The Ambience of Film Noir – Audio Reflection

The Ambience of Film Noir was a very interesting read for as I have always carried a large interest in film. To be honest, I think I may have only payed attention to the visual aspects of film and neglected the importance of sound all together. I can say that I have gained a new perspective towards the value of audio as it has come to my understanding that without audio, a film would be a lot less effective in expressing itself.

Going through the development of film audio, it kind of gives me the idea that filmmakers had the same perspective towards audio as myself at one point or another. All of that is the past now, as it is clear that audio has taken a gigantic leap from what it used to be, to now. I began reconsidering my initial thoughts of sound once I have read that filmmakers began manipulating sound to formulate their desired settings. They were able to do this by messing around with many different variables among the aspects of sound that ranged from background noises of places or people to literally a music track that was overlayed on top of the scenes.

I never grasped the idea of audio enhancement until this reading began to mention audio dubbing and editing, where essentially one would add effects to or even replace the original film audio. You do not realize the difference it makes until you witness the “before” and the “after” of the sample film. Hence, the reason why we were asked to watch the opening shot of Touch of Evil, where we compared the two videos by the audio within them. I quickly grew fond of the processes behind audio and in the future I may incorporate my new findings into my own work one day.

I feel that audio holds the power to completely alter the audience’s view of the film that they are watching, mainly because music can really declare the beginning mood of the entire sequence that it covers. Essentially, changing up the audio is probably one of the most effective and efficient ways that producers could do to  capture mood. Even though there are multiple ways to capture mood, I can now say that audio production is a solid route.