160007 UE Digital Film Music (2023W)

Writing on digital cinema has overwhelmingly focussed on the effects of computer-generated images (CGI) on film-making and audience experience. Our emphasis, however, is on cinema as an audiovisual medium. Rather than asking how digital technologies have influenced either the moving image or the soundtrack alone, we ask how they have transformed the ‘ratio of the senses’ (Marshall McLuhan).

The greater part of the course will be devoted to investigating the range of ways digital films depart from the narrative use of music and sound in ‘classic’ Hollywood cinema. We will look at a number of blockbuster movies (superhero, science fiction, horror), as well as some more experimental cinema. Our survey may also take in documentary, music video, and TV drama. In our analyses, we will be sensitive to the ways in which the new aesthetic possibilities offered by digital cinema map the effects of new technologies and globalization on modern culture.

The course is designated as UE (Übung), but is actually run more like a Lecture Course with Exercises (Vorlesung mit Übung), but there will be plenty of opportunity for student participation and discussion during the lectures.