Improvisation and Direct Sound: Sound Theories and Technological Change

Numerous studies have shown how post-synchronisation enabled major filmmakers (among them Eisenstein, Godard and Welles) to create innovative new cinematic forms out of hitherto unseen encounters between image and sound, with editing or montage becoming a means of composition. Such a practice is inherently opposed to that of "cinema direct" filmmakers who, using or anticipating technological innovations around sound recording, base their aesthetic in part on capturing live sound. Nevertheless, it appears that these filmmakers, some of who are inspired by jazz music, introduce their own new cinematic forms based on other ways of associating sound and image, and in particular on improvisation. Following a brief discussion of the foundational texts of this "live" aesthetic, several film analyses will make it possible to bring out some of the aesthetic systems whose origins lie in television but which cinema has appropriated to develop a poetry of live sound inspired by jazz.