After reading Jay Beck’s precise analysis of La Ciénaga, I was intrigued by how he described and catalogued its sound. Therefore I looked for other Film Sound analysis that wasn’t Chion’s. I stumbled upon an article written by Álvaro Barbosa from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Saint Joseph and Kristine Dizon from the Faculty of Human Sciences of Universidade Católica Portuguesa, entitled The Film Sound Analysis Framework: A conceptual tool to interpret the cinematic experience (2020) published on the Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts in 2020.
It’s another fantastic essay I had the privilege to read and absorb its ideas. According to Barbosa and Dizon, this tool is meant to:
(…) be used not only by scholar, but also by sound designers and practitioners (…)
And help the communication in the means of film production between musicians, directors, producers, sound designers, sound engineers, production assistants, and visual creators.
In fact, their “formula” is nonetheless a fusion between all the previously and well-known analytical listening frameworks:
- Michel Chion’s listening modes: casual, semantic and reduced listening.
- Pierre Schaeffer’s organized listening modes: ouir, écouter, entendre and comprendre.
- Pauline Olivero’s listening modalities: voluntary and involuntary.
- Rick Altman’s: semantic/syntactic approach to film genre.
The product of this fusion is entitled FSAF: Film Sound Analysis Framework, and it consists of the following analysis:
- Syntax Analysis vs Semantic Analysis: the perspective of the film’s sonic structure versus the meaning it conveys.
- Taxonomic Analysis vs Applied analysis: conceptual taxonomical perspective leading to understanding underlying sound strategies used in the film vs a perspective based on the stricter application of well-established techniques and methods.
Generally, one can analyse film sound from the following perspectives syntactic taxonomy, semantic taxonomy, applied syntax and applied semantics.