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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Emre Caglayan
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Slow cinema is typically understood as a contemporary global production trend marked by an observational mode that comprises extreme long takes and foregrounding of cinematic space and time. But commentators often overlook the vital role played by sound design in the films' elongation of temporality and the formation of our affective responses to it. This article investigates the ways in which kinetic and affective features of sonic motifs influence our emotional engagement and enrich our experience of slowness. As part of a growing trend of films with multi-layered soundtracks that substitute a traditional orchestral score, slow films employ rhythms, ambient noises and environmental sounds for distinctively ‘slow’ effects. Attending closely to how environmental noises and rhythms are mixed, looped, modulated and structured has the potential to reveal deliberate attempts by filmmakers to provoke emotional responses ranging from transcendence to absurd humour, to induce a direct, unfiltered engagement with a protracted temporality, and finally, to encourage audiences to confront sound at its sensuous fundamentals. The article offers an in-depth analysis of two distinctive motifs: first, a rhythmic overlay of environmental effects and loops of background noise that shape the materiality of cinematic space and the passing of time; second, the exaggeration of sound's sensuous properties (such as rhythm, volume and duration) that function as absurdly comic interludes, in the absence of clear-cut narrative motivations.
Author(s): Çağlayan E
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: The New Soundtrack
Year: 2018
Volume: 8
Issue: 1
Pages: 31-48
Print publication date: 01/03/2018
Online publication date: 01/02/2018
Acceptance date: 12/09/2017
Date deposited: 17/12/2018
ISSN (print): 2042-8855
ISSN (electronic): 2042-8863
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.3366/sound.2018.0115
DOI: 10.3366/sound.2018.0115
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