The Importance of Auditory and Visual Cues In Film

While watching the iMovie projects in class yesterday, I noticed that the audience's feelings toward them were highly influenced by the filters used in the video.  At times it was easier to understand the mood or situation in the video due to the filter used.  The colors appeal to our senses so it makes sense that the use of color (or lack thereof) helped to create a certain mood.  For example, many students chose to use the dream or romance filter to depict a difference in sense of time and/or reality.  Another filtered used was the black and white.  This lack of color helped to add an element of seriousness to the video and a touch of sadness or emptiness.  Overall, from watching the videos yesterday, I learned that filters are a huge visual clue to the audience because it reveals the situation as well as mood of the video.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that music is a very useful auditory cue to the audience.  The music is what really helps to set the mood and it even sets up the tone of the video.  Sometimes people used just one song, other times they used multiple.  Using multiple songs allows for the viewer to pick up on mood or tone changes; using one song lets the viewer know that there is one over-arching theme in the video.  For example, Kelsey and I both used one song for our videos which helped the audience to understand that while her video was total happiness, mine was total sadness.  In Kat's video, she had an entire playlist because her storyline went in multiple directions, varying from happy to sad.  Auditory cues really help the audience keep track of the storyline and the sounds definitely tell the audience how they should be feeling.

However, Caitlin didn't really use many auditory cues in her video but she still got her point across.  I think this is because she still gave visual cues through dialogue.  Trying to tell a story without auditory or visual cues would be pretty hard to do.  Mike's video lacked dialogue but included music.  I think that without the music it would've been pretty hard to understand his video.  However, the dinosaur was engaging in activities that we have all experienced so the visual cues were pretty clear.  So, in my opinion, every film has to contain at least visual cues for the audience to understand what is going on; music mostly helps to "set the stage" by providing a mood/tone.