The Power of Sound in Creating Humor: Chaplin – a Pioneer of Audio-Gags and of Sound Design
ISSN 2351-4744 The Power of Sound in Creating Humor: Aner PREMINGER The Film School, Sapir Academic Chaplin – a Pioneer of Audio-Gags and College, Department of * Communication, The Hebrew of Sound Design University, Jerusalem ABSTRact. This article examines Chaplin’s innovations in the concepts of sound that, while overlooked, nonetheless contribute greatly to the cinematic language on sound. The article shows that in spite of the fact that Chaplin’s important contribution to the transition to sound cinema is ignored in most of the literature dealing with his art, not only did he invent new ways of using sound as both a con- KEYWORDS: cept and a new technological tool of his cinematic art, but in many Chaplin, silent cinema, scenes he used sound for audio gags in similar ways to those he talkies, gag, soundtrack, used props and sets in visual gags. This thesis first of all introduces audio-gag, The Circus, three new categories that have been created to clarify the dichotomy City Lights, Modern between silent film and the talking film: audio-silent film, talking- Times, The Great silent film, and filmed theatre. Then it applies some important notions Dictator, Limelight, that Michel Chion had introduced in order to talk about cinematic transition to sound sound utterance to explore a selection of audio-gags which best il- cinema, audio-silent lustrate how Chaplin actually created an audio language that ex- film, talking-silent pands his repertoire of ways to create cinematic humor. Finally, it film, filmed theatre, demonstrates how Chaplin’s unique audio-gags that were ahead of audiovisual illusion, his time, contributed to the evolution of sound design as it was used gibberish, asynchronic later during the 1950s and 1960s, according to Chion’s arguments.
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