Research task 16 - the importance of sound in film

Just like images and text, sound brings things to film that make the experience of watching it more enjoyable.
Interestingly, at the beginning of our course, we learned about the first films ever published - films in which sound was only a part in background music. 'Talkies'; films with the actors really speaking, only really started to be produced in the 1920s. But, Arthur! They still had some form of sound! I hear you shout. But, musical sound and sounds such as dialogue are different types of sound, and add different things to the film experience.

Music is an interesting one. It can help convey tone and mood in a way that images and text alone cannot, which is why it's so vital in a horror film (I don't know if you've ever tried to watch one with the sound off, but it definitely makes the experience a lot less exciting). Music can convey moods, such as fear, sadness, and excitement. In my opinion, it's a really important factor in suspending disbelief, because it helps the audience to become part of the film wholeheartedly.
Other sounds, for example, dialogue, or other noises within the film, help with storytelling. Since films are such a different medium than books, events cannot be conveyed to the audience in the same way. This is why it is important to think carefully about what the actors are going to say, if there is going to be narration involved, and other things like this. This kind of sound helps to engage the viewers - if an audience were to see a film of average length (let's say two hours or so) with just music and no other kinds of sound, I guarantee you that a few people would be nodding off even in the front - because music is usually very continuous, and so it can just become background noise.

The use of diagetic and non-diagetic sound is also important in film as a storytelling device. Sounds like music and narration would be non-diagetic, because the characters in the film are not supposed to know that it's there, and sounds like dialogue, or a chair scraping, would be diagetic, because it adds to the atmosphere of what is going on in the scene.

Other than all of this, sound is important as a whole because it gives tone to the whole film. I talked before about horror films having music - the music in that genre of film will usually be tense, which shows the mood of the characters in the film, and helps give context to the situation. Other sounds, such as screams, are rare in, say, a romance film, and if used in this genre would shock the audience and make them anticipate what is going to happen next.