For my first major paper, I will research the importance of what the narrator is saying, how it is being said, and how the subtitles play into that notion. This matters because what is being said and how it is said by the voice-over narrator is crucial to the setting and mood of the film yet what happens when the audience is not able to understand the voice-over narration because of a language barrier? Researching how the subtitles correlate with the sounds, in the movie, and the effect of what and how the voice-narrator says, will give us a better insight into the importance of sounds and narration in film.

My new sound script is geared towards the non-French speaking audience because I want to see how the subtitles affect their notion of the film. I will take into consideration Erik Davis’ Acoustic Cyberspace talk delivered at the Xchange conference in Riga, Latvia. Davis states that, “Acoustic space is capable of simultaneity, superimposition, and nonlinearity, but above all, it resonates…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.” However, the use of subtitles complicates this matter in my sound-script. Are subtitles a mode of visual or audio space? Visually, if one was to watch a film without visuals, then the subtitles would not be seen meaning that the subtitles are a means of visual space. However, without the sound the subtitles are able to evoke some sort of “sound” through what is said.

The purpose of my sound script is to see how the subtitles affect the setting and mood of the film and to see where the lie in correlation to visual space and sound space.To play with the idea of the importance of the voice-over narrator and subtitles, I have decided to switch the voice-over narrator to that of a French female. In the original sound-script, the voice-over narrator evokes and image of a fairytale bedtime story through this soothing, grandfatherly-like voice. I am interested in how this feeling of a fairytale, bedtime story will be affected when the narrator is switched to that of a young female. I have also decided to use a French narrator because it gives me a chance to play with the effects of the subtitles on the audience. I’m worried about writing a sound script that will be able to demonstrate the idea that subtitles are able to evoke “sound” through context.