Cinematic World Research Articles

Electronica, gender and French cinematic girlhood in Céline Sciamma’s films

ABSTRACT This article examines the music in Céline Sciamma’s films with an emphasis on Naissance des pieuvres (2007), arguing that, in a film where the girl characters so rarely express themselves through dialogue, the music offers a means of communication that does not rely on the verbal. It is through music that this film invites the spectator into the girls’ cinematic world, and this music provides an insight into the sensations and emotions that the girls experience. The article argues that the use of the electronic genre increases this potential for expression. Because electronic music is bound up in French musical culture, and because it offers specific opportunities for female expression, the genre is particularly significant in a French girlhood film. This article examines how the electronic genre aids in the creation of a specifically ‘girl’ space in Céline Sciamma’s films offering the girls a space in which they can express themselves freely without pre-existing signification or stereotypes. Via both the musical sounds themselves and the signification attached to the electronic genre, the film’s music provides an audible expression of the characters’ experiences, inviting us into the girls’ cinematic space and allowing us a point of entry into their world.

GRAPHIC DESIGN IN FILM: BUILDING CHARACTER IDENTITY AND VISUAL STYLE IN THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

Graphic design and cinema have worked together since the early days of filmmaking, driven by the effort to develop autonomous visual narratives in silent films, in much through the use of intertitles. It is meaningful to recognize how graphic design elements have invariably been a part of cinema’s hybrid language, as a material of expression manifested through the visual channel together with the filmed image. The different technological milestones that shaped cinema’s development also directly influenced the use of graphic language in movies, which became more complex with time. These graphic elements are present throughout an entire film narrative, from the choice of verbal, pictorial and schematic elements in titles and animations, to the creation (and curation) of printed or handmade graphic props, signage and logos filmed by the camera. Together, they form a movie’s graphic identity, which helps to convey meaning to the narrative as well as to bring a more dynamic and authentic storytelling. Through a case study of Hollywood’s 2013 movie adaptation of the literary masterpiece The Great Gatsby, this paper intends on exemplifying the strategic use of graphic design elements throughout the movie – in the physical and virtual formal natures – aiding in the construction of characters’ identities, contextualized into the roaring 1920’s aesthetics, as well as defining a clear visual style that is consistent with director Baz Luhrmann’s unique vision for the movie. In this way, the objective is to bring awareness to the potential of graphic design in building cinematic worlds that are historically accurate, aesthetically rich, and emotionally identifiable.

On Skorin-Kapov's Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope and Laine's Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky

