For my new soundscript, I want it to make the audience (my english 121 classmates) empathize with the main character, who is doing the voice over narration. As some of you know, A Clockwork Orange is features very disturbing themes. Thus, the whole movie revolves around one young man, with all his actions and words making him ever more disturbing. Hopefully, with this new sound-script, I will take away this disturbing element in the clip. The way I plan to achieve this is by changing the tone of his voice in the narration. In the original, the emotion in the words dont match at all with his actions. Hopefully, by making the emotion in his words match up more with the narration I can take away some of that disconcerting feeling you get from watching the original.

 My research question is “how does changing the tone (specifically, making it more emotional) change how people percieve the narrator?”

My main claim for my first major paper is that something as small as changing intonations can have a great effect on how someone views the clip. Its risky, because many people would say that something as small as that would have no real effect on the overall clip. But I say that the emotional cues are an integral part of the overall feel of the clip. the intonation could be all the difference between feeling one way as opposed to another toward this clip.

My claim is important because it shows just how important sound is. The fact that a change in something as small as intonation can give two completely separate feelings toward the narrator, shows that sound definitely plays a major role in interpreting a clip.  My sound script will serve to augment the clip, because it will be showing how open sound is to interpretation. How changing one little aspect of the clip can turn the overall feel of the clip upside down. I will definitly try to use Davis’ “Acoustic Cyberspace” in support on my new sound-script. Currently, I have no questions about anything. But I’m sure that will change soon.

Wow. So that was one of the most confusing things I’ve ever read. Lots of run on sentences? anyways! reading it, there was her obvious bias. Her dislike, might I even say, hatred toward speaking for others. But unless I missed it ( which I very well could have; I couldn’t concentrate toward the end) it seemed very one sided. She did give many examples and reasons to why speaking for others was detrimental, but it seemed there was a complete lack of any argument for the other side. That alone, the failure to show the other side takes away some of the credibility. It makes it seem more like a rant. Of course, there was still a lot of good information in there. Just reading through it, I got the feeling that her hatred of speaking for others were a bit over the edge.

“There is a strong, albeit contested, current within feminism which holds that speaking for others—even for other women—is arrogant, vain, unethical, and politically illegitimate.”

That just really struck me, the choice of words used. All some of the worst insults you could say to someone. Also              “The declaration that I “speak only for myself” has the sole effect of allowing me to avoid responsibility and accountability for my effects on others; it cannot literally erase those effects. ” This was really interesting. Even though you try to speak for yourself, you can still end up speaking for others. Of note, is that no matter what you say, its going to have an effect one way or another on someone elses views.

This intertextualizes with service in this class thus far, because currently, we are providing a service to the Boys and Girls Club.  Our personal experiences are akin to what she Alcoff is talking about. She mentions people in different locations speaking for people of a different location, with location not being just the traditional sense, but also, a persons “social Location”; what rung are they on society’s ladder.

“In other words, a speaker’s location (which I take here to refer to her social location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker’s claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one’s speech”

This highly pertains to us and our class, because as we do our sevice learning, we are interacting with a group who are at a different location in society. Thus, we must tread lightly, as we can not truely understand them. Since we are going to be making a Public Service Announcement, what we say is going to either, as Alcott puts it, “authorize or de-authorize” our announcement.

For me, it just sort of re affirms the idea of not being able to truely speak for another group of people. But at the same time, it also dredges up questions of where that line is. At what point can you still speak for others, and at what point should you just stop. Also, it makes me think about the ramifications of everything i say, and also when I dont say anything, what happens.

Our narrator is someone along the lines of the coalition person. He’s black and brought themselves up from those poor living conditions. Thus he can empathize with both sides of the subject. From his voice he still incorporates ebonics into his speech, while is still very well spoken.

The narrator is looking back at his life about five years after. Seeing how he went from the tunnels to coalition to help the homeless and beyond. Now he is looking back at his life, seeing what he did, and how things still are.

Sample:

yea, i lived in this fuckin hellhole before. Horrible living conditions, but at that time, i aint got no other choice. I had to tough it out in here for some time.

Lots of problem with people living down there. Nobody wants them down there, not even them. But what other choice to they have? That was the only place we could afford to call home.

to show people the plight that they are going through. Also, it would serve as a sort of motivating factor, hearing somebody who was in their position before pull themselves out of the hole.

Jentery: sorry, turns out i didn’t publish it last class….so here it is….

Invisible Storytellers started off with a really nice image. Kozloff describes oral storytelling as one of the oldest, most fundamental narrations, while cinematic storytelling is the youngest technologically dependant narrations. And then to combine the two… She then goes on to define what exactly voice over narration is, describing it as the narration by somebody who is in a different time than what they’re narrating, among other requirements. The history of voice over narration was also really interesting, seeing how it developed over the years. The first article was about that, and the second one goes more in-depth, showing how it first started (broadcast radio). Even with Voice over narration spanning close to a century, there is still fierce debate over it.

