Bela Balazs and the Sound in Goodfellas
Bela Balazs’ theory of sound is an eye-opener to how we take the sound film for granted. He beautifully explains how sound improved the film viewing experience after living in a time talking pictures didn’t exist. While Goodfellas wasn’t the first film to include sound, it takes advantage of sound in many different ways that Balazs explains himself in his chapter, Theory of the Film: Sound. Through the use of Bela Balazs’ concepts of asynchronous sound, silence, and acoustical close-ups, Goodfellas is able to convey tension to the audience that would otherwise be less effective without sound.
After the opening title sequence, we see three men in the car together. After a few seconds, the audience,
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as well as the character who is driving, begin hearing an odd sound. The driver notifies his colleagues, who have drifted to sleep, about the strange noise before pulling over to see where the source of the sound is. Right away, a sound technique detailed by Balazs is being used. Hearing a noise that isn’t coming from anything onscreen is a form of asynchronous sound. When applied effectively, Balazs explains that it can produce “tension arising from curiosity and expectation" (Balazs 120). While Balazs is mostly focused on the audience’s point of view, both the audience and the characters onscreen in this scene become curious about what the sound could be. However, the driver in particular noticeably becomes nervous with his simple line, “No,” as if what he had concluded wasn’t possible. For the viewers who have been paying attention, there is now a slight disconnect between them and the main character, Henry Hill. If they noticed Hill’s moment of self-doubt, the audience should be even more curious about the mysterious sound. As a result, the tension begins to build even more. All of this comes from the simple decision to insert a sound that seemingly doesn’t have any source on the screen. If the film had no sound at all, this technique couldn’t be used to produce mystery and interest in the viewer. As the characters exit the car, everyone is almost completely silent.
As the camera zooms in on Conway and DeVito's faces, nothing but the thumping sound and crickets fill the space. All the characters seem worried, but not frightened. Balazs also explains the phenomenon of silence in a sound film and how it’s vastly different than no sound at all. He states that the “physiognomy of men is more intense when they are silent” (Balazs 119). In this example, the silence makes the scene a very tense environment. Even though the audience is not aware of the exact situation, they conclude that there’s a feeling of uneasiness within the characters about what is in the trunk. The film achieves this by adding silence to the scene to emphasize the emotions the characters are feeling. A film without sound cannot perfectly reproduce this effect. The dramatic effect that comes from silence in a sound film wouldn't be apparent because there is less of an emotional impact on the viewer. Balazs argues that you cannot experience silence by hearing nothing. Instead, you experience silence when you “can hear every distant sounds in a very large space” (Balazs 118). In this scene, the experience of silence is executed by including sounds of crickets and the thumping of the trunk. While sound has not been completely eliminated, the absence of sound, going from inside the car to outside it, is a dramatic difference and very clear to the audience. This contrast completely changes the …show more content…
audience’s mood. The sudden change allows for tension to build without the characters needing to say a word. Going near the end of the movie, when all three guys visit DeVito’s mother, they all chat about a specific painting.
Close to the end of the scene, there’s a close up of DeVito as he laughs about the painting. However, the camera pans and starts zooming in on the window behind him. As the camera zooms in, the sound of his laughing slowly starts to fade away. At the same time, the car the guys were driving comes into view and the thumping noise begins to increase in volume. Balazs explains the concept of acoustical close-ups, which are used to allow the audience to hear sounds that they might not hear in the real world. It may be a sound or noise that occurs often and naturally in the world, but it may not be a sound one is used to recognizing as significant or perhaps the sound is "drowned in the general din" (Balazs 121). In this example, there is no way the characters can hear the thumping of the trunk as they converse with each other. It’s also not logical that the audience would’ve been able to hear the sounds of the trunk unless the director pointed the audience’s attention to it. Using acoustical close-ups, the director can focus the audience's attention to a specific point of interest. The ability to isolate a certain place or object using sound can emphasize the importance of that thing to the audience. In this case, the thumping sound reminds viewers of the opening scene of the film. With this realization, a sense of uneasiness should come to the viewers
as they’re now aware of what comes next. As a result of using the acoustical close-up, the director has made the audience emotionally feel uneasy just as the characters did when they heard the thumping in the car. The tension Goodfellas brings to the audience is one of its best strengths. However, the use of sound is typically not considered to be a contributor to tension from the casual viewer. While examining Balazs’ observations on the strengths of the sound film, it is clear how much a carefully placed sound effect or moment of silence can make the difference in changing the mood of the scene. By effectively incorporating the concepts of asynchronous sound, silence, and acoustical close-ups that Bela Balazs explains, tension is delivered to the audience in Goodfellas in a way that a silent film couldn’t do.
Sound as we discuss in our discussion question section, sound plays a significant role in every scene, it helps the audience in many ways such as to know the audience what is going to happen or to get the into the character. Now on days many directors increase realism brought on by sound inevitable forced acting styles to become more natural the scene can be identifying a digetic sound. Many people may think that the sound effect that a director use in a movie, novella or documentary is the same, they are totally confused, its two types of sound such as digetic sound and non digetic sound
Sound is an incredibly relevant part of filmmaking. Although often misunderstood, it helps to generate a more realistic episode by recreating the sonic experience the scene needs. Its main goal is to enhance the emotions that each section is trying to convey by adding music and effects alongside moving images. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960), is one of the most popular films of the XX Century (Thomson, 2009). Commonly recognised as a masterpiece for its cinematographic, editing and musical values, it changed cinema forever by “playing with darker prospects (…) of humanity such as sex and violence (Thomson, 2009)”. This paper will analyse the sound effects used in the shower scene and its repercussions
Relying on the conventions of the silent film era, The Philadelphia Story uses “the expository intertitles to convey crucial information” relevant to the...
