We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
230 DIALOGUE
stress on a word. If he wants to give it prominence he must speak it in a different tone from the other words, even though this is not otherwise indicated or desirable. In the talkie the actor can speak with an unchanged, uniform lack of emphasis and not he but the suddenly changed set-up (which is a matter for the director) will cause the public to note the importance of a certain word. The character into whose mouth such words are put may not even know that these particular words are key words. Their significance is established not by the actor but by the set-up. Hence the dialogue of a sound film need not be as well-constructed, logical and so completely revealing as the dialogue in a stage play. For the picture — and not only the things depicted in it, but its whole atmosphere — may express much of what the words do not say.
On the other hand the words must fit into the composition of the picture in such a way as to enhance acoustically and not counteract the visual effect of the former. For instance the words must not attract our attention just when the visual picture is expressing something important.
The strength of sound and the tone of the lighting also have to be in harmony with each other. Further, if the spoken words have a sound background (background music or noise), then, if something is visible of pictorial background, the word should not stand out more from the acoustic background than the speaking figure stands out against the visual background.
SPEECH AS AN IRRATIONAL SOUND EFFECT
It has already been said that the spoken word is not merely the reflection of a concept — its intonation, its timbre, at the same time make it an irrational expression of emotion. It has further been said that the sound film with its close-up is more suitable than the theatrical stage for capturing these underlying acoustic colourings which express not only the logical thoughts of the speakers but the unconscious moods which at the same time are reflected by their facial expression. It is the business of poets to capture in writing the moods which hover, as it were, between the words. But it is one of the paradoxes of irrational expression that one can 'read be