| | | | | | throbs. In this kind of spectacle, the world is no longer "wakened" by the audio. Rather the point is to rattle spectators down to a "Wow!" Special effects have evolved into special affects. | | | | | | | | | Clearly today it is no longer enough to "put the door slams, the cat meow, and the traffic," in a film any more. 42 The advances in sound technology should not be ignored. Yet, when all is said and done, the Sturm und Drang possibilities of the technology in the theaters do not fit all films equally well. There is clearly an open conflict between two types of cinema, one which lets viewers scrutinize the world for clues as to its meaning and another which seeks above all to give spectators a corporal high. The question then boils down to you and the film you are making. Is it about the world? Or is it about getting the audience through a roller-coaster type of experience? | | | | | | | | | Music forms the third component of the sound track. Why music at all? Looking beyond the commonplace notion that it was needed originally to cover up the noise of the projector, Chion has suggested that the practice in fact took its cue from long-established predecessors: the music that accompanied opera singers, ballet dancers, circus performers, etc. In most of these situations, the musicians sit in a space of their own: the pit. And Chion has accurately described a similar output in film, as "pit music."43 Too often though, this type of music, Hanns Eisler tells us disapprovingly, "sets the tone of the enthusiasm the picture is supposed to whip up in the audience. . . . Its action is advertising, and nothing else. It points with unswerving agreement to everything that happens on the screen."44 This music thus functions as an ideal audience, totally immersed in the story and always ready to applaud regardless of the depicted occurrences and the actual performance of the film. We, of course, are not an ideal audience and our own reaction to the spectacle may be different. As a result, we may become aware of the music's efforts, grow suspicious of them, and declare them to be in vain. The problem with this type of music is that it has no ethical backbone to stand on. It agrees with everything that is placed on the screen. It has never seen a situation it does not like and cannot embrace. An example of this kind of melodious endorsement can be found at the end of The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988). The trial is over and the protagonist has won despite the odds. She thanks her attor- | | | | |