Sound falls in to two categories, diegetic and non-diegetic meaning sound that is natural, and sound that has been added such as a music. The director uses sound by making everything in the background sound very low to heighten the sound of her breathing so it is easily heard. This technique is another way to express the emotion of nervousness as well as show how scared the character must feel. Although the words Juno says at the time is quite jokingly stated the way sound is used helps portray a different feeling for the audience to experience. Different film techniques often times, subtly help the audience feel what the characters are actually feeling, despite what may have been said, it helps get the directors true message across in a creative way. This scene perfectly shows exactly how it is possible to do this as well as showing how it is
As the camera zoom smoothly creeps in from the establishing wide we are exposed to a changing palette of noises from the surrounding environme...
In conclusion, I have demonstrated how Coppola exploits a wide array of sound and editing to create suspense, intensity, and anxiety in the sequence to affect the audience’s emotions, using diegetic ambient sound effects, non-diegetic music, voice over and four editing types. With this sequence, Coppola has shown the savagery of war and our complicity in this violence as an audience.
As the camera pans left, the audience is feed the sound of busy city life. The complete opposite to the image the audience had experienced just moments before. The soundtrack is vital, as it creates a direct image to match the visual that the audience sees. The audience at this point must recognise the difference between the two scenes and realise why it was used. The use of soundtrack and carefully structured images creates an uneasy tension in...
Brownlow, Kevin 1994, ‘Preface’, in Paolo, C, Burning Passions: an introduction to the study of silent film, British Film Institute, London: BFI, pp. 1-3.
Sound is an extremely important element to a film. Music, the sound chosen in this scene, is categorized as non-diegetic, which means that the music is not in the story world. The directors use deep, dramatic, intense music when Nick is interrogating Judy about her speech. The music in the scene helps the audience feel the anxiousness that Judy is feeling towards predators, particularly Nick. As the music plays in the background, the intensity of the scene grows immensely. The directors use the music to help heighten the emotion during this encounter and reveal Judy’s inner fear of predators that gets the best of her in this
“Sound may tell the story directly, or it may be integrated by the audience along with the picture into a complete whole, without differentiation. In such a state, the sound and picture together can become greater than the sum of the parts.” (Holman, 2010)
With the discovery of techniques such as continuous editing, multiple camera angles, montage editing, and more, silent filmmaking developed from simple minute-long films to some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring films that have ever been created—in only a few decades. In Visions of Light, someone alluded that if the invention of sound had come along a mere ten years later, visual storytelling would be years ahead of what it is today. This statement rings true. When looking at the immense amount of progress that was made during the silent era of films, one must consider where the art of film has been, where it is, and where it is
Sound is what brings movies to life, but, not many viewers really notice. A film can be shot with mediocre quality, but, can be intriguing if it has the most effective foley, sound effects, underscore, etc. Sound in movies band together and unfold the meaning of the scenes. When actors are speaking, the dialogue can bring emotion to the audience, or, it can be used as the ambient sound. Music is one of the main things to have when filmmaking. The use of Claudia Gorbman’s Seven Principles of Composition, Mixing and Editing in Classical Film gives audiences a perspective of sound, and, how it can have an impact on them.
I really liked when the scenes where the image and sound both work together great. I refer to the silence as nothingness and feeling alone because that describes the dark silences perfectly. It is definitely the most prominent part in the movie, and I think more movies should try to use silence to their advantage. I absolutely think that the movie uses silence expressively. For one thing, they are in space so there isn’t a lot of noise in the middle of the galaxy, but for some reason when I think back to when there were shots of the rocket ship in the dark galaxy I think of how the film makers made there be no background noise except the ship which was nice because it made it seem very realistic. Usually in movies there is a lot of background music that you don’t notice, but it helps the scene out. In this case the director used silence to make the scenes more realistic. I think of the scene where Matthew McCaughey goes into the dark hole. He was narrating at the time then suddenly you hear dead silence. It made me have a deeper connection with the movie because the movie was silent, but so were my thoughts. When I think back to the movie, I don’t remember there being a lot of music because it all just blended in, then I went back to see if they had anything special about their music I noticed all the different types of music they had throughout the movie. (This is all referring to my discussion post from chapter
As Richard Abel observes, “The materiality of silent cinema…has become so unfamiliar to us, so different from that of our own cinema in the late twentieth century” that it is difficult to view silent film as anything but anachronistic (4). However, with 2011’s The Artist—an homage to silent film—winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, it may be worthwhile to examine the nature and appeal of silent film. In a way, silent film does something that the modern day special effects spectaculars do not do: it leaves more to the imagination and calls upon the viewer to use his or her own mind in correspondence with the moving pictures. This paper will analyze what it is that makes silent film unique and show how the nature of silent film allows viewers to envision for themselves those aspects of the drama that are left out (voice, dialogue) while emphasizing others (action, place, physical humor) in much the same way that an audience participates with a live performance in the theater.
The use of sound has been greatly developed and is now considered as "one of the richest sources of meaning in film art." (Giannetti, 2002). When sound in film is being examined, two positions must be assumed; digetic sound and non-digetic sound. These positions relate to the basis of the sound in film and television. For example, digetic sound refers to the sound that materialises inside the creation of the film (if a character h...