Lesson #4 | Identifying Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sounds

In our fourth lesson, we learnt about the three major types of sound: Dialogue, Sound Effects, and Music, as well as the functions of sound effects:

→ Impact on the Plot

- Change the Mood / Feeling of the Character

- Provide Contrast

- Shape Character’s Personality

- Define Location: eg. In a Jungle / Forest - Sound of Bees / Bugs

- Portray the Environment’s Impact on Characters: eg. Gunshots enhance the tension experienced by the characters, allowing us to understand their situation better.

→ Impact on the Movie (as a whole)

- Simulates Reality

- Helps Create a More Dramatic Effect

- Provide Better Sound Quality

Zhu Laoshi also taught us how filmmakers apply different components, such as onscreen and offscreen space, image mood and sound mood, objective and subjective sounds, as well as image time and sound time to either create contrast between sound and the imagery onscreen or to enhance the plot of the movie - for example, image time and sound time may differ during transitions between scenes in order to foreshadow what would happen next.

Afterwards, we each found a clip and identify the diegetic sounds (ones that can be heard by characters in the story) and non-diegetic sounds (those that come from outside the world of the story) in the clip. I chose to analyse the training scene of the Hunger Games movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGyQFdjCy6c). Here are the sounds that I identified:

DIEGETIC

Dialogue

Sound of Peeta Falling onto the Ground 

Weapons: Bow and Arrow

Sound of Training Machines

NON-DIEGETIC

Background Music (Drums)

We then worked on our group projects. Josephine is responsible for the dialogue of the clip, while Michelle and I are responsible for the sound effects. We are planning to finish the sound list as soon as possible so that we can begin emulating and recording sounds. We will also need to find people to help us out with recording the dialogue since all the characters in the clip are adult males.