Cirrus@Austlit

'Sonic and visual information bounce off each other in daily and fictional lives; physical perception and imagination are intrinsic in the creation of immersive experiences. In the case of atmospheric cinema sound, for example, individual sensibility and physical relationships to sound and space are central to modelling a narrative’s perceptual and emotional authenticity. Is this experiential process compromised when film-making practice is lead by visual storytelling? I would argue that current and future cinema sound practitioners have the propensity to expand sonic phenomenological experience of creative collaborators and audiences alike. A more generalised application to synergetic creative process could originate within the cinematic industry itself. Of course some film directors are renowned for their holistic and collaborative approach to sound creation. Nevertheless sound professionals’ multisensory imagination should be encouraged, from the onset of their professional careers, with as much diligence as their acquisition of technical expertise. In order to highlight the impact of individual imagination on audio-visual creative collaboration, the author of this article devised a creative process involving the altruistic participation of Australian-based cinema professionals. The readers of this article will be invited to experience part of this specific creative process and audio-visually imagine a scene from the reading of a script.' (Publication summary)

Well-known stories in established and contemporary literature for children are increasingly becoming available in various moving image media versions as well as in traditional book formats. Classroom exploration of the same story in different narrative formats has addressed the impact on meaning-making of similarities and differences in language and image across versions. What has received very little attention however, is the role of music in conjunction with image and language in the construction of the potentially different interpretive possibilities of the multiple versions of ostensibly the same story. This paper discusses the nature and role of music, images and language in the book and movie versions of Shaun Tan’s story of The Lost Thing, drawing attention to the role of music in highlighting key interpretive differences deriving from subtle variation in the use of image and language in the two story versions. Implications for students’ multimodal text creation and interpretation in the context of the new Australian Curriculum: English are briefly noted. [Author's abstract]