Embodying the Audiovisual Scene

Abstract

Abstract This article provides an embodied cognitive account of sound in film. Treating sound and image as equal partners, we first develop a spatial model for film sound that is based on the inferential logic of the container image schema; an embodied schema which has been argued to play a pivotal role in human reasoning. Next, we use this model to distinguish between three kinds of dynamic sound patterns of containment in film: (1) sound vectors that cross the on-screen/off-screen border within diegetic space, (2) sound vectors that shift from one diegetic time and/or space into another, and (3) sound vectors that cross the diegetic/non-diegetic border. The theoretical entailments of these patterns for film sound analysis will be illustrated through various case examples of narrative cinema.