The term "soundtrack" in relation to cinema generally refers almost exclusively to the (orchestral) film music, which is often released and sold independently as a "soundtrack."
But what do you actually hear in the cinema?
The "SOUNDTRACK" of a feature film today is a complex texture of music, atmospheres, effects, special effects, sound effects, and dialogue. The creators of this soundtrack are usually a team comprising sound mixers, composers, and sound designers/sound editors. While these teams work together on the overall texture of a film soundtrack, they rarely collaborate in real time and in the same location.
In addition to the film music, sound design / sound editing plays a crucial role in the overall composition of a film's soundtrack.
The term "sound design" has appeared in film credits since the late 1970s, initially referring to all work on a film's soundtrack (excluding the film music). Since the late 1970s, advancements in sound technology have significantly expanded creative possibilities for sound professionals in film, particularly due to innovations in noise reduction and the ability to encode multiple tracks into a stereo track. This led to increased attention to the design of the film's sound track. Concurrently, there has been a rise in the number of individuals involved in sound design during post-production. To distinguish these roles, there has been an inflationary development of terms such as sound design, ADR recording, ADR editing, Foley recording, Foley editing, re-recording, sound editing, sound supervising, etc. (see also the job profiles in film sound).
This differentiation became even more pronounced in effect-heavy films, where additional roles like special effects design or creature sound design emerged. Particularly because the creation process for these effects demands a significant level of "design" for new, previously unheard sounds, the term sound designer has, in recent years, become synonymous with special effects designer. Today, the term sound editor typically refers to the "sound designer" responsible for the overall editing and creation of individual sound stems. Currently, there is ongoing discussion about reviving the role of "Director of Sound," who could and should serve as both the organizational and primarily the artistic/design leader of the entire sound team (including music).
A film operates according to structural criteria but is fundamentally committed to "storytelling." All artists and craftsmen involved in the film are assigned to, or subordinate to, this storytelling. Over nearly a hundred years of developed storytelling, unique artistic processes have emerged at all levels of the film art form, transforming a simple story into a highly artistic and thus temporally-structured work of art.
Since film has never been silent - even during the incorrectly termed "silent movie era" - approximately 30 years of development leading up to the introduction of sound films first established a practice of film music. The historical development of film music as accompaniment to silent films allowed for the emergence of various patterns and clichés that continue to characterize film music today. It also ensured that the profession of film composer was valued within the film industry from the very beginning. Unfortunately, the thirty-year delay in the technical development of sound films meant that sound professionals, who were rapidly integrated into the film process at the end of the 1920s (mostly from broadcasting), were initially employed solely based on technical requirements.
Unfortunately, this remained the case for another forty years until, around the mid to late seventies, a new generation of filmmakers, influenced by the high-fidelity and multi-track techniques introduced in pop music, developed a different relationship with sound in cinema. The elevation of "sound design" by this generation led to advancements in sound technology, bringing it to today's levels of digital surround sound and increasingly 3D audio, as well as the construction of cinemas designed specifically for sound.
Since the transition to Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) in the 1990s, "tools" have also become available in the sound creation process, enabling quick and efficient handling of vast amounts of audio fragments within a system.
At exactly this time - around the mid to late nineties - a content and aesthetic discussion about film sound emerged alongside the technical one. It is no surprise that the standard work "Audio-Vision," by composer Michel Chion, which became available in French in the early nineties and in English in 1995, became the foundation for this discussion. In the late nineties and the first decade of the 21st century, leading American sound designers like Walter Murch and Randy Thom discussed the possibilities and significance of sound design for film at conferences, in trade publications, and in online forums.
Michel Chion's observations and analyses go so far as to question the existence of a standalone "soundtrack" for films, as these "soundtracks" are developed for the moving image, interact with it, and audio, like video, mutually influences perception so strongly through simultaneity that they cannot be separated without damaging their symbiotic effect in film. It seems absurd, in light of this understanding, to maintain a separation between the crafts of sound design and music composition, as has often been the case until today - sometimes even operating independently.
