Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Measuring Engaging Dialogue
- 2 Verbal-Visual Style and Words Visualised
- 3 The Integrated Soundtrack and Lyrical Speech
- 4 Dialogue and Character Construction
- 5 Embodying Dialogue: Rich Voices, Expressive Mouths and Gesticulation
- 6 Gendered Verbal Dynamics: Sensitive Men and Explicit Women
- 7 Adapting Dialogue and Authorial Double-voicing
- Conclusion: Verbal Extremes and Excess
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Verbal-Visual Style and Words Visualised
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Measuring Engaging Dialogue
- 2 Verbal-Visual Style and Words Visualised
- 3 The Integrated Soundtrack and Lyrical Speech
- 4 Dialogue and Character Construction
- 5 Embodying Dialogue: Rich Voices, Expressive Mouths and Gesticulation
- 6 Gendered Verbal Dynamics: Sensitive Men and Explicit Women
- 7 Adapting Dialogue and Authorial Double-voicing
- Conclusion: Verbal Extremes and Excess
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Unless distracted or multi-tasking, audiences rarely listen to film dialogue without also watching what is happening on-screen. Likewise, unless experiencing a film in a noisy environment, they rarely witness on-screen events without them being framed by characters’ spoken words, and the soundtrack more generally. But what can make certain combinations of words and images jarring, or pleasurable, for an audience – and why? This chapter examines the relationship between dialogue and what is simultaneously shown on-screen, in order to develop an understanding of verbal-visual style in contemporary indie cinema. Given that the low budgets of independent cinema can place severe restrictions on the visual aesthetics, it is unsurprising that at times the six cinematic verbalists substitute verbal interest for visual interest, or for visual interest that depends on the verbal for its impact. We can see this in the decision to shoot more cheaply using black-and-white film, as with Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise. But, given that Baumbach also opted for black and white with Frances Ha, albeit a high-quality and digitally captured version, we may also consider a monotone colour scheme as particularly well-suited to films with ‘colourful’ dialogue.
In the films under focus, verbal-visual style generally depends on meaningful relationships between what is spoken and what is shown; although this interdependence does not necessarily involve a redundancy in relation to words and the images shown simultaneously. Instead, the cinematic verbalists can take advantage not only of the way that we perceive things both visually and aurally, but also of the way that we can recognise and remember pattern built up in this way. Although independent writer-directors can use visual techniques that are stylised to a similar degree to their speech, their work also reveals a less prominent trend for an observational visual style that aligns with the way that, at times, audiences have to work at ‘overhearing’ their dialogue. In fact, analysis of the interaction between their respective visual and verbal styles can reveal how the mise en scène is often subordinate to a fascination with language, and that spoken words can be used to alter, rather than repeat, meaning signified visually.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Engaging DialogueCinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema, pp. 25 - 48Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018