The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart

Representing holy foolishness: an investigation of the holy fool as a critical figure in European cinema

How music influences the interpretation of film and video

The field of Music Emotion Recognition has become and established research sub-domain of Music Information Retrieval. Less attention has been directed towards the counterpart domain of Audio Emotion Recognition, which focuses upon detection of emotional stimuli resulting from non-musical sound. By better understanding how sounds provoke emotional responses in an audience, it may be possible to enhance the work of sound designers. The work in this paper uses the International Affective Digital Sounds set. A total of 76 features are extracted from the sounds, spanning the time and frequency domains. The features are then subjected to an initial analysis to determine what level of similarity exists between pairs of features measured using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient before being used as inputs to a multiple regression model to determine their weighting and relative importance. The features are then used as the input to two machine learning approaches: regression modelling and artificial neural networks in order to determine their ability to predict the emotional dimensions of arousal and valence. It was found that a small number of strong correlations exist between the features and that a greater number of features contribute significantly to the predictive power of emotional valence, rather than arousal. Shallow neural networks perform significantly better than a range of regression models and the best performing networks were able to account for 64.4% of the variance in prediction of arousal and 65.4% in the case of valence. These findings are a major improvement over those encountered in the literature. Several extensions of this research are discussed, including work related to improving data sets as well as the modelling processes.

/pdf/supervised-machine-learning-for-audio-emotion-recognition-24ve2h25uy.pdf

Supervised machine learning for audio emotion recognition

Unfamiliar sounds in familiar settings: On the cosmopolitan labour of film composers in Istanbul

This article examines the role that sound plays in making fictions perceptually real to film audiences, whether these fictions are realist or non-realist in content and narrative form. I will argue that some aspects of film sound practices and the kind of experiences they trigger are related to basic rules of human perception, whereas others are more properly explained in relation to how aesthetic devices, including sound, are used to characterise the fiction and thereby make it perceptually real to its audience. Finally, I will argue that not all genres can be defined by a simple taxonomy of sounds. Apart from an account of the kinds of sounds that typically appear in a specific genre, a genre analysis of sound may also benefit from a functionalist approach that focuses on how sounds can make both realist and non-realist aspects of genres sound real to audiences.

/pdf/making-fictions-sound-real-on-film-sound-perceptual-realism-2ky2xrfwm5.pdf

Making fictions sound real - On film sound, perceptual realism and genre

Following the viewers: Investigating television drama engagement through skin conductance measurements

What was Dogme 95

Most film analysis features discussions and explorations of the visual track, while marginalising the soundtrack. In addition, soundtrack analysis itself can be limited to formalist descriptions of sound production or musical structures. This article argues for the incorporation in film analysis of theories concerning viewer perception, cognition and emotional response, particularly in relation to the soundtrack. It discusses sound space and perception through a brief study of technologies such as stereo sound, Dolby SR (Spectral Recordings) and digital sound. It examines the ways in which the development and introduction of these technological advances in film sound recording, mixing and cinema reproduction have affected the role of sound in film diegesis. 'Open' and 'compact' sound spaces are explored in relation both to these technologies and to the way in which film spectators respond to the events on the screen.

Spatial Perception and Technologies of Cinema Sound

Film music is often thought of as something that adds to the visuals. Yet, this truism somehow obscures the complexity of how film music works. First, music has no single and fixed meaning that can be added to the visuals in the first place. Second, experiencing audiovisual meaning can be accounted for on several levels. For that reason this article proposes eight different but complementary ways of listening to music along the lines of ecological theories of musical perception in which it is argued that we hear things, that is, referential matters in music. The validity of this is demonstrated through the discussion of a series of scholarly interpretations of John Williams’ music for the opening scene of Jaws (1975). Second, it is argued that music may add meaning on different levels and a three level model of film music analysis is suggested in which the music as an expressive device, the fiction world as a dramatic space and kinds of audience engagement are conceived as three separate, yet interacting, levels of the filmic experience.

/pdf/hearing-things-in-music-for-films-music-fiction-and-19wpxj1blh.pdf

Birger Langkjær

Papers

Making fictions sound real - On film sound, perceptual realism and genre

Following the viewers: Investigating television drama engagement through skin conductance measurements

What was Dogme 95

Spatial Perception and Technologies of Cinema Sound

Hearing things in music for films: music, fiction and engagement