title: Feeling sound: cinematic sound, subjective narration and embodiment
Creators: name: Eastwood, Caroline Louise
Publisher: name: University of Kent
Year: 2024

description: This dissertation investigates how cinematic sound can elicit an embodied feeling in the viewer in response to fictional characters onscreen. 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 where it is used in varying ways to capture the subjective experience of characters who have suffered varying degrees of psychological and/or physical distress. 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 in relation to the image and the feeling that 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 affective capacity of sound to engage the viewer in a character's subjective state.
Theories of subjective narration in cognitive film studies from Edward Branigan (1984, 1992) and Murray Smith (1995) examine how the communication of character subjectivity does not necessarily adhere to a specific film technique such as point of view. By drawing on these ideas this study moves away from the dominance of the image and vision in film studies. Instead, I examine how Ramsay and Marder use sound to draw on the aural equivalent to point of view - point of audition - to subjectively narrate the troubled interiority of their protagonists. Ramsay and Marder's use of diegetic sound effects and ambience to subjectively narrate their character's
perceptual experiences makes their work intriguing but also challenging, where these sound elements simultaneously lure the viewer into a character's psychological state but can also make our access to him or her difficult. However, it is not purely sound alone that can create this effect in our film experience, cinematography and editing also contribute to the creation of affect in the viewer. To this end, I also consider composer and writer Michel Chion's work on audio-visuality in cinema to discuss point of audition together with other key sound techniques including acousmatic sound, acoustic close-ups, audio-bridging, and moreover the audio-visual relationship - how audio can enhance the visuals and vice versa - elements that alter the viewer's perceptual experience of film but also his or her access to a character's subjectivity.
A core finding of this thesis is that Ramsay and Marder demonstrate an acute awareness for how sound design can portray the perceptual experience of a character's interiority but also for how in the context of the image, there is the potential for the viewer to 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 can be especially effective in garnering the viewer's intimate relationship with a film character. For instance, this thesis considers hearing as part of a larger sensory system where it interconnects with the other senses, and as a result, concerns the multisensory potential of sound in our pre-reflective experience of film. 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, this project is grounded in an 4 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.