Response on Theory of the Film: Sound

Bela Balazs stresses the importance of sound in film in his article Theory of the Film: Sound. In a world and industry dominated by striking visuals, sound is put on the back burner, so to speak, and the audience generally underrates the necessity of sound when it comes to film. One claim Balazs makes that I appreciate is "The sound of a wave is different if we see its movement", because that is an idea I've never thought about before. At first, his claim does not appear to make any sense. How can a sound be perceived differently when it's isolated from the source? I tested out this theory, closing my eyes in my apartment and simply listening to the sounds I heard - the clock ticking, the roar of the refrigerator, the opening and closing of doors in the hallway. Ever noise I heard was amplified, attaining a new presence that I would not have heard had my eyes been open. The eyes typically take center-stage when open, while the ears fall to the sides, yet this experiment challenged that.

Another point I loved about Balazs' article was his interest in silence. My FST 200 class talked about the significance of silence briefly, and how it can often be more powerful than the loudest explosion one hears on screen. Balazs writes "The widest space is our own if we can hear right across it and the noise of the alien world reaches us from beyond its boundaries", which is a neat thought that sound alone can create depth without the aid of visuals.

One of the final points Balazs made deals with educating the ear. Coming from a musical background (piano, flute for 8 years, and now a vocalist), ear training has been drilled into me, and while it is more difficult to distinguish sound than visuals, sounds are nonetheless important. The ear is just as sensitive, if not more, than the eye, with the capacity to distinguish many degrees of sounds. We live in a superficial society, putting stock into appearance, thus art is reduce to a strictly visual form - photographs, films, drawings. Through making a conscious effort, the ear can be trained just as well as the eye, and I believe that is what Balazs was trying to accomplish.