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SOUND EFFECTS
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labeled on the screen; that would be clumsy indeed. Rather do they appear as visions, dreamlike, still. Just as the past lives itself over again for most of us — in fleeting scenes before “the mind’s eye.” Thus, a higher order of realism is preserved and presented. The device has a touch of genius.
We may lay down one rule firmly. A character who has been presented with speech should not appear in silent footage thereafter, except in situations in which the character plays a momentarily minor part. If other considerations compel you to switch from sound to silence, then avoid doing so within the same sequence.
Once the spectator has heard the voice of a character, he fuses the sound impression with the eye impression. The voice becomes to him an integral part of the personality on the screen. Thenceforth he expects the voice with the form and action of that personality. Omit the voice and you produce in your audience an unpleasant surprise akin to the jolt which might be caused by the reappearance of the character with an arm or a leg missing.
This thwarting of natural expectations weakens and becomes thereby less serious if the character, after having been presented first of all in an important talking role, later appears, let us say, merely as a member of a large crowd. And, to some extent, the same result occurs when several sequences intervene between the last shot of the character in talking film and the first shot in silent.
An excellent specimen to study in this connection is the sound version of Saturday's Children, in which Corinne Griffith starred. Here we find both varieties of shifting. She first appears in the old-fashioned silent pantomime.