The Emotional Impact of Sound: A Short Theory of Film Sound Design

14 pages•Published: January 24, 2019

Abstract

Following Zillmann’s Mood Management Theory, a main reason why people are watch- ing films is the drive to modify and regulate one’s mood by means of media entertainment [1]. And film is in this sense an effective medium: Narration, acting, visual design and sound design altogether contribute to its emotional impact. Accordingly, a main objective of film sound design is the communication and triggering of emotion or mood.
The paper investigates film sound design from the viewpoints of human perception, psychology and communication science. A special focus is set on the semantics of sound, communicated by means of crossmodal metaphors and symbols, on attention guiding and inattentional deafness, on the diegesis and on image / sound relationships.

Keyphrases: auditory object, auditory scene, cross modal effects, emotion, film sound design, metaphoric sounds, sound semantics, sound symbols

In: Philipp Kessling and Thomas Görne (editors). KLG 2017. klingt gut! 2017 – international Symposium on Sound, vol 1, pages 17-30.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/xGwB
	https://doi.org/10.29007/jk8h

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{KLG2017:Emotional_Impact_Sound_Short,
  author    = {Thomas Görne},
  title     = {The Emotional Impact of Sound: A Short Theory of Film Sound Design},
  booktitle = {KLG 2017. klingt gut! 2017 – international Symposium on Sound},
  editor    = {Philipp Kessling and Thomas Görne},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Technology},
  volume    = {1},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2516-2322},
  url       = {/publications/paper/xGwB},
  doi       = {10.29007/jk8h},
  pages     = {17-30},
  year      = {2019}}

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