1. Home
2. Courses
3. Ways of Seeing
4. Ways of Seeing, Assignment 6, Sound

Prompt

Using either two or three scenes from Playtime and/or M, analyze the use of sound as a way of communicating or adding story information.

Unify your analysis by either contrasting the use of sound in your selected scenes or describe how this particular use of sound evolves during the film. Your analysis should focus on these particular elements of sound:

• sound acoustics
• non-diegetic sound
• diegetic sound and time
• diegetic sound and space
• diegetic sound and mimesis

You may wish to answer the question: “How does a particular element of sound enhance each scene?”

Review the Sound outline for an overview of these concepts and Spadoni, chapter six, for more detailed descriptions.

Rubric

I will evaluate your paper on the following criteria:

• clearly identifying, in the opening paragraph of your paper, whether you’re contrasting the use of sound in a set of scenes or analyzing the evolution of the use of sound in subsequent set of scenes.
• directing your analysis on two to three scenes from either or both films listed above.
• vividly describing the scenes you are analyzing and how the elements of sound are present in each scene.
• analyzing these scenes according to the terminology described in the textbook

Outside sources are not required for this assignment, but please cite the page number when referencing any passages from the textbook. For example:

According to Spadoni, referential meaning is “everything that the film visibly and audibly presents to us” (19).

or

Although I didn’t like the film, I will resist evaluating the film in favor of analysis. Instead I will focus on “looking at film as a system of relationships and try to develop persuasive arguments about what that system is doing” (Spadoni 32).

Your paper should be about four-to-five pages in length and must be submitted as a PDF via email on the date specified on the syllabus.