Melodrama
Theatrical, literary, and cinematic narrative mode often centered on individual crises within the confines of family or other social institutions, frequently characterized by clearly identifiable moral types, coincidences and reversals of fortune, and the
Digital Sound
Recording and reproducing through technologies that encode and encode it as digital information
Synchronous Sound
Sound that is recorded during a scene or that is synchronized with the filmed images; sound that has a visible onscreen source; also referred to as onscreen sound
Asynchronous Sound
Sound that does not have a visible onscreen source; offscreen sound
Parallelism
An instance in which the soundtrack reinforces the image, such as synchronized dialogue or sound effects or a voiceover that is consistent with what is displayed onscreen
Diegetic Sound
Sound that has its source in the narrative world of the film, whose characters are presumed to be able to hear it
Nondiegetic Sound
Sound such as a musical score that does not have an identifiable source in the characters' world
Diegesis
A term that refers to the world of the film's story including not only what is shown but also what is implied to have taken place
Semidiegetic Sound
Sound that is neither strictly diegetic nor nondiegetic, such as certain voiceovers that can be construed as the thoughts of a character and thus as arising from the story world
Sound Designer
the individual responsible for planning and directing the overall sound of a film through the final mix
Sound Recording
Sound playback during a film's exhibition
Clapboard
A device marked with the scene and take number that is filmed at the beginning of each take; the sound of its being snapped is recorded in order to synchronize the sound recordings and camera images
Boom
A long pole used to hold a microphone above the actors to capture sound while remaining outside the frame; handled by the boom operator
Direct Sound
Sound captured directly from its source
Reflect Sound
Recorded sound that is captured as it bounces from the walls and sets. It is usually used to give a sense of space; opposed to direct sound
Post Production Sound
Sound recorded and added to a film in the postproduction phase
Sound Editing
Combining music, dialogue, and effects tracks to interact with the image track; performed by sound editor
Sound Bridge
The term for sound carried over a picture transition, or a sound belonging to the coming scene playing before the image changes
Spotting
The process of determining where music and effects will be added to a film
Foley Artist
A member of the sound crew who generates live synchronized sound effects while watching the projected film; named after their inventor, Jack Foley.
Automated Dialogue Replacement
A process during which actors watch the film footage and re-record their lines to dubbed into the soundtrack; also known as looping
Looping
image or sound recorded on a loop of film to be replayed and layered
Walla
A nonsense word spoken by extras in a film to approximate the sound of a crowd during sound dubbing
Room Tone
the aural properties of a location that are recorded and then mixed in with dialogue and other tracks to achieve a more realistic sound
Sound Mixing
the process by which all the elements of the soundtrack, including music, effects, and dialogue, are combined and adjusted after the image; also called re-recording
Mix
the combination by the sound mixer of separate soundtracks into a single master track that will be transferred onto the film print together with the image track to which it is sychronized
Sound Reproduction
sound playback during a films exhibition
Soundtrack
audio recorded to synchronize with a moving image, including dialogue, music, and sound effects; the physical portion of the film used for recorded sound
Sound Perspective
the apparent location and distance of a sound source
Overlapping Dialogue
mixing two or more characters' speech to imitate the rhythm of speech; the term may also refer to dialogue that overlaps two scenes to effect a transition between them
Narrator
a character or other person whose voice and perspective describe the actinon of a film, either in voiceover or through strict limitation of what is shown by a particular point of view
Voice Over
a voice whose source is neither visible in the frame nor implied to be offscreen; it typically narrates the film's images, such as in flashback or the commentary in a documentary film
Women's Pictures
a category of films produced in the 1930s-1950s, featuring female stars in romances or melodramas and marketed primarily to women
Underscoring
a films background music; contrasts with source music
Cue
A visual or aural signal that indicates the beginning of an action, line of dialogue, or piece of music
Stingers
sound that forces the audience to notice the significance of something onscreen, such as the ominous chord struck when the villain's presence is made known
Mikey Mousing
overillustrating the action through the musical score, drawn from the conventions of composing cartoons
Music Supervisor
the individual who selects and secures the rights for songs to be used in films.
Sound Montage
the collision or overlapping of disjunctive sounds in a film