chion

Sound is definitely a really powerful tool in filmmaking. The way Chion talks about viewing Persona without sound and how it completely changes everything reminded me of taking an intro level class with Berliner and he showed us a clip from Psycho. Then he showed it to us again without the sound. It was absolutely ridiculous and boring. Someone slowly walking around has no meaning or no intensity AT ALL without sound. Even the famous shower scene was dull without the high pitched sound that most people associate with the stabbing motion (although the sound does not actually occur in sync with the stabbing).

I personally first learned the how critical the sound is during Intermediate Editing. I spent a lot of time gathering all my clips and stuff for my experimental film and then went to add a song and print to video and i all of a sudden slammed into a wall. I looked for hours and hours and hours for the type of song that i wanted for my film. I really had no idea how hard it was going to be to find a song that would give my editing project the right feel. I decided that next time i would start with the soundtrack and work backwards... building the experimental film off of the sound/speech/etc.

There is a huge difference between the films we watch in class with sound and without. I find the ones with sound way more interesting. I think its because through our entire lives we have watched films with some sort of sound. Even silent films have songs. So to watch a film with no sound at all is really uncomfortable for me. The cuts are so much more noticeable without the sound bridges and it feels incomplete.