Wild Sound
Bringing concepts from early film theory into dialogue with the vibrant field of contemporary sound studies, Wild Sound turns an analytic eye and ear to the role of the soundscape in cinema, particularly the way that film soundtracks capture, create, represent, and even critique our sonic environment.

Listening beyond music and dialogue, this book draws attention to the oft-ignored background soundscape-film's "wild sound"-which plays a quiet but substantial role in determining how film audiences feel about certain places, people, and processes. It explores the relationship between location sound and wider practices of phonographic field recording in the creation of a cinematic sonic environment.

The latter half of the book shifts attention from from the controlled soundscapes of cinema to the relatively chaotic sonic environments of the world around us. Michael Pigott ultimately demonstrates how a theory of cinematic soundscapes helps us develop practical strategies for investigating the sonic environment in our personal and natural sound worlds, beyond the cinema auditorium.

1145929501
Wild Sound
Bringing concepts from early film theory into dialogue with the vibrant field of contemporary sound studies, Wild Sound turns an analytic eye and ear to the role of the soundscape in cinema, particularly the way that film soundtracks capture, create, represent, and even critique our sonic environment.

Listening beyond music and dialogue, this book draws attention to the oft-ignored background soundscape-film's "wild sound"-which plays a quiet but substantial role in determining how film audiences feel about certain places, people, and processes. It explores the relationship between location sound and wider practices of phonographic field recording in the creation of a cinematic sonic environment.

The latter half of the book shifts attention from from the controlled soundscapes of cinema to the relatively chaotic sonic environments of the world around us. Michael Pigott ultimately demonstrates how a theory of cinematic soundscapes helps us develop practical strategies for investigating the sonic environment in our personal and natural sound worlds, beyond the cinema auditorium.

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Wild Sound

Wild Sound

Wild Sound

Wild Sound

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Overview

Bringing concepts from early film theory into dialogue with the vibrant field of contemporary sound studies, Wild Sound turns an analytic eye and ear to the role of the soundscape in cinema, particularly the way that film soundtracks capture, create, represent, and even critique our sonic environment.

Listening beyond music and dialogue, this book draws attention to the oft-ignored background soundscape-film's "wild sound"-which plays a quiet but substantial role in determining how film audiences feel about certain places, people, and processes. It explores the relationship between location sound and wider practices of phonographic field recording in the creation of a cinematic sonic environment.

The latter half of the book shifts attention from from the controlled soundscapes of cinema to the relatively chaotic sonic environments of the world around us. Michael Pigott ultimately demonstrates how a theory of cinematic soundscapes helps us develop practical strategies for investigating the sonic environment in our personal and natural sound worlds, beyond the cinema auditorium.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501350917
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date: 02/05/2026
Series: The Study of Sound
Pages: 208
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Pigott is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Joseph Cornell Versus Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2013), and he researches experimental film and video, architecture, VJing, and projection arts. His album, Sounds of the Projection Box, is available on vinyl and digital from Gruenrekorder.

Michael Bull is Professor of Sound Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. His many authored books include Sirens (Bloomsbury 2020) and Sound Moves, iPod Culture and Urban Experience (Routledge, 2007). He is editor of the Routledge Companion to Sound Studies (2018) and The Auditory Culture Reader (Bloomsbury 2003, and 2016), and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is a founding editor of the journals, The Senses and Society and Sound Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Inside
1. Wild Sound
2. The Sound of Film Theory
3. The Background
Interval
Part II: Out
4. Origin
5. Exhibition
6. Waste

Coda
Index

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