Many opponents of voice over narration deride the directors who use it as lazy. Also many people argue that films are art, and thus they should be treated as it, not diluting it with vioce over narration. They say that cinema is unique in its capacity to convey images and meaning to to viewer. While this may have been true, nowadays, I think, movies are more an outlet just to relax. Instead of studying the actors actions and guessing on what it means, voice over narration can tell the viewer what the actor is thinking. Of course, that means that there would be less variety in the interpretations of the movie. And thus, opponents of voice over narration argue that it means the directors are insulting the viewers, by telling them and not letting them figure out on their own.

From her word choice here “So it has been throughout the history of filmmaking. Many have issued pronouncements against voice-over, and few have murmured in its defense” it makes me think that over the years, all anybody hears about Voice over narration is negative. Many Pronounce the faults of it, while few murmer the virtues of it. Kozloff seems to be a very big proponent of voice over narration, and is very passionate about it. Thus, she would want to do something about it; get people to know the other side of voice over narration. How it can enhance a story. Kozloff writes that voice over narration can effectively add whole new layers to a movie at could be achieved otherwise. She also says that since oral commentary is one of the most basic and fundamental narrations, doing voice over narration will only serve to heighten your experience by making it feel more “natural”

For me, think about movies I watched, I cant really come up with any movies off of the top of my head that featured Voice over narration. I suspect it is because like Kozloff said, a really fundamental type of narration. Thus, I can assume that when I watch a movie, I don’t pay attention to voice over narration. I take it in, but because oral commentary has been wired into the brian from all those millenia, I just take it in without thinking. Looking over films, I think it’d be interesting to do analysis for A Clockwork Orange

Reading Davis’ talk was extremely hard. Very confusing and lots of re-reading passages. He says that society today, as a whole, is deviating further away from society in the Renaissance, in the sense that nowadays, society is becoming more and more based on visual cues. I agree with this statement, as you look around, at the movies and shows, everybody is trying to outdo everybody else with big explosions and lots of on screen action and whatnot. Its becoming more and more of a brute force thing, innundating you with all the visual cues. There’s none of that simple elegance of sounds. Which brings up another part of Davis’ talk about the differences between visual and acoustic space.

“Where visual space emphasizes linearity, acoustic space emphasizes simultaneity—the possibility that many events that occur in the same zone of space-time. In such a scheme, a subject—a person, maybe—organizes space by synthesizing a variety of different events, points, images, and sources of information into a kind of organic totality”

The way I see it, visual space is portrayed as this grid like structure. Rigid and non moving. That it doesn’t adjust to changes. Acoustic space, on the other hand, is viewed as this fluid ethereal…stuff. Acoustic space is something that does adapt to the changing times, and as a result, acoustic space has a good foothold of become much more than what it is today, as acoustic space tends to put you right in the middle of everything. Although it seems Davis is of the opinion that soley an acoustic world (or nearly all acoustic) is the best, I still believe that there is benefits to a visual display. I am with Davis though that in today’s society, people don’t view sounds as highly as they should. Sound is just an accompaniement to say a movie, where I believe an emphasis of sound or visuals would make it much deeper and have many more levels of emotion.

“But in an immersive acoustic environment, you might hear all the sounds you would hear on a street corner, spatially organized in real time, surrounding you. This is much, much, stronger than a visual experience, which tacitly distances you, places you in a transcendent, removed position, rather than embodying you at the center of a new context.”

 Clearly, you can see that Davis sees the acoustic space as better. You have to actively engage yourself in it, as opposed to an idle spectator on the sidelines. and with today’s machine’s having such a developed “acoustic domain”, I think Davis truely believes that future will be integrated more and more with this acoustic space. One of his final comments is this:

“As our machines become more complex, our relationships with them will become more complex, and whole new domains and dimensions will keep opening up”

While I do think that his ideas about the acoustic world are true, sound being a lot more poignant than visuals, this statement was very chilling. Just thinking about the statement conjures up images of humans eventually becoming machines. Integrating ourselves with metal and wires just to reach new dimensions of an acoustic world, or whatever it will evolve into. Maybe its just me…

 Megan Nordstrom

Going from Davis’ talk to Megans portfolio was very very different. Immediatly, you see that you can understand what she’s saying! Alas, I found her whole pirate theme annoying and distracting. I thought that took away some of the credibility of her portfolio, but I assume part of my feelings about that is due to my dislike of people acting like pirates, whether in appearance or voice; but i digress! Trying to eliminate my bias, I thought her portfolio was pretty well written and interesting, yet, i enjoyed it less than Davis’ talk. Maybe because it was easier to understand and i didn’t have to read and re-read it, and didn’t get that much accomplishment finishing it.

“‘It is not necessarily what the narrator says about the production of car, but how he says it. He uses a slow, knowledgeable approach that helps gives a feeling of ‘Old America” (2)… By unpacking the voice of the film’s narrator, I am able to show how the type and style of narration relates to the time period and social issues of that era… ‘It was obvious that the director wanted the audience’s main focus on the narrator’s voice instead of on the images’ (3). “

 I thought that this was pretty important in that different aspects of the sound changes how one percieves it differently. the choice of words, and the way that he says it all serve to help people interpret it. Then of course the images would only serve to strengthen their interpretations of the narration. The narration has many layers that you would need to consider all together to be able to grasp the full idea of what he’s narrating, much like what Davis says, about the acoustic space making one more involved, instead of the visual world where all you do is sit around detached from it.