Robert Robertson: Eisenstein on the Audiovisual: The Montage of Music, Image and Sound in Cinema (2009)

“The pioneering film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein is known for the unequalled impact his handful of films have had on the development of cinema. Less is known about his remarkable and extensive writings, which present a continent of ideas about film. Here Robert Robertson explores a significant area of Eisenstein’s thought: his ideas about the audiovisual in cinema, which are more pertinent today than ever before with the advent of digital technology – music and sound now act as independent variables combined with the visual medium to produce a truly audiovisual result. Eisenstein explored in his writings this complex exciting subject with more depth and originality than any other practitioner. Eisenstein on the Audiovisual is essential reading for anyone who deals with the audiovisual in cinema and related audiovisual forms, including theatre, opera, dance and multimedia.”

Publisher I. B. Tauris, 2009
Volume 5 of International library of cultural studies
ISBN 1845118391, 9781845118396
304 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-2-24)

Michel Chion: Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (1990–) [FR, ES, EN]

“In Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, French critic and composer Michel Chion reassesses audiovisual media since the revolutionary 1927 debut of recorded sound in cinema, shedding crucial light on the mutual relationship between sound and image in audiovisual perception.

Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception: we don’t see images and hear sounds as separate channels, we audio-view a trans-sensory whole. Expanding on arguments made in his influential books The Voice in Cinema and Sound in Cinema, Chion provides lapidary insight into the functions and aesthetics of sound in film and television. He considers the effects of such evolving technologies as widescreen, multitrack, and Dolby; the influences of sound on the perception of space and time; and the impact of such contemporary forms of audio-vision as music videos, video art, and commercial television. Chion concludes with an original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film.”

First published as L’audio-vision: son et image au cinéma, Nathan, Paris, 1990.

English edition
Edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman
Foreword by Walter Murch
Publisher Columbia University Press, 1994
ISBN 0231078986, 9780231078986
239 pages

Publisher (EN)

L’audio-vision: son et image au cinéma (French, 3rd ed., 1990/2017, added on 2020-9-19)
La audiovisión: Introducción a un análisis conjunto de la imagen y el sonido (Spanish, trans. Antonio Lopez Ruiz, 1993, unpaginated, added on 2014-3-8)
Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (English, trans. Claudia Gorbman, 1994, updated on 2012-7-17)

Richard Abel, Rick Altman (eds.): The Sounds of Early Cinema (2001)

The first book to examine the variety of sounds that accompanied so-called silent cinema.
The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. “Silent cinema” may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910).

Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov.

Richard Abel is Ellis and Nell Levitt Professor of English at Drake University, where he teaches cinema/media/cultural studies. His most recent book is The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910 (California, 1999), which was a finalist for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. Currently he is editing the Routledge Encyclopedia of Early Cinema.

Rick Altman is Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. After publishing Film/Genre (British Film Institute, 1999), which won the SCS Katherine Singer Kovacs award, he edited a special issue of IRIS 27 (Spring 1999) on the “State of Sound Studies.” His current projects include a book on the silent cinema soundscape, a DVD devoted to illustrated song slides, and performances by his troupe, The Living Nickelodeon.

Publisher Indiana University Press, 2001
ISBN 0253214793, 9780253214799
327 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-7-14)