On Skorin-Kapov's Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope and Laine's Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky Benjamin Franz Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope. By Jadranka Skorin-Kapov. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 216 pp., ISBN 978-1501306976. US $32. Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky. By Tarja Laine. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. 194 pp., ISBN 978-1782385752. US $115. These two books, written in the past few years, seek to delve into the cinema of Darren Aronofksy. A strong filmmaking presence, Aronofsky has created a cinema of psychological melodrama, according to these scholars. The films discussed in these volumes are magnificent works,1 which to this reviewer belie a deep understanding of Judaism and rich a Jewish background. If either of these authors delved into Aronofsky's background as a Jewish filmmaker, these volumes would have been elevated to must-reads for subscribers to Jewish Film & New Media. However, neither Laine nor Skorin-Kapov seem to have any interest in exploring that crucial facet of Aronofsky's approach to storytelling. Instead, both books are deeply rooted in surveying the psychological topographies of the mind that Aronofsky's films dwell on and the manifestation of pain and trauma his protagonists' experience in their particular cinematic worlds. [End Page 114] Were these books being reviewed for any other publication, it would have sufficed to summon citations bearing out the thoughtful and clear methodologies provided by these scholars on the subject of Aronofsky's films. However, as this journal's agency is to explore the Jewish nature of Aronofsky's body of work, I must admit that these volumes are quite lacking in that regard. Particularly painful is Skorin-Kapov's monograph. She has clearly mapped the psychological subtext of each Aronofsky film from Pi (1998) to Noah (2014). Her summaries of each film are clear. The theories she uses to summon the intent and delivery of scenes in these films is profound. However, not once does she connect a praxis from Aronofsky's psychological and artistic ideas to his innate Jewishness. This will disappoint people looking for a clear explication of how Aronofsky's identity as a secular Jew informs his art. For example, consider her approach to Pi. First she presents an overview of the film's story. Then she dissects its protagonist, Max Cohen. She explores his psychology and how it aligns with various theorists. Then she looks at the intentionality of Max's actions as he pursues the mathematical proof of God: the repeating perfectly self-replicating string of numbers that verifies the creator's place in our universe. The gallery of film scholars she cites to discuss this idea is robust and deep. I found great pleasure in reading many of the threads she chose to weave to create a full psychologically examined portrait of this character. Unfortunately, this is not further tied into the Kabbalistic ideas or the places Aronofsky may have learned of such mystical Jewish concepts. We are bereft of any interrogation or inquiry into the filmmaker's Brooklyn-based background, which would have granted a young Aronofsky access to glean details of Kabbalah, Hasidut, or even any Aggadata, which may or may not be relevant to these films. It just does not happen here. Laine is more interested in exploring the manifestations of physical agony portrayed by the protagonists of each film. Where Skorin-Kapov mines the psychological background of lead characters, Laine wants to understand how the physical meets the neurological. For Laine, the emotional outbursts of characters bring clues to the meaning and intent of each film she elaborates on. Here is a bold, inspired attempt to connect Randy the Ram's heart condition in The Wrestler (2012) with his most rewarding identity as a former professional wrestler. To watch Randy's tragic story unfold as expressed through the varying amounts of chest pain he experiences is quite the heady material for melodrama. If only there was a thought [End Page 115] given to how this could be derived from the Ashkenazic Jewish obsession with the sicknesses, plagues, and diseases that afflict us...

On Skorin-Kapov's <em>Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope</em> and Laine's <em>Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky</em>

On Skorin-Kapov's Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope and Laine's Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky Benjamin Franz Darren Aronofsky's Films and the Fragility of Hope. By Jadranka Skorin-Kapov. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. 216 pp., ISBN 978-1501306976. US $32. Bodies in Pain: Emotion and the Cinema of Darren Aronofsky. By Tarja Laine. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. 194 pp., ISBN 978-1782385752. US $115. These two books, written in the past few years, seek to delve into the cinema of Darren Aronofksy. A strong filmmaking presence, Aronofsky has created a cinema of psychological melodrama, according to these scholars. The films discussed in these volumes are magnificent works,1 which to this reviewer belie a deep understanding of Judaism and rich a Jewish background. If either of these authors delved into Aronofsky's background as a Jewish filmmaker, these volumes would have been elevated to must-reads for subscribers to Jewish Film & New Media. However, neither Laine nor Skorin-Kapov seem to have any interest in exploring that crucial facet of Aronofsky's approach to storytelling. Instead, both books are deeply rooted in surveying the psychological topographies of the mind that Aronofsky's films dwell on and the manifestation of pain and trauma his protagonists' experience in their particular cinematic worlds. [End Page 114] Were these books being reviewed for any other publication, it would have sufficed to summon citations bearing out the thoughtful and clear methodologies provided by these scholars on the subject of Aronofsky's films. However, as this journal's agency is to explore the Jewish nature of Aronofsky's body of work, I must admit that these volumes are quite lacking in that regard. Particularly painful is Skorin-Kapov's monograph. She has clearly mapped the psychological subtext of each Aronofsky film from Pi (1998) to Noah (2014). Her summaries of each film are clear. The theories she uses to summon the intent and delivery of scenes in these films is profound. However, not once does she connect a praxis from Aronofsky's psychological and artistic ideas to his innate Jewishness. This will disappoint people looking for a clear explication of how Aronofsky's identity as a secular Jew informs his art. For example, consider her approach to Pi. First she presents an overview of the film's story. Then she dissects its protagonist, Max Cohen. She explores his psychology and how it aligns with various theorists. Then she looks at the intentionality of Max's actions as he pursues the mathematical proof of God: the repeating perfectly self-replicating string of numbers that verifies the creator's place in our universe. The gallery of film scholars she cites to discuss this idea is robust and deep. I found great pleasure in reading many of the threads she chose to weave to create a full psychologically examined portrait of this character. Unfortunately, this is not further tied into the Kabbalistic ideas or the places Aronofsky may have learned of such mystical Jewish concepts. We are bereft of any interrogation or inquiry into the filmmaker's Brooklyn-based background, which would have granted a young Aronofsky access to glean details of Kabbalah, Hasidut, or even any Aggadata, which may or may not be relevant to these films. It just does not happen here. Laine is more interested in exploring the manifestations of physical agony portrayed by the protagonists of each film. Where Skorin-Kapov mines the psychological background of lead characters, Laine wants to understand how the physical meets the neurological. For Laine, the emotional outbursts of characters bring clues to the meaning and intent of each film she elaborates on. Here is a bold, inspired attempt to connect Randy the Ram's heart condition in The Wrestler (2012) with his most rewarding identity as a former professional wrestler. To watch Randy's tragic story unfold as expressed through the varying amounts of chest pain he experiences is quite the heady material for melodrama. If only there was a thought [End Page 115] given to how this could be derived from the Ashkenazic Jewish obsession with the sicknesses, plagues, and diseases that afflict us...

Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova

Reviewed by: Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Córdova, Zoraida Wayward Witch. Sourcebooks Fire, 2020 [384p] (Brooklyn Brujas) Trade ed. ISBN 9781492650683 $17.99 Paper ed. ISBN 9781728215518 $10.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781492650690 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12 Fifteen-year-old Rose Mortiz survived being trapped in hellish Los Lagos (in Labyrinth Lost, BCCB 9/17) and dealing with Lady de la Muerte (in Bruja Born, BCCB 6/18), but healing her broken family and restarting their lives in Queens still feels daunting. She barely gets a chance to try before the affairs of the supernatural world pull her back in (literally, through a portal), this time to Adas, a mythical realm in the Caribbean Sea. A destructive rot is threatening to swallow the island and potentially make its way to Rose's world, and while the king of Adas is a liar and a dictator, he appears to be right when he insists that Rose's ability to steal and amplify other creatures' magic may be able to stop it. Accompanied by the kingdom's warrior princess and bookish prince, Rose makes her way through a fantastical world of beauty and danger to discover that the plague on the land may have more to do with the wreckage of the royal family than any type of dark magic. This final book in the Brooklyn Brujas series shifts focus to the youngest Mortiz sister, and Córdova yet again executes a wholly satisfying combination of deft characterization and cinematic world building. Adas includes elements of Western and Latin American folklore and fairy tales, giving readers a setting both familiar and fresh, and the secondary cast (including a nonbinary character) plays a crucial role in Rose's emotional growth as she realizes that brokenness isn't a permanent state and that scars point towards healing, not necessarily more pain. Readers will be sad to say goodbye to the Brooklyn Brujas, but they could also head back to Los Lagos to start the story again. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Traumatic Horror Beyond the Edge:It FollowsandGet Out

Within cinematic horror, trauma as a concept has often been used as an allegorical strategy to work through collective anxieties. This article on It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) strikes another note. It argues that, by their aesthetic qualities, both films are rendered traumatic in their affective orientation, both toward the cinematic world and toward the spectator. It analyses the two films through trauma as an affective-aesthetic strategy that puts emphasis on the edge of the frame as well as on the offscreen space. This strategy evokes a sinister mood that exists independently of the protagonists, allowing us to meaningfully feel the effects of their trauma as we engage with the film. Especially the use of the offscreen space in both films contributes to the “traumatic mood” of the films, but it also functions to immerse the spectator in the invisible filmic world. In this way, It Follows and Get Out embody trauma as a denial of relief from dread, which we both recognize in the characters' experience, and feel in our own bodies through the effective creation of ever-present threat.

