationship with its audiences at the end of the silent period of Hollywood cinema. Specifically, it presents The Last Warning as a case study and focuses on the ways that Universal promoted this film—a “partial-talkie”—to exhibitors and advertised it to the public. This analysis suggests how Universal imagined the audience for this film and explores the studio’s strategies for connecting the film’s narrative to this imagined audience during the transitional period to synchronised sound. For example, Universal tried to entice exhibitors to book the film by providing survey cards that audience members could fill out during a break in the film’s narrative. The cards would allow them to guess “whodunnit” before the film resumed. Universal therefore engaged in a creative and playful approach to making the film experience more interactive, albeit in a decidedly low-tech way. The studio imagined a specific, rather sophisticated type of audience engagement with a stylistically creative but narratively banal genre film at the end of the silent era.

A concluding chapter by Trevor Griffiths considers the end of the ‘early period’ and the effects on cinema production and cinema-going of the arrival of sound. The emergence of sound cinema raised fundamental questions about how film was presented to audiences, exposing to view many practices in the silent era, which more often than not pass without comment. The factors, both supply- and demand-driven, promoting the adoption of sound by Scottish exhibitors are considered through analysis of the trade press and associated business records and the chapter examines the pace and extent of the diffusion of sound exhibition from the end of the 1920s, tracing its spread across both metropolitan and small-town Scotland, consolidating the emphasis of preceding chapters.

This chapter examines archived correspondence between the Los Angeles–based Goldwyn Studios and London’s Pinewood Studios during the creation of Fiddler on the Roof’s four-track sound design. Goldwyn’s sound team argued that Pinewood’s mixers were not capable of delivering a Hollywood-caliber soundtrack. In response, Pinewood accused Goldwyn of not adhering to the industry standards for stereo mixing. Taken together, these communications expose how competitive the postproduction sound industry was for premier Hollywood projects during the early 1970s. While this chapter is devoted to the analysis of the voices of the sound practitioners, the author argues that the correspondence regarding Fiddler’s soundtrack also reveals the aesthetic ideals of both Goldwyn and Pinewood at a time when the definition of a Hollywood film was in contention.

The work presented in this paper focuses on development of a dual modality sensor, for deployment within an oil and gas extraction plant to measure the composition of oil-water mixtures. The sensors combine ultrasonic and electrical measurement techniques. These are of course non-destructive, rapid, and can potentially provide an on-line industrial measurement. In addition, the combination of two techniques could potentially be reliable in a wider range of process conditions and could contain self-calibration features. The sensors used in the current study were manufactured using thick-film technology, which enables construction of multilayered structures of both conductive and non-conductive layers, some of which may exhibit piezoelectric properties for ultrasonic measurement purposes. These are later fired on a ceramic substrate to provide rugged sensors, capable of working in aggressive industrial environments. Experiments were conducted for mixtures of vegetable oil and saline water to investigate the feasibility of such dual dual-modality sensors. The time of flight of ultrasonic wave in pure liquids and heterogeneous mixtures was measured. It has been shown that the signal obtained from the transducers is sufficiently strong to warrant the measurement of the speed of sound in heterogeneous mixtures of oil and water. A study of the effects of oil concentration and temperature on the speed of sound has been conducted. A mathematical model has been tested, which relates the speed of sound to the volume fraction taking into account the reflection and refraction on the droplet interfaces. The experimental results subjected to linear regression agree very well with the theoretical predictions. The electrical measurement was conducted at three different frequencies. In general, the values of capacitance and conductance decrease with increasing oil percentage. In the middle oil percentages a discontinuity occurs in the decreasing trend. In the high oil percentages, the experimental results agree very well with theoretical predictions.