Sound design conferences, particularly in London but also in Iowa, Sydney, and for a time in Cologne, have further propelled this discussion process and were innovations of the nineties that continue, at least in London (School of Sound), to this day. This discussion process initially recognized the creative possibilities of soundtracks as having an independent compositional significance. Unfortunately, in recent years since around 2010, there has been a renaissance in reverence for "film music," often neglecting the discussion of sound design or even audio-vision. This reverence is - as is often the case - driven by commercial interests, as film music can be marketed effectively as a "special classical program" or paired with pop music events. Consequently, the increasing "film music events" in this country focus primarily on "classical" film music and only discuss craft-related or, at best, instrumental compositional questions. When the topic of film sound / sound design is even addressed, it usually concerns only technical or production-related anecdotes.
The international discussion - especially within the "School of Sound" in London - currently expands the discourse on sound design to include questions about the interactions between image and sound, and sound and image. This ultimately involves issues of montage art, as well as further areas to be explored in acoustic and sound art, extending to new music and soundscape composition.
In the 21st century, it is no longer justifiable why "soundtrack" still refers exclusively to the artificially composed film music, as it did in the silent film era, which can then be marketed as such - essentially as music in the conventional sense - separate from the overall soundtrack. The fact that these soundtracks also include sounds, atmospheres, and especially spoken words is largely overlooked in the awareness of how sound interacts with the image. Furthermore, the rare attempts to release entire soundtracks independent of the film on audio media (e.g., Apocalypse Now) claim a quality as a radio play, but fail to recognize the change in perception of such a soundtrack when the moving image related to the sound is removed. Given the trend of watching films increasingly on computer monitors or even mobile phone displays, one may rightfully question whether advanced soundtracks will be perceived at all in relation to these images.
Film sound detached from its image becomes neutral, horizontally perceived, and creates only temporal connections of recurring elements or varies these through remembering, comparing, and associating. Conversely, the image stream separated from its sound disintegrates into a sequence of glued-together frames or shots. Entire narrative arcs that flow through sound, connecting across cuts or clarifying shifts in time and space, can turn into unintelligible, even illogical montages. When both perception levels come together, the film flows. Sound events that previously had no particular relevance stand out now, as they are amplified by the image. Images that seemed illogically linked now have an "organic" connection. Whole montage sequences become phrased arcs through the underlying sound, whether it is music, a continuous and varied atmospheric texture, or dialogue.
Regarding language - a layer of sound design - there is currently an increasing discourse around "authorial sovereignty." Who establishes the language in film? The screenwriter, a dialogue writer, the director, or the sound designer? Due to the voco- or verbo-centric nature of film, language in film sound always deserves the highest attention. However, why does "what" and "how" in off-screen text, off-screen language, and dialogue continue to reduce to what an author wrote down before the symbiosis of image and sound montage on paper?
What sound designers, sound editors, and sound supervisors ideally contribute to the film's sound during the montage process (as co-authors) is the actual film music, which consequently only requires very selectively and sparingly placed instrumental music to fulfill the medium of "film soundtrack"!
Of course, the "classic" film composer is not rendered obsolete. Rather, he is an important collaborator in the overall texture of a soundtrack. Who composes - or better said, leads the design of - this overall soundtrack is ultimately not dependent on a focus on harmonic or noise-based material. Collaboration between sound designers and film composers is conceivable and already practiced today, blurring the lines between harmonic and noise-based sounds, leading to a fully composed, intertwined soundtrack that is no longer solely dependent on harmonic sound design and, therefore, can no longer be traditionally shaped by a single composer.
Therefore, the exchange of professional experience between composers (not just film composers) and sound designers on both practical and educational levels is the way forward. The "sound directors" should also be natural partners to the screenwriter, director, and editor from the conceptual phase to the final mix. All parties can benefit enormously from such collaboration, leading to a new compositional approach to sounds in film and the medium of audio-vision over the long term. Where this has already been achieved, the demand for a "music" appropriate to the new medium of film - first put forward by Adorno and Eisler in the 1940s - can also be fulfilled. This music no longer needs to rely on the plundering of musical clichés drawn from the entire history of music that was never composed for film, nor does it have to focus solely on sound-emotional effects.
At the same time, it is fundamentally welcome that the numerous film music awards at film festivals now include accolades for successful film sound designs or special categories within film music festivals. Perhaps one day a sound designer (or sound supervisor, or a team of composer and sound designer) will even be awarded the film music Oscar or the sound Lola?