And That I See a Darkness: The Stardom of Kirsten Dunst in Collaboration with Sofia Coppola in Three Images

Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst share a long-standing collaboration that has lasted from Dunst's adolescence onwards and into mature womanhood. As a former child star, Dunst has grown up in front of Coppola's camera and has come to be closely associated with the director's rarefied and highly aestheticised cinematic world. I have argued elsewhere that a cardinal and abiding concern of Coppola's oeuvre is how images come to be collectively and culturally understood; moreover, Coppola is especially concerned with how the (en)gendering of an image can either open up or foreclose sites of contestation. Coppola is positioned in contrast to readings of her work as strictly postfeminist. I argue that Coppola's work is postfeminist to the extent that it exhibits an indebtedness to, in particular, second wave feminism, but I also contend that Coppola is concerned with critiquing the mores and norms of postfeminism from a resolutely feminist perspective

From the Photogeny of Poverty to the Cinegeny of Money

This article analyzes changes in the relationship between society and money that are not yet reflected in economic and social theory but have already manifested in cinematic images. Interpreting the railway-station theft sequence from Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, the author highlights money as a special privileged object in cinema, where two concepts of cinematic photogeny converge. The first understands photogeny as an object’s attractiveness manifesting exclusively on the screen (Louis Delluc), and the second as the eradication of the object and the disclosure of speed, movement, and impulses generated by the very nature of cinema (Jean Epstein sometimes called this “photogeny” and sometimes “cinegeny”). This article shows that early cinema dealt constantly with money, which, being an unphotogenic object, nevertheless revealed a “photogeny of poverty,” expressed in sentimentality (sympathy for the oppressed) and in cruelty (injustice manifested in the world of capital). Moreover, “poverty” was inherent in the very earliest cinema, which was characterized by a lack of visual aids (sound and color). Once cinema acquires its pictorial plenitude (what Gilles Deleuze calls its optical-aural situation), the attitude toward money changes. It ceases to be a sign of poverty or injustice, becoming instead an attraction that introduces the viewer to the cinematic world of deception, theft, and fraud. The cinegeny of money establishes its imprescriptibility from the world of modern media, which prompts us to view money neither as an object nor as an economic tool, but as an element of the modern world, not unlike the pre-Socratic fire, air, or number.

Transgressing boundaries between film and music videos: Smarzowski, Kolski, and music videos in Poland

While the investigation of how directors utilise popular music in their films has enjoyed relative popularity among Polish scholars, the way in which contemporary filmmakers transgress boundaries between ‘film’ and ‘music video’ in order to manifest their authorial strategies in other screen genres has not entered academic debates yet. The aim of this article is twofold. First, I will provide an overview of the marginalised position that the music video genre occupies in Polish-language academic discourse and suggest a few reasons for this negligence. Secondly, I focus here in particular on a comparison of the visual approaches and strategies prevalent in music videos directed by two notable contemporary Polish filmmakers: Jan Jakub Kolski and Wojciech Smarzowski. I will position their music videos in the context of their film production, arguing that their work for the music industry is an extension of their distinctive cinematic worlds and that it affects both the film language and the aesthetics of the music video genre ingeneral.

Assembled Worlds: Intertextuality and Sincerity in the Films of Wes Anderson

Anderson’s stylized film worlds are more than pure aestheticism. Placing disparate objects from across film history and popular culture in concert with each other, they assemble cinematic worlds that contain issues “too big” to be approached directly. As such, although both Rushmore and The Grand Budapest Hotel are permeated by stultifying loss and grief, their anachronistic, reflexive diegeses act as both canvases and containers for unresolvable narrative and thematic concerns.

Foggy signs: Dark ecological queerings in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist

Abstract This article draws on the rich ecocritical scholarship that has burgeoned in the twenty-first century to posit that queer representations of the environment that blur Romantic human/non-human dualism can challenge and nuance our discussion of the present ecological crisis. Lars von Trier’s infamous film Antichrist, I argue, presents the viewer with such a queer vision of dark ecology. This is not a harmonious and peaceful vision of Romantic nature, but the environment as a mesh, a place where the very division between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ is consistently undermined. ‘Nature’ in von Trier’s cinematic world represents all the invasive aspects of our biological surroundings that humans have sought to flee for millennia by producing shelter and culture. Antichrist has been called a psychological thriller or horror film, but it can also, I argue, be appropriately defined as a primary and genre-defining artwork of dark ecology.

