Frame grab from Borom Sarret/The Wagoner (Ousmane Sembène,1963). Read Alexander Fisher's article on Sembène's use of voice-over in this film in the latest issue of Cinephile

While it is true that film has been historically considered an image-centred medium, the fact that hearing plays as much a role in perceiving the motion picture as seeing does, transcends it beyond a mere visual art. Furthermore, as noted sound theorist Michel Chion asserts in The Voice in Cinema, “the presence of a human voice structures the sonic space that contains it.” Therefore, studying parts of the cinema in which the voice gains particular significance is not only justified, but necessary. This issue of Cinephile revolves around diverse applications and functions of the voices in fiction films, whose sources are absent from the image frame.

Theoretical approaches to the filmic voice were only developed in the 1980s, and as the works cited in the articles here indicate, at least in the case of off-screen voices and voice-over, they have not been properly updated. One goal of this collection has been to explore various demonstrations of voice-over both in a more contemporary scope and on a more international scale. The main concern of each of the following five articles is the voice-over, showing how concentrating on this under-appreciated technique can lead to bigger conclusions about films and filmmakers. [Editorial Introduction, Cinephile, 8.1, 2013]

Today, Film Studies For Free hails the online publication (earlier this year) of volume 8.1 of Cinephile, the University of British Columbia's on and offline film journal. The special topic on this occasion is the cinematic voice-over and there are marvellous essays on it by Sarah Kozloff (author of the classic studies of VOs and film sound Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film [1988] and Overhearing Film Dialogue [2000]), Stephen Teo, Carl Laamanen, Laura Beadling and Alexander Fisher.

You can download a large PDF of this beautifully illustrated issue from this webpage. The featured contents are as follows

• 'About a Clueless Boy and Girl: Voice-Over in Romantic Comedy Today' by Sarah Kozloff
• 'What Does God Hear? Terrence Malick, Voice-Over, and The Tree of Life' by Carl Laamanen
• 'Native American Filmmakers Reclaiming Voices: Innovative Voice-Overs in Chris Eyre’s Skins' by Laura Beadling
• 'The Voice-Over as an Integrating Tool of Word and Image' by Stephen Teo
• 'Voice-Over, Narrative Agency, and Oral Culture: Ousmane Sembène’s Borom Sarret' by Alexander Fisher

Framegrab from Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)

In his discussion of the work of Hal Ashby ['When is the Now in the Here and There?'], Aaron Hunter contributes to the emerging body of scholarship on the technique of “trans-diegesis”. Taking Ashby’s Coming Home (1978) as a case study, Hunter shows how Ashby’s use of trans-diegetic music—music that crosses narrative layers—forms part of a consistently playful approach to cinematic form and functions on several levels: as a tool that allows for a merger between moments in time, as a device to create a transition between incongruent events within the diegesis, or as mechanism to create a temporal confluence between apparently sequential events. [Alphaville, 3, 2012 Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine]

 
Once again, Film Studies For Free salutes the online journal Alphaville. Its latest issue, just out, treats the important topic of sound, voice and music in film and television and boasts some excellent contributions.

FSFF enjoyed them all, but particularly liked Michael Dwyer's The Same Old Songs in Reagan-Era Teen Film and Michael Charlton's Performing Gender in the Studio and Postmodern Musical, along with the discussion of Hal Ashby's film by Aaron Hunter. There are also some great book reviews and rewarding conference reports, too, perhaps most notably James MacDowell's detailed discussion of  The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures.

All the contents are linked to below.


Alphaville, Issue 3, Summer 2012
Sound, Voice, Music Edited by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine

Editorial by Danijela Kulezic-Wilson, Christopher Morris and Jessica Shine

• The Same Old Songs in Reagan-Era Teen Film by Michael D. Dwyer, Arcadia University
• Performing Gender in the Studio and Postmodern Musical by Michael Charlton, Missouri Western State University
• When is the Now in the Here and There? Trans-diegetic Music in Hal Ashby’s Coming Home by Aaron Hunter, Queen’s University Belfast
• Beneath Sci-fi Sound: Primer, Science Fiction Sound Design, and American Independent Cinema by Nessa Johnston, University of Glasgow
• Cultural Innovation and Narrative Synergy in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet by Ioana Literat, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California
• Emotion Capture: Vocal Performances by Children in the Computer-animated Film by Christopher Holliday, King’s College London

Book Reviews Edited by Jill Murphy

• Media and Memory, by Joanne Garde-Hansen (2011) Reviewer: Elena Caoduro, University of Southampton
• Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen, by Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong (2011) Reviewer: Fiona Lee, City University of New York – The Graduate Center
• Music Video and the Politics of Representation, by Diane Railton and Paul Watson (2011) Reviewer: Antonio Sanna, Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Italy)
• Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview, by Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty and Jochen Eisentraut (eds.) (2009) Reviewer: Penny Spirou, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia)
• Seeing Through Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood Film Scores, by Peter Franklin (2011) Reviewer: K. A. Wisniewski, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (USA)
• Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir, by Robert Miklitsch (2011) Reviewer: James A. Wren, San José State University

Reports Edited by Ian Murphy

• Dysfunctionalities. Annual Conference of the German Society for Media Science (GfM) Postdam, Germany, 5-8 October 2011 Reporter: Patricia Prieto Blanco, Huston School of Film and Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway
• The Impact of Technological Innovations on the Historiography and Theory of Cinema Montreal, Canada, 1-6 November 2011 Reporter: Daniel Fitzpatrick, DAH, National University of Ireland, Galway
• The End Of…? An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Motion Pictures University of Kent, Canterbury, 21-22 January 2012 Reporter: James MacDowell, University of Warwick