| DIEGETIC SOUND sound whose apparent source is known or presumed by the viewer to be located in the fictional situation at hand or in the mind of a character | ACTUAL SOUND sound which, according to the premises of the fiction, anyone present in the situation at hand would be able to hear | ON-SCREEN sound whose apparent source is presumed to be visible on screen at the time it is heard, |
| OFF-SCREEN sound stemming from a source not visible at the moment, but understood to be a part of the situation at hand | ||
| TRANSITIONAL sound bridging two scenes or two registers within a sequence, and which can be subdivided into: prolonged, anticipatory, intercut and pivotal forms of overlapping. | ||
| DIFFERENTIALLY AUDIBLE sound which is objectively present, but presented as it can only be heard by one character in the situation at hand because of some special circumstance (not involving subjective distortion) | ||
| SUBJECTIVE SOUND sound occurring in the mind of a designated character, and which other characters present would not normally be able to hear | INNER VOICE | |
| REMEMBERED SOUND | ||
| IMAGINED SOUND | ||
| DISTORTED SOUND | ||
| SPOKEN WRITING | ||
|
NARRATIVE | PERSONAL NARRATION a retrospective narration spoken by a voice the viewer recognizes or will come to know, as belonging to one of the characters in the fiction, who--if on camera when this voice is heard--is understood to be located in a different time/space than that of the narrative voice | |
| NON-DIEGETIC | VOICE | IMPERSONAL NARRATION narration spoken by a voice the viewer does not perceive as belonging to a character in the fiction, or to any narrator built into the fiction, |
| | NON-DIEGETIC MUSICsound inaudible to the characters in the fiction, and with no apparent or implied source within the story space music understood by the viewer as not stemming from any apparent source within the story space and which no character can hear |
1. DIEGETIC/NON-DIEGETIC, ACTUAL/SUBJECTIVE SOUND
2. NARRATIVE VOICE
3. ON-SCREEN/OFF-SCREEN SOUND
4. TRANSITIONAL SOUND
5. DIFFERENTIALLY AUDIBLE SOUND: A SPECIAL CASE OF ACTUAL SOUND
TYPES OF SUBJECTIVE SOUND
A. Inner voice
B. Spoken writing
C. Remembered sound
D. Imagined sound
E. Distorted sound
CONCLUDING NOTE
The typology proposed above might be useful:
1) as a means for including in a Stylistic profile of a given director, an exact description of his/her sound "palette"-perhaps even as it evolves from film to film;
2) as a construct enabling us to deal with clearly defined varieties of sound, one at a time, in a systematic effort to chart the functions of film sound; and 3) as a basis for determining to what degree any given model for studying film esthetics, encompasses a full range of variables with respect to sound. More generally, the typology might serve as a reminder that sound can be discussed with the same degree of precision that is routinely accorded to other aspects of film art.
http://imv.au.dk/~pba/Homepagematerial/MMproduktionmateriale/Raskin%20Sound%20%20Paper.pdf
