Feeling sound : cinematic sound, subjective narration and embodiment

This dissertation investigates how filmmakers use sound to foster the viewer's embodied engagement with fictional characters. Much has been captured on the role of the film image and its affective properties in our engagement with character in academic literature. However, far less has been reported on the role of sound, especially its close relationship with the image in our pre-reflective and embodied engagement with film. This study will tackle this gap in film studies with close reference to films directed by Lynne Ramsay and Darius Marder. These directors place sound design at the centre of the films I have chosen for this study and is used in varying ways to subjectively narrate characters who are psychologically complex due to trauma experiences. To portray character complexity, Ramsay and Marder will often challenge conventional filmmaking methods and narrative structures. Subsequently, on the surface, the internal states of these characters may appear difficult to access but by attending to sound and the affective feeling this may generate, we can begin to comprehend a character's feelings. By way of close film analysis and relevant theory, I will examine how these directors and their sound designers - Paul Davies and Nicolas Becker - utilise the multisensory capacity of sound to engage the viewer in a character's internal state. Theories of subjective narration in film studies such as Edward Branigan (1984) and Murray Smith (1995) examine how communication of character subjectivity does not necessarily adhere to a specific film technique such as point of view. This study examines how Ramsay and Marder draw on the aural equivalent, point of audition to subjectively narrate their protagonist's perceptual experience of trauma through sound. Both Ramsay and Marder draw on diegetic sound effects and ambience rather than the more commonly used dialogue or music soundtrack to subjectively narrate their character's perceptual experiences. This makes their work intriguing but also challenging in the sense that these sound elements simultaneously lure the viewer into a character's psychological state but can also make our access to him or her a challenge. Drawing on composer and film sound theorist Michel Chion's seminal writings on audio-visuality in cinema, I will also discuss how point of audition and other key sound techniques such as acousmatic sound, acoustic close-ups, audio-bridging, and the effects of added value in the sound-image relationship - how the sonic can enhance the visuals and vice versa - help the viewer to embody a character's experience in film. A core finding of this thesis is that Ramsay and Marder demonstrate an acute awareness of for how sound design can portray the perceptual experience of a character's interiority but also for how in the context of the image the viewer can obtain feelings with, or empathy with a character. The films that I have selected for this thesis, therefore, are arguably intended to be experiential for the viewer, where we are encouraged to observe our own perceptual experience through the subjective narration of characters. Consequently, the question of how our cinematic experience connects with our everyday aural perception is significant to this study. Such an investigation paves the way to a bigger, significant area of inquiry: how audio-visual aesthetics are well-matched to tackle important questions of human perception and meaning - specifically hearing - and why sound is particularly effective in the viewer's embodiment of film character. This thesis considers hearing as part of a larger sensory system, where it interconnects with other senses and as a result, concerns the multisensory potential of sound in our pre-reflective experience of cinema. Given the focus of my study and with the aim to illuminate the salience of sound in our sensory experience of film, I draw from a variety of disciplines; - cognitive studies, philosophy (phenomenology), psychology and neuroscience. Consequently, my thesis is grounded in an embodied cognition approach to cinema - a sub-discipline of cognitive film studies, where phenomenological experience and bodily feeling intersects with the study of the mind.