Sunday, October 3, 2010

Rear Window - Craig Walters

One of the things I noticed about the diegetic sound of the movie Rear Window was that it was often nonsynchronous sound. Often times, usually at night, when something dramatic was happening the sounds from the road seemed to disappear. This is probably because the silence adds to the dramatic effect, meaning that the noises and, probably, the piano his neighbor played (or music in general) were synthesized in a studio.
Alfred Hitchcock does a great job with the realistic sound recording in this movie and does this by having several different personalities (of characters) dictate the sounds. There is a beautiful blonde who’s a dancer, she listens to a lot of music which is upbeat, and a pianist, who’s plays beautiful and dramatically. The blonde girl is shown usually in the morning or during times that seems to be quite leisure, whereas the pianist plays in more dramatic settings. Often when things are intense with the main character, and more notably, when the single older lady living under the killer is about to commit suicide and his music moves her so much that she decides against it.

1 comment:

  1. Some interesting points here, Craig, though I get a bit lost in the fragmented syntax. Almost seems like you're commenting on the less realistic, more subjective qualities of the sound as well as its realism.

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