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.

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

Time

Sound

Purpose

:02-:10

man singing with symphony-like music

establishes context; creates opening for trailer

:11-:20

prince talking to big mirror hanging on the wall, mirror talking back; crowd of knights gasp

helps to set plot; prince’s voice is kind of pompous-sounding; sound of gasps creates sense of disbelief

:21-:22

knight smashes small mirror

shows that prince is malicious! sound of mirror shattering contrasts with the opening singing/music

:23-:24

knight turns back to talk to big mirror

establishes a threat!

:25–:33

different symphony-like music with voice-over explaining plot of movie

continues to explain plot of movie; narrator’s voice-over rhymes and feels storytelling-like