Squeeze film dampers (SFDs) are effective means to reduce vibrations and to suppress instabilities in rotor-bearing systems. However, at operating conditions while traversing critical speeds with large orbital whirl motions, ingestion and entrapment of air into the thin lands of SFDs generates a bubbly mixture (air in lubricant) which is known to reduce the dynamic film pressures and the overall damping capability. This pervasive phenomenon lacks proper physical understanding and sound analytical modeling. An experimental investigation to quantify the forced performance of a SFD operating with a controlled bubbly mixture is detailed. Tests are conducted in a constrained circular orbit SFD to measure the dynamic squeeze film pressures and journal motion at two whirl frequencies (8.33 and 16.67 Hz) as the air content in the mixture increases from 0% to 100%. The analysis of period-averaged film pressures reveals a zone of uniform low pressure of magnitude equal to the discharge pressure, independently of the mixture composition. The uniform pressure zone extends as the mixture void fraction increases. Radial and tangential film forces are estimated from the dynamic pressures at two axial locations of measurement. The tangential (damping) force decreases proportionally with the mixture volume fraction, while a radial hydrostatic force remains nearly invariant. The experimental results quantify effects previously known by qualitative description only, thus providing a benchmark towards the development of sound theoretical models.

Residual stress produces major challenges in the fabrication of MEMS devices. This is particularly true in the development of MEMS microphones since the response of the thin sound-sensitive diaphragm is strongly affected by stress. It is important to predict the effects of fabrication stress on the microphone chip and identify the failure modes to ensure a satisfactory fabrication yield. In this study, a finite element model of the microphone chip is developed to analyze the laminated structure under different fabrication stresses. The model of the microphone chip includes the diaphragm, backplate and sacrificial oxide layers on top of the silicon substrate. Fabrication stresses are included through the use of an equivalent thermal stress. The stresses in the different layers have been estimated based on measurements performed on fabricated test structures. The estimated stresses are simulated in the finite element model. An important factor in determining the process reliability is the compressive stress of the low temperature sacrificial oxide layer (LTO). A variety of stress combinations between different layers with the low temperature oxide layer are investigated. It is found that an adequate level of tensile stress in the backplate is crucial to ensure the fabrication yield. In the designs considered here, silicon nitride in combination with a thin conductive layer is identified as a favorable material for the backplate considering its high modulus and tensile stress in ‘as deposited’ film. In addition, the presence of a LTO layer on the backside of the wafer turns out to be very helpful in reducing the deflection of the unreleased chip and the stress in the diaphragm. In the case where there is a net compressive stress in the laminate, the failure mode is identified by nonlinear analysis. This analysis provides a guideline to select robust materials and tune the fabrication process to ensure a satisfactory fabrication yield.

Biologically inspired unique perforated diaphragm architecture for acoustic source localization has been designed. The merely 500 μm separated structure of ears of fly Ormia ochracea which increases the interaural time and intensity differences of arriving sound has great ability to enhance the acoustic source localization. This remarkable capacity of fly to amplify direction cues for incoming sound along with squeeze film damping effects are the key inspirations for designing the diaphragm. In this design, we maintain a unique ratio between the number of holes and the diaphragm size and enhanced the acoustic directional sensitivity cues. A mechanical structure based on the ears of fly Ormia ochracea is modeled and the response is observed on different frequencies by considering the critical damping value and also on zero damping value. In one step further a perforated diaphragm is designed utilizing ANSYS software and is examined with fluid elements to estimate the damping value. A harmonic analysis is carried out in conjunction with estimated damping value 0.3325 and also on zero damping value. The figured results are very much similar to the modeled results and a range of 1 nm to 472 nm amplitude differences between two sides of the diaphragm is observed over the entire range of the frequency in damping case.

Abstract The literature on tilting pad thrust bearings (TPTB) calls for flow reduction as an effective means to reduce drag power losses as well as oil pumping costs. However, the highest level of flow reduction a bearing can undergo while maintaining reliable operation is a key question that demands comprehensive analysis. This paper implements a model into an existing thermoelasto-hydrodynamic (TEHD) computational analysis tool to deliver load performance predictions for TPTBs operating with reduced flow rates. For bearings supplied with either a reduced flow or an over flow conditions, a sound model for the flow and thermal energy mixing in a feed groove determines the temperature of the lubricant entering a thrust pad. Under a reduced flow condition, the analysis reduces the effective arc length of a wetted pad until matching the available flow. Predicted discharge flow temperature rise and pad subsurface temperature rise from the present model match measurements in the archival literature for an eight-pad bearing supplied with 150% to 25% of the nominal flow rate, i.e., the minimum flow that fully lubricates the bearing pads. A supply flow above nominal rate increases the bearing drag power because the lubricant enters a pad at a lower temperature, and yet has little effect on a thrust pad peak temperature rise or its minimum film thickness. A reduced flow below nominal produces areas lubricant starvation zones, and thus the minimum film thickness substantially decreases while the film and pad’s surface temperature rapidly increase to produce significant thermal crowning of the pad surface. Compared to the bearing lubricated with a nominal rate, a starved flow bearing produces a larger axial stiffness and a lesser damping coefficient. A reduction in drag power with less lubricant supplied brings an immediate energy efficiency improvement to bearing operation. However, sustained long-term operation with overly warm pad temperatures could reduce the reliability of the mechanical element and its ultimate failure.

