The sounds of the film experience build on viewers’ everyday social and leisure activities to contribute to the movies’ immediacy and sensory richness and to convey what seem like essential truths and meanings. Paradoxically, movie soundscapes often eschew realism and plausibility in order to heighten authenticity and emotion, like foregrounding actors’ whispered conversation in a crowded room so we feel intimately connected to them.

The variety of sounds in film gives the viewer an impression of being authentically present in space, and this impression is supported by the preferences established in the standard techniques of sound recording, mixing, and reproduction. Sound also encourages the viewer to experience emotion and to see the world in terms of particular emotions.

Sound continuity describes the range of scoring, sound recording, mixing, and playback processes that strive to unify meaning and experience by subordinating sound to the aims of the narrative. On the other hand, sound montage reminds us that just as a film is built up of bits and pieces of celluloid, a soundtrack is not a continuous gush of sound from the real world; rather, it is composed of separate elements that can be creatively manipulated and reflected upon to achieve certain effects.