Bernie Newnham
After now more than 48 years in this business in various disguises, and 30 or so asking sound men to do stuff, I had never heard the word “diegetic” before a student had it written all over some storyboards.
Martin Eccles, Philip Tyler, Brian Curtis, John Howell, Tony Crake, Graeme Wall
Must be new and trendy: diegetic and non-diegetic are just posh media studies terms used when writing about film/television sound (media studies wannabes use it – posh terms are taught rather than any “craft skills”). We didn’t have a name for it: indeed there was no need for a name, the few ‘non-diegetic’ sounds within a mix would be referred to by name, eg. incidental music and narration.
Diegesis is a Greek word for “recounted story” or “narration”. It is confusing how the Greek for “narration” could suddenly switch to being the “actual sound” but need to remember that Greek narration was done by an in-vision chorus.
DIEGETIC SOUND
Another term for diegetic sound is “actual sound” or “ in vision sound”.Any sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film: it is sound on set or sound that can be seen to arise from on set including passing traffic noise and music played on set band in the corner of pub or coming from radio/ TV on set. Examples are:
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voices of characters
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sounds made by objects in the story
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music represented as coming from instruments in the story space (as source music)
In terms of say, Outside Broadcast Sports programmes, diegetic sound would equate to “International Sound” (that is, the total sound of all in the ‘stadium’ …FX, PA, in vision interviews ( if offered as part of the complete International Vision).. but without your own English Commentator.
Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film’s world, and can be either on screen or off screen depending on whatever its source is within the frame or outside the frame.
NON-DIEGETIC SOUND
This is sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action: examples are:
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narrator’s commentary (voice over)
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sound effects which is added for the dramatic effect
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mood music
Non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from the a source outside story space.
Roger Bunce
So – the old comedy sketch, where there is a spoof dramatic moment, and the mounting suspense music is gradually building louder and louder, until one of the actors yells at the orchestra to shut up – and we suddenly seen that there is a completely incongruous orchestra on the set – that must be non-diagetic sound up until the point where the orchestra is revealed, when it suddenly switches to diagetic sound. Seems like a completely unnecessary distinction to me.
Further, my students used to witter about “the 180 degree rule”, which meant nothing to me until I realised they were just talking about not crossing the eye-line. Media colleges seem to like excessive verbiage.