Abstract Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (SAM) is a very important tool in the evaluation of molded plastic electronic components. SAM is used to non-destructively determine the configuration and quality of components using ultrasonic sound waves and consequently is an important test step in the screening, Destructive Physical Analysis (DPA) or Failure Analysis (FA) of plastic components. SAM is performed in a water bath so if internal defects are open to the surface of the device they can fill with water and become invisible to SAM.

Gas film bearings enable the successful deployment of high-speed micro-turbomachinery. Foil bearings are in use; however, cost and lack of calibrated predictive tools prevent their widespread application. Other types of bearing configurations, simpler to manufacture and fully engineered, are favored by commercial turbomachinery manufacturers. Externally pressurized tilting pad bearings offer a sound solution for stable rotor support. This paper reports measurements of the rotordynamic response of a rigid rotor, 0.825 kg and 28.6 mm in diameter, supported on flexure pivot tilting pad hybrid gas bearings. The tests are performed for various imbalances, increasing supply pressures, and under load-on-pad (LOP) and load-between-pad (LBP) configurations. Presently, the initial condition of the test bearings shows sustained wear and dissimilar pad clearances after extensive testing reported earlier, see Ref. [1]. In the current measurements, there are no noticeable differences in rotor responses for both LOP and LBP configurations due to the light-weight rotor, i.e. small static load acting on each bearing. External pressurization into the bearings increases their direct stiffnesses and reduces their damping, while raising the system critical speeds with a notable reduction in modal damping ratios. The rotor supported on the worn bearings shows a ∼10% drop in first critical speeds and roughly similar modal damping than when tested with pristine bearings. Pressurization into the bearings leads to large times for rotor deceleration, thus demonstrating the little viscous drag typical of gas bearings. Rotor deceleration tests with manually controlled supply pressures eliminate the passage through critical speeds, thus paving a path for rotordynamic performance without large amplitude motions over extended regions of shaft speed. The rotordynamic analysis shows critical speeds and peak amplitudes of motion agreeing very well with the measurements. The synchronous rotor responses for increasing imbalances demonstrate the test system linearity. Superior stability and predictable performance of pressurized flexure pivot gas bearings can further their implementation in high performance oil-free microturbomachinery. More importantly, the measurements show the reliable performance of the worn bearings even when operating with enlarged and uneven clearances.

Effusion cooling represents the state of the art of liner cooling technology for modern combustors. This technique consists of an array of closely spaced discrete film cooling holes and contributes to lower the metal temperature by the combined protective effect of coolant film and heat removal through forced convection inside each hole. Despite many efforts reported in literature to characterize the cooling performance of these devices, detailed analyses of the mixing process between coolant and hot gas are difficult to perform, especially when superposition and density ratio effects as well as the interaction with complex gas side flow field become significant. Furthermore, recent investigations on the acoustic properties of these perforations pointed out the challenge to maintain optimal cooling performance also with orthogonal holes, which showed higher sound absorption. The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of a realistic flow field on the adiabatic effectiveness performance of effusion cooling liners to verify the findings available in literature, which are mostly based on effusion flat plates with aligned crossflow, in case of swirled hot gas flow. The geometry consists of a tubular combustion chamber, equipped with a double swirler injection system and characterized by twenty-two rows of cooling holes on the liner. The liner cooling system employs slot cooling as well: its interactions with the cold gas injected through the effusion plate are investigated too. Taking advantage of the rotational periodicity of the effusion geometry and assuming axisymmetric conditions at the combustor inlet, steady state RANS calculations have been performed with the commercial code ANSYS® CFX simulating a single circumferential pitch. Obtained results show how the effusion perforation angle deeply affects the flow-field around the corner of the combustor, in particular with a strong reduction of slot effectiveness in case of 90° angle value.