Cinema and painting in Parajanov’s aesthetic metamorphoses

In this article I examine the painterly qualities of Sergei Parajanov’s films and argue that these qualities are profoundly related to the alteration of the spectatorial experience and reinvention of the aesthetic possibilities of the cinematic medium. In particular, I analyse how in his films the implementation of inverted perspective alters the spectator’s perception of the cinematic world. Furthermore, I explore how the painterly qualities in Parajanov’s films open new aesthetic possibilities through the hybridization of cinema and painting. This leads me to reconsider the genealogy of Parajanov’s cinematic experimentations within an alternative history of the moving image.

Film, Performance, and the Spaces Between: The Collaborative Works of Mara Mattuschka and Chris Haring

This article takes as its starting point five collaborative experimental films by choreographer Chris Haring and filmmaker Mara Mattuschka. Transposing live stage performances into self-contained cinematic worlds, these works represent compelling examples of intermedial exchange. The article draws on intermedial discourse, performance theory, dance film, and theories of space, body, and voice to illustrate how the films self-consciously stage their own process of transformation through an emphasis on the physical, sensual, and metaphorical spaces between.

Locating Theatricality on Stage and Screen: Rescuing Performance Practice and the Phenomenon of Fifteen Strings of Cash ( Shiwu Guan ; 1956)

Theatricality, or an aesthetics of exaggeration, is the highlight and defining characteristic of the stage in xiqu (indigenous Chinese drama). When Maoist art fell under the general aegis of socialist realism, however, xiqu leaders undertook significant changes to performance practice, including the general execution of traditional gesture. These changes initiated a conversation about the value of theatricality that spanned across the theater industry, and fundamentally challenged the hegemony of the realist aesthetic regime. Amidst the crescendoing discussion on theatricality, the hit Kunqu play Fifteen Strings of Cash (Shiwu guan; 1956) helped revive interest in the rich tradition of aestheticized movement. At the time of its move to the silver screen, the film world was debating how to respond to the aesthetic consequences of the clash between an actor-centered, theatrical art and an immersive, realist one. Fifteen Strings of Cash interfaced the concerns of the cinematic world with the continuously changing discourse on theatricality. In this article, I use this government-sanctioned, popular culture hit to look at the dynamic history of official discourse on theatrical gesture. I explore the influences on the revival of theatricality, whether from rival portions of theater officialdom, or the force of entertainment culture across media, and how these factors mixed with nationalism.

Dziga Vertov and Aleksandr Rodchenko: the visible word

This article explores the collaboration between Aleksandr Rodchenko and Dziga Vertov on the intertitles for several issues of Vertov’s Kinopravda. While some Kinopravda issues (7, 13 and 14) are known to have been designed by Rodchenko, others offer clues to Rodchenko’s influence on, if not active contribution to their design, since they are distinct from the later intertitles created by Ivan Beliakov. Rodchenko used a range of materials and designs to make the titles interactive, engaging with constructivist design of the period. He allowed Vertov to focus on the word by turning it into an object of the cinematic world captured on film, and using it as within a visual rhythmical structure.

How to Build a Transsexual Superman: Reading Superman’s Emergence Alongside Histories of Eugenic Science and Gender Confirmation Surgeries

Published under DC Comics’ Elseworlds imprint, Superman’s Metropolis is a comic book retelling of the Superman origin story set within the cinematic world of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The interpolation of the Superman narrative into the film is meant to be an imaginative act that interweaves two alternative universes in order to highlight the underlying themes of identity and corporeal malleability in both texts. This creative exercise, the author argues, is not merely a coincidental interlinking but a purposeful attempt to reveal the very real impact eugenic science (and the discourses it crafted about the body) has had on the character of Superman. This article proposes another alternative version of Superman’s origin story, one that specifically disrupts seemingly stable and normative histories of the hero’s emergence and extends the connections made in Superman’s Metropolis to consider how the eugenics movement’s investment in and development of gender confirmation surgeries (previously known as sex reassignment surgeries) markedly affects the ways in which we understand the emergence of the Superman narrative. While at first a reading-together of these histories may seem widely incompatible, the author argues that the narratives of transsexual surgeries (surgical procedures that modify an individual’s primary or secondary sex characteristics) fold neatly into the Superman origin story.

