There is an interesting aspect with how subtitles and sounds work. More specifically how words can describe sound. Having watched The Walking Dead I noticed the subtitle “Walkers Snarling” and I just found it kind of funny. Its not supposed to be funny though, or maybe it is. Regardless of humor it does have a specific context to the tv show itself.
As I take the word from the show and discuss it here, I look to a few things. I want to visually represent the headline with an image. A quick image search for “Walkers Snarling” produced images of people walking, kids in walkers, and dogs snarling. The search even produced a bottle of Johnnie Walker whiskey. I had to search for zombies or the walking dead to find images for the post.
Sounds and words are at the root of this discussion. So many movies and tv shows use heavy layers of music and sound effects in the background that most people never notice. The sounds do however have a big influence on their emotions. The overall soundtrack for movies play a large roll in setting moods as scenes are influenced by the corresponding sounds.
Subtitles or captions as they are commonly referred to serve a valuable function but its not often that they are looked at philosophically. I am not going into deep detail in this post because I just want to bring up the over arching idea of words and sounds. The main reason is to build a database of ideas and thoughts that connect. To take small topics and connect them into a larger narrative, but separately through individual posts and linking them together and across the internet.
From this prompt I reflected back to a movie by Wim Wenders titled Lisbon Story. It connects all of these challenges into a film that is seemingly an homage to Dziga Vertov. The movie is set in Lisbon, Portugal and is about a filmmaker and a sound engineer who work together on a film that was collected without sounds. Its a must watch for anyone in film or photography.
This led me to look deeper into the film industry and its evolution from silent to sound. I read a lot of work on Sound Film and Talking Pictures or Talkies. There is a lot of literature on this topic and as I digest and consider what I read and how it relates to this post and others I will fill in more.