Negative pressure is one of the metastable states of liquids at which it can be extended up to a certain limit without a gap of continuity. There are numerous experimental studies where a negative pressure up to 40 MPa has been obtained at laboratory conditions. However, these results of the experimental works were not practically implemented, as real liquids both in the nature and the technological processes contain impurities. Under certain kinetic and hydrodynamic conditions the waves of negative pressure in real liquids (crude oil, water, and water-based solutions) were observed. The wave of negative pressure is a turned soliton wave with one negative hump. It is a conservative wave, which maintains its shape and dimensions, and travels long distances with the speed of sound. An advanced technology of generation of the negative pressure wave in real systems allowed creating completely new energy saving technology. This technology based on negative pressure phenomenon has been already used for increasing oil production efficiency during various oil well operations, cleaning of oil well bore, and pipelines from various accumulations. It is shown that a new technology has a lot of potentials for bottom-hole cleaning operations, oil recovery enhancement, pipeline transportation, gas-lift operation etc. Negative pressure is known to be one of the metastable states at which liquids can be extended up to a certain limit. Theoretic evaluations show that in pure liquids negative pressure may reach large values while the liquid may stand significant extending efforts. For instance, the maximum negative pressure that may be sustained by ideally pure water is estimated as −109N/m2. It means that an imaginable rope of completely pure water with the diameter of 0.01m can sustain a huge extending effort more than 105 N. It is evident that the real experimental values of negative pressure are much less than the corresponding theoretic estimations. It is connected with the impossibility of obtaining ideally pure liquids without any “weak places” (gas bubbles, admixture, etc) and with the circumstance that in experience, the rupture often happens not in the liquid volume but on the surface touching the walls of the vessels weakened by the existence of thin films, embryos, etc. There are numerous results of the experimental work of static and dynamic character, where negative pressure has appeared in one or another degree [1]. In laboratory conditions, negative pressure apparently was first revealed in the experiences made by F. M. Donny (1843), who used degassed sulfuric acid and obtained negative pressure only −0.012 MPa. Among the further attempts of receiving bigger negative pressure, it is worth mentioning the experiences made by O.Reynolds, M.Bertelot and J.Meyer. Basing upon a centrifugal method and using mercury, L.J.Briggs obtained the record value of negative pressure (−42.5 MPa). But as a matter of fact, beginning from the first experiences by F. M. Donny, the main condition in the investigations for the appearance of negative pressure has been the homogeneous character of the liquid and high degree of the purity the liquid-vessel system. Significant values of negative pressure has been obtained under those conditions, however these results of a great scientific importance have no effective applications in practice as real liquids in Nature and technological processes are heterogeneous multicomponent systems. A long-term experimental work has been done to generate negative negative pressure in real liquid systems and investigate influence of this state on thermohydrodynamical characteristics of natural and technological processes [2,3]. Basing on the idea that negative pressure can be created due to the sudden character of extending efforts a direct wave of the negative pressure in real liquids (water, oil, solutions etc.) have been obtained experimentally. For impulsive entering into metastable (overheated) zone in a phase diagram “liquid-vapor” the pressure should drop so fast that the existing centers of evaporation (bubbles, embryos, admixtures etc.) would not be able to manifest themselves for this period. In these terms purity of the liquid is not decisive, and herewith there might exist states of an overheated liquid with the manifestation of negative pressure. It was determined that wave of the negative pressure resembling overturned soliton wave with one but negative peak propagates with speed of sound. The typical variation of the pressure in the petroleum stream in pipe is given in Figure 1. Reversed wave of the negative pressure was not recorded during the experiments. Evidently this is associated with considerable structural changes in the liquid after the passing of the direct wave. The arising negative pressure though being a short-term, results in a considerable overheating of the fluid system and leads to spontaneous evaporation and gas-emanation with the further cavitation regime. It was determined that after passing of the negative pressure wave hydraulic resistance in the system becomes much less, and significant increase of permeability of the porous medium and intensification of the filtration process take place. On the base of the investigations it was made a conclusion that any discharge in the hydraulic systems when the drop of the pressure requires much less time that relaxation of the pressure in the system inevitably results in the arising