“The Music Has Something to Say”: The Musical Revisions of L'Atalante (1934)

L'Atalante (1934), the second collaboration between experimental French filmmaker Jean Vigo and composer Maurice Jaubert, has become a staple in the cinephile canon. But its profound influence on postwar filmmakers could not have been anticipated at the time of its disastrous initial release. As Vigo lay on his deathbed, the film's producers, finding L'Atalante narratively incoherent, attempted to make it more broadly accessible, replacing parts of Jaubert's score with the popular song “Le chaland qui passe” and renaming the film after the hit tune. These changes subtly altered an important narrative subtext of the film—a reflexive fixation on the recent arrival of synchronized sound film, expressed through a focus on musical playback technologies (phonographs, radios, and music boxes) and their ability to captivate. In this article, through a comparative analysis of scenes from L'Atalante (which has subsequently been restored) and Le chaland qui passe (the only surviving copy of which is housed at the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique), I show how the differences between the two versions reflect a general anxiety over the arrival of sound film in France. Vigo's fascination with mediated music and its ability to create a magical cinematic world, and the distributors' attempt to fit the film's music into a commercially successful paradigm, reflect contemporary concerns about the potential impact of mediated sound on French cinema. Through my analysis, I demonstrate how film practitioners grappled with technological changes, using music as a powerful interventional force.

De los cómics a la cinematografía = From Comics to Cinematography

From a multidisciplinary perspective we immerse ourselves into the History of Art, to dive into the background of the history of comics and, from there, to follow along the way the interaction that has existed between this and the main media that are specialized in images and creating visual icons, painting, photography and especially the cinema. It analyses the step from the static image to the moving image, in both high culture and popular culture, and shows how all these visual arts have been interrelating and have nurtured themselves, even more so nowadays. A long journey that aims to track the processes, the dynamic and the evolution that exist around the vignette from their ancestral origins to the cinematic world, their similarities and their differences, its interactivity and especially the influence and links between one another in the pursuit and development of a narrative visual language.

Whole-Screen Metamorphosis and the Imagined Camera (Notes on Perspectival Movement in Animation)

This article uses a special kind of distortion of spatial orientation in animation, which the author calls whole-screen metamorphosis, to problematize the relation that theories of camera movement often assume between a camera and its world. Recent developments in digital imaging have prompted confusion among scholars as to whether or not it makes still sense to talk about ‘camera movement’ – since, in many cases, real cameras were barely used (as in Gravity) or not at all (as in Frozen). The author argues that this confusion is frequently misguided: camera movement, as a tool of critical analysis, has always been based on a phenomenology of perspectival movement, regardless of any use (or non-use) of a real camera. However, animators sometimes play with perspectival movement in ways that undercut the more fundamental impression of a cinematic world, effectively metamorphosing our relation to it. Two kinds of this metamorphosis are explored. One, found in Norman McLaren’s Blinkity Blank, creates a Gestalt switch of our impression of space; the other, found in Caroline Leaf’s The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa, dissolves the sense of ground that is needed to support an impression of world, in a kind of becoming-animal of the camera. These phenomena point to a need for more nuanced accounts of relations between live-action, animated, and digital images.

Volume Attenuation and High Frequency Loss as Auditory Depth Cues in Stereoscopic 3D Cinema

Assisted by the technological advances of the past decades, stereoscopic 3D (S3D) cinema is currently in the process of being established as a mainstream form of entertainment. The main focus of this collaborative effort is placed on the creation of immersive S3D visuals. However, with few exceptions, little attention has been given so far to the potential effect of the soundtrack on such environments. The potential of sound both as a means to enhance the impact of the S3D visual information and to expand the S3D cinematic world beyond the boundaries of the visuals is large. This article reports on our research into the possibilities of using auditory depth cues within the soundtrack as a means of affecting the perception of depth within cinematic S3D scenes. We study two main distance-related auditory cues: high-end frequency loss and overall volume attenuation. A series of experiments explored the effectiveness of these auditory cues. Results, although not conclusive, indicate that the studied auditory cues can influence the audience judgement of depth in cinematic 3D scenes, sometimes in unexpected ways. We conclude that 3D filmmaking can benefit from further studies on the effectiveness of specific sound design techniques to enhance S3D cinema. Graphic illustration of the displacement of the background sound in relation to the position of the visual background within the stereoscopic window