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Audio-Vision
Sound on Screen
by Michel Chion
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Book Presentation:
Michel Chion’s landmark Audio-Vision has exerted significant influence on our understanding of sound-image relations since its original publication in 1994. Chion argues that sound film qualitatively produces a new form of perception. Sound in audiovisual media does not merely complement images. Instead, the two channels together engage audio-vision, a special mode of perception that transforms both seeing and hearing. We don’t see images and hear sounds separately—we audio-view a trans-sensory whole.
In this updated and expanded edition, Chion considers many additional examples from recent world cinema and formulates new questions for the contemporary media environment. He takes into account the evolving role of audio-vision in different theatrical environments, considering its significance for music videos, video art, commercial television, and the internet, as well as conventional cinema. Chion explores how multitrack digital sound enables astonishing detail, extending the space of the action and changing practices of scene construction. He demonstrates that speech is central to film and television and shows why “audio-logo-visual” is a more accurate term than “audiovisual.” Audio-Vision shows us that sound is driving the creation of a sensory cinema.
This edition includes a glossary of terms, a chronology of several hundred significant films, and the original foreword by sound designer, editor, and Oscar honoree Walter Murch.
About the Author:
Michel Chion is an independent scholar, composer, filmmaker, and teacher. He is the author of more than thirty books on sound, music, and film, including The Voice in Cinema (Columbia, 1999), Film, a Sound Art (Columbia, 2009), and Words on Screen (Columbia, 2017).Claudia Gorbman is professor emerita of film studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She has written widely about film sound and music and has translated five books by Michel Chion.Walter Murch has been repeatedly honored by both the British and American Motion Picture Academies for his sound design and picture editing. He has received special recognition for his work in The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient.
Press Reviews:
An original and useful model for the audiovisual analysis of film. Production Expert
Updated and expanded, with additional material from recent film production, the 2019 edition of Audio-Vision will soon take its place as a valuable textbook for those interested in literary research and practice of cinematic soundtrack. Dr. Nick Poulakis, CINEJ Cinema Journal
Without a shadow of a doubt one of the best books I have ever read, Audio-Vision’s reprinting is a cause for great celebration. After a quarter of a century, it remains the first port of call for scholars and students of audiovisual culture, offering a cornucopia of theories that conceptualize sound's relationship with the moving image. Never less than enthralling, its acuity has not been dulled by more recent theory and scholarship. K. J. Donnelly, author of Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film
When Audio-Vision first appeared in 1994, it became a lifeline for the burgeoning field of sound/media studies, providing a veritable roadmap to a discourse just beginning to crystallize. The second edition is no less momentous; Chion seamlessly brings current cinematic offerings into his theoretical purview, showing that his understanding of the filmic soundspace is as insightful to historians, theorists, and students as ever. A fundamental text for soundtrack studies. Daniel Goldmark, author of Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon
Michel Chion’s work is a thrilling exploration of film sound in all its forms: real and symbolic, technical and conceptual, dimensional and suggestive. He gives us all the tools we need for describing what films allow us to hear. Chion’s many neologisms are like notes that can reverberate infinitely for every filmgoer, and through innumerable films. This revised edition of Audio-Vision is a new benchmark for any film scholar. Elsie Walker, author of Understanding Sound Tracks Through Film Theory
See the publisher website: Columbia University Press
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Voice, Silence, and Listening in Hollywood Films
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Environmental Sounds in Film and Media Arts
Listening With a Feminist Ear (2023)
Soundwork in Bombay Cinema
Divergent Tracks (2022)
How Three Film Communities Revolutionized Digital Film Sound
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