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It is often difficult to talk about film sound. The problem is of a cultural nature. On a critical level, a vocabulary of film sound is still to be agreed upon. Some scholars, such as Michel Chion and Rick Altman, have attempted to form a basic skeleton for others to use. However, when it comes to sound, our existing film vocabulary still operates more in terms of exclusion than inclusion. From descriptions of film as a "visual medium" and the "moving picture," to descriptions of filmmakers as "visionary directors" and "masters of light," it appears clear that our way to "narrate" films does not include the sound aspect.1
This discriminatory approach toward sound in films has conditioned our basic attitude toward thinking and talking about movies in two main ways. On the one hand, we are neither equipped for nor used to articulating our thinking on film sound beyond harmful generalizations. In exemplary fashion, writing on Star Wars in the early days of its release, Pauline Kael reduces the complexity of one of the most innovative soundtracks in film history to one expression: "the loudness" (708). On the other hand, we have also come to regard the topic of film sound as of a lesser value or even as damaging to the "true" nature of cinema: the image. As Tom Levin correctly points out,
The history of the development of cinema sound can be treated as an oscillation between its difference [from the image] understood as supplement and its difference understood as a threat. (63)
This cultural inadequacy, both in linguistic and critical terms, is amplified by the tremendous development that the art of film sound has accomplished in the last 20 years. The availability of new technologies (most important, the Dolby Stereo sound system) and experimentation with multitrack mixers (as in Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville) have provided filmmakers with a unique possibility to employ multilayered and multichannel sound.
This freedom to depart from prior constrictions, particularly the limiting choice between (optical) monophonic sound and expensive (magnetic) stereo, has given birth to a very sophisticated sound architecture.2 From a limited number of tracks layered with an approach that had to deal with the real limitations imposed by mono reproduction in film theaters, soundtracks...