of rarefaction wave, in particular, the negative pressure wave [4]. The larger is the hydraulic system and the higher is the depression of the pressure, the more intensively the negative pressure wave may manifest itself. In certain terms waves of the positive pressure may be reflected from free surfaces, different obstacles, from contact surfaces between phases in the form of the reverse wave of the negative pressure. On this base there were presented numerous theoretical and experimental works on the simulation of the process, investigation of impact of the negative pressure on certain physical features of real systems [5]. The negative pressure wave may lead to very hard complications: showings of oil and gas leading sometimes to dreadful open fountains, borehole wall collapse, column crushing, gryphon appearance [6]. Analysis of numerous facts of complications, troubles in wells as water-oil-gas showings, crushing of columns, collapses, gryphon formation demonstrates that they arise usually as a result of round-trip operations in drilling of wells and their capital repairs. The negative pressure wave may be initiated by a sudden pulling of pipes or drilling equipment, as well as their sudden braking, quick opening of a valve at the well exit, etc, resulting in metastable extension of the working fluid agent. Though impulse negative pressure manifests itself as a significant dynamic factor, its structural consequences are more dangerous for an oil well. Moving along a well the negative pressure wave results in the spontaneous boiling of the water in the drilling fluid, and as a result of considerable reduction of its specific weight the hydrostatic column is “switched-off’ for some seconds and this may be sufficient for oil and gas showings of the well to be appeared accompanied often by crushing of columns and collapsing of wells due to great destroying energy manifestation. Negative pressure waves may be considered also as one of the dominant factors in geophysical processes, especially, in evolution and appearance of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes [7,8]. Extreme dynamic processes in the underground medium as a matter of fact can be considered as a synergetic manifestation of the negative pressure together with other thermohydrodynamical factors. The waves of negative pressure in the underground environment may be initiated by tectonic dislocations and faults as a result of different dynamic processes, dramatic decrease of pressure during the displacement of fluids and rocks. They may arise also in the form of a reverse waves as a result of reflection of ordinary seismic waves from different underground surfaces. On the basis of received results the method of artificial creation of negative pressure waves has been created [4]. The essence of the method is that negative pressure waves can be generated by means of discharge in hydraulic systems (pipes, wells, etc) when the drop of the pressure takes place during the characteristic time much less than that of pressure relaxation in the system. The greater is the volume of hydraulic system and the higher is the depression of the pressure, the more intensively the negative pressure wave may manifest itself. This method was taken as a basis of elaboration of principally new technologies and installations to increase effectiveness and efficiency of some oil recovery processes. It has been worked out and widely tested in field conditions new technologies on using of the negative pressure phenomenon for cleaning of oil producing hydraulic systems/well bore, pipeline/from various accumulations and increasing of effectiveness of oil producing at different well operation methods. The technology provides generation negative pressure waves in the well using the special mechanisms that leads to the shock depression impact upon the oil stratum, and as a result, to considerable growth in the oil influx, bottom-hole cleaning, accompanied by essential saving both reservoir and lifting energies, elimination and prevention of sandy bridging, paraffin, silt, water, etc. accumulations. For implementations of these technologies corresponding installations have been elaborated, in part, equipments for cleaning out of oil holes from sand plugs, increasing of efficiency and effectiveness of gas-lift well operations and bottom-hole pumping. In cleaning out of oil-holes from sand plugs the most operative and effective liquidation of different sand plugs irrespective of their rheological character is provided, associated with complete bottom-hole cleaning, essential increase of oil recovery and overhaul period. Elaborated equipment is simple and easy to use. Other comparatively advantageous application of the technology provides increase of efficiency of a gas-lift well operation, expressed in considerable reduction of a specific gas consumption associated with essential increase of oil recovery and overhaul period. The design of the equipment is reliable and simple to service. There are different modifications of the equipment for single-row, double-row lifts in packer and packerless designs. The introduced technologies have passed broad test in field conditions. The operative and complete cleaning of numerous oil wells was carried out, where the altitude of sand plugs varied from 20m to 180m; oil output of wells and their overhaul period have been increased and specific gas discharge reduced significantly.