Sound Design and the Moving Image: The Multi-Layered Language of Film

What is the role of sound in film? Music and sound effects are central elements of telling its stories by establishing pacing, enhancing mood, commenting on or interpreting, even contradicting and subverting what we see. This course explores these questions from the "talkies" of the late 1920s to the films of today. Over this time filmmaking technology has been transformed by post-production editing. We will analyze selected films and scenes to develop a technical and critical vocabulary to describe and assess the multiple visual and aural layers of a still evolving art form in which what we hear is as important as what we see.