Activity 2: Your understanding of sound in multimodal texts

Online movie trailers, used to advertise and preview movies, are approximately three to four minutes long. Television ads for movies are typically much shorter and limited in terms of how they grab viewers’ attention and condense the story line. In your web browser, conduct a search for “movie trailer.” Scan the results and select a movie trailer to watch. Choose a full-length trailer so that you’ll have more audio material to work with for this activity.

Click Submit after the text box to submit your answers to your instructor’s gradebook. You may review your answers by returning to this activity at any time. (An activity reports to the gradebook only if your instructor has assigned it.)

Close your eyes and listen to the trailer; do not watch it. Closing your eyes will allow you to focus on just the sounds. As you listen, identify the different sounds you’re hearing and think about what function they serve, what feelings they evoke in you, how they are sequenced together, and so on. Then watch the trailer. You’ll hear the sounds, see the sequences of images, and perhaps begin to note how they fit together. As you play the trailer a third time, create a list—somewhat like Souza’s list—of the different sounds you hear. Once you have a list, identify each sound by genre and think about how the sound helps convey meaning in the trailer.

Create a chart like the following to record your notes. Consider adapting the chart and using it to document sounds in the different types of texts you study.

Trailer for the first Shrek movie

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