Diegetic sound for film

To recap, Diegetic Sounds take place in the character’s world while non diegetic takes place outside of the world space exclusively to affect the audiences emotions further than what is portrayed.

Playing with the expectations of the two can have a powerful impact that of emotion or comedy based on examples in this video.

  • “The term diegesis originates in Plato’s attempts to distinguish between two primary modes of storytelling-” “diegesis (“narration”) involves a single storyteller who makes no attempt to imitate the speech or actions of the dramatis personae.” (https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/15615/Penner-MaMI2017.pdf?sequence=1) 2

  • Étienne Souriau: “Souriau uses diégèse to distinguish between the profilmic events the camera captured and what these images represent in the fictional world of the film. He defines diégèse as “all that is intelligible within the narrative, in the world implied or suggested in the fiction of a film” and diégétique as “any event concerning the characters of a story which involves them in a change of position within the space contained in the narrative.”5 Far from referring to a mode of storytelling, Souriau’s term diégèse refers to both the totality of fictional events and the fictional world in which those events take place.” (https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/15615/Penner-MaMI2017.pdf?sequence=1). 3

  • “Somewhere in the development of the scholarly discourse on film sound and music, the diegetic became synonymous with the realistic. Most explicit on this score is David Neumeyer, who introduces the concept of diegetic sound via Christian Metz’s concept of “spatial anchoring,” which Neumeyer defines as “the degree to which a recorded sound is ‘attached’ to its object—in effect a measure of its ‘diegetic-ness’ or its ‘realism.’”12 In his ensuing analysis of Casablanca (1942), Neumeyer reasons that “diegetic [music] must be ‘realistic’ . . . how can we be convinced that the [characters] hear it otherwise?” ((https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/15615/Penner-MaMI2017.pdf?sequence=1). 5

  • “The fantastical character of film musicals may also extend to their visual components. As Robynn Stilwell has remarked, “the visuals of your basic Busby Berkeley extravaganza are far more ‘nondiegetic’ than the music.”17 Most numbers are framed as performances of or rehearsals for a Broadway show, beginning with shots of an orchestra, conductor, audience, and proscenium arch, but quickly cut to a space far more expansive than the one shown in these framing shots, including improbable mise-en-scène (e.g., “By a Waterfall” from Footlight Parade [1933] contains a giant swimming pool and a half dozen waterslides), where effects that could never be realized in a live performance take place, such as instantaneous changes of setting or costume (e.g., “I Only Have Eyes for You” [Reprise] from Dames [1934]) and reverse-motion shots (e.g., “The Words Are in My Heart” from Gold Diggers of 1935)." 7

The term of diegetic according to this article has been an English nightmare. Thanks to Neumeyer the concept of spatial anchoring helps get the point accross that sound doesn’t need to be realistic to fit into the world. It just has to be believable or understandable from where and why it is happening.

Essentially musicals hit a weird place of diegetic/nondiegetic because the scenarios aren’t realistic yet the story is still being conveyed…

Check out later

file:///D:/Downloads/sound%20and%20the%20diegesis%20_%20(an)empathetic%20sound%20_%20Commutation.pdf

Value added by Music

  • “music can directly expressits-partidpation in the feeling ofthe scene, by tak ing on the scene's rhythm, tone, and phrasing; obviously such music participates in cultural codes forihings like sadness, hap piness, and movement.” 8

  • “music can also exhibit conspicuous indif ference to the situation, by progressing in a steady, undatmted, and ineluctable manner: the scene takes place against this very backdrop of "indifference." This juxtaposition of scene with indifferent music hasthe effect not offreezing emotion butrather of intensifying it, by inscribing it on a cosmic background. I call thissecond kind ofmusic anempathetic” 8

    • The anempathetic effect is most often produced by music, but it can also occur with noise—^when, for example, in a very violent scene after the death of a charactersome sonic process continues, tike the noise of a machine, the hum of a fan, a shower running, as if nothing had happened.