Emotion Resonance and Divergence: A semiotic analysis of music and sound in “The Lost Thing” an animated short film and “Elizabeth” a film trailer

Betty Noad, Georgina Barton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Music and sound contributions of interpersonal meaning to film narratives may be different from or similar to meanings made by language and image, and dynamic interactions between several modalities may generate new story messages. Such interpretive potentials of music and voice sound in motion pictures are rarely considered in social semiotic investigations of intermodality. This paper therefore shares two semiotic studies of distinct and combined music, English speech and image systems in an animated short film and a promotional filmtrailer. The paper considers the impact of music and voice sound on interpretations of film narrative meanings. A music system relevant to the analysis of filmic emotion is proposed. Examples show how music and intonation contribute meaning to lexical, visual and gestural elements of the cinematic spaces. Also described are relations of divergence and resonance between emotion types in various couplings of music, intonation, words and images across story phases. The research is relevant to educational knowledge about sound, and semiotic studies of multimodality.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)206-224
Number of pages19
JournalSocial Semiotics
Volume30
Issue number2
Early online date13 Nov 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Mar 2020
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Emotion Resonance and Divergence: A semiotic analysis of music and sound in “The Lost Thing” an animated short film and “Elizabeth” a film trailer'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this