Food for Thought

Film is defined by the two elements that characterise it; Image and Sound. When famous and established DOPs were asked what makes the cinematic image they were at a loss to come up with an answer. 

They are the artists who grapple and compose the image creatively and instinctively using their skills and experience. Eventually the image is captured, edited and screened. Their work is committed to creating the end result. The Academic realm, on the other hand, is a distanced one that is concerned with seeking answers and definitions. 

When it comes to the image, there is a rich library and academic heritage. If one is looking for a place to start, I would suggest Gilles Deleuze Cinema 1 The Movement-Image  (1983) and Cinema 2 The Time-Image  (1985) which work on the philosophy of Henri Bergson in Creative Evolution (1907) and Matter and Memory (1896). The very titles of the books imply that the cinematic image is one that involves movement and one that involves a time or timeless dimension. Using concepts like perception-image, affection-image, impulse-image, action-image and mental-image Deleuze believes that there is an “eye” already “in things, in luminous images in themselves”, for it is not consciousness that illumines but the images, or light, that already are a consciousness “immanent to matter” (Deleuze 1986: 60, 61). Images are understood to be “mobile sections of duration.”

The question I am raising here is about sound. Can sound be also thought of as mobile sections of duration? Can sound also be referred to as movement and as having a timeless dimension? 

One has to be careful with answering these questions. A negative answer would imply that sound does not enjoy movement and does not have a timeless dimension. A positive answer would go against many established theories about sound in film. Deleuze himself stated that the 'Image is everything.' 

How can Image be everything in cinema if the very definition of film is image and sound? This leads one to question the uneasy or unhappy marriage between Image and Sound.