Purpose of Sound Script

The new sound script I will write for minutes 3:00 – 6:30 of Moulin Rouge will be written such that it accents the strong emotions and signals produced by the non-auditory signals within the clip. I plan on investigating how emotions and depth and things are portrayed silently by filmmakers, and writing a narration which doesn’t crowd out these signals. The audience of my new sound-script will be the same as for the original script, though hopefully my script will prompt them to look at the movie more intellectually and such. I think the narrator of my sound-script will be a detached female voice, instead of that of the protagonist. Instead of carrying emotion and other implications, my sound-script will lay out only the barebones of what is physically taking place within the film, leaving depth to be inferred from the visual signals.

Research Question:

How does the movie Moulin Rouge portray emotion and dimension to its audience within the first scenes of the movie without the use of sound?

Main Claim and Why it’s Neat

In my major paper I will claim that emotions portrayed by images can carry extremely complex implications, and that visuals are powerful tools that need to be analyzed. In my paper, I’ll attempt to downplay the importance of voice over narration (somehow, I feel like I’ll end up arguing that voice over is a cop-out, but I’m not sure that’s what I want to do). My claim is risky because it does just that; my claim minimizes the significance of voice over narration, and might try to prove that voice over can eclipse what is being portrayed visually.

Stakes

My claim is important because it is broad and risky. The stakes are hight because I’m attempting to say something big: essentially that images are powerful to stand almost alone. My sound-script will embody that claim by removing from the voice over most it’s affect and implications.

How New Sound-Script will augment/critique/complicate the Moulin Rouge Clip

The visual signals within the clip from Moulin Rouge that I’m analyzing are extremely strong, and are used to convey feelings and depth (through the use of blue tinting, short spastic clips, etc.). I feel that these clips don’t really need a narration which adds a whole extra layer of dimension (thereby suppressing some of what the images are conveying). My sound-script, instead, will force the audience to focus more attention and emotion on the visual aspect of the film.

Artifact in Support of Sound-Script

I’m not entirely sure how it’ll work out, but I think it would be neat if I incorporated a bit from Illich’s “To Hell With Good Intentions.” It might be a bit of a stretch, but seeing as my new narrator will not be a character within the film, she will be speaking for the others in the film. Which is risky, and therefore is better off minimal – which is what I’m going to try and write my script to be?

Questions

It’s safe to say that I have a large number of apprehensions about attacking this paper (not the least of which being that a friend is coming from across the state to visit the weekend before it’s due). I’m not entirely sure what I’m getting myself into with this claim, touting the importance of visuals over a narration. It seems like I’m attacking a fairly big claim.