Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization by Kahra Scott-James

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization by Kahra Scott-James Caitlan Truelove Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization. By Kahra Scott-James. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. [vii, 192 p. ISBN 9781474235112 (paperback), $37.95; ISBN 9781474235143 (e-book), $190.] Illustrations, index. Claudia Gorbman, often referred to as the founder of film musicology, notes that film composers are participants in film music scholarship, since they "have a gift for explaining what they do," but that film music scholars find it difficult to apply analytical approaches on this music if the composer has already dictated what the music means ("Aesthetics and Rhetoric," American Music 22, no. 1 [Spring 2004]: 15). Yet musicologists have long studied film composers, their methods, and how these have changed since the advent of sound film. Even though it would appear as if researchers from many academic fields are producing film music scholarship using different methodologies, one of the main goals of current research is to bring these methodologies and different fields together. Most recently, musicologists and music theorists have used the phrase "theorists of the soundtrack" to describe their research in film music (see James Buhler and Hannah Lewis, eds., Voicing the Cinema: Film Music and the Integrated Soundtrack, [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020], jacket cover). Since the soundtrack consists of music, sound effects, and dialogue, these theorists choose to draw upon methodologies from many different areas. Perhaps it is no surprise then that a book emerged outlining the beginnings of how sound is worked incipiently but discreetly in the films of today. Although originally intended for sound-design practitioners, Kahra Scott-James's book—part historiography, part guidebook—offers a sound designer's perspective as a theorist of the soundtrack. This volume brings up more practical "behind-the-scenes" aspects of sound production, which may help to inform the current soundtrack discourse in musicology and music theory. The book is organized into six chapters: "Early Practice," "Sound as Design," "Contemporary Sound Design," "Preproduction," "Production," and "Postproduction." Scott-James's writing style is clear throughout the book, even when describing the more technical aspects of production. Additionally, she explores developments and innovations to sound design for screen and stage from locations across the globe, although her focus relates to more recent US film productions. In the first chapter, Scott-James explores sound production for the stage, talkies, and animation. She describes thunder, one of the first sound effects for stage, as an example of real, subconscious, and unreal representations of what audience members perceive: thunder exists in the physical world, but the sound can also suggest impending doom as well as an aural representation [End Page 573] of supernatural characters (p. 1). Early forms of sound design are also traced back to puppetry, slapstick, and vaudeville. Scott-James describes in detail the history of the slapstick, a device originally used in commedia dell'arte performances, and how it was a useful tool to recreate the sharp, snappy sounds of "a slap, thwack, whack, shot, or whip crack" (p. 3). Theatrical sound design continued to evolve when producers started to include audio-visual elements—such as projected photographs or scenes—to their stage shows. Scott-James does not touch on live film soundtracks until later in the chapter and cites Lyman Howe as potentially "the first person to use a phonograph and live sound effects in the presentation of movies" (p. 7). Developments in sound design are described in the same subsections as advances in technology, such as the use and production of sound effects in radio, television, and early forms of animation. Scott-James notes that as plots become more complex, audiences grow more attuned to noticing sounds heard in the media they consume. In chapter 2, "Sound as Design," Scott-James introduces sound theories. Although this topic may be more familiar to professional sound designers, this chapter provides insightful information to those studying the soundtrack. Scott-James focuses mainly on sound work and sound techniques in the early to mid-twentieth century, arguing that many of these established processes are still in use in contemporary films. This period is also a time of filmmakers experimenting with sounds, and...