This thesis is an analysis of two film soundtracks, High Fidelity and Rushmore, and how each conforms to, and moves away from, trends in soundtrack production. The analysis begins by examining the relationship between film and music through the progression of key figures and moments leading to the current state of the film soundtrack. The soundtracks of High Fidelity and Rushmore are situated within the contexts of youth and rock culture as a means of illuminating their compilations and prospective audiences. The conclusion of this thesis is that these particular films and their soundtracks are entrenched in a dialogue about nostalgia and the superiority of archival music and provide clear examples of the growing use of nostalgia within cultural contexts generally.

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This work argues that sound design represents a powerful narrative force within the larger narrative of a film. The major component of this project is a DVD with multiple sound designs (each containing a different narrative context) available for a single short film. The written component looks at sound design and its components, and then examines sound design through the lens of Fisher's Theory of Narrativity. It is found that sound design does exhibit the characteristics of providing a "reliable, trustworthy, and desirable guide to thought and action in the world." It is also shown that using the principles of Schema Theory enables sound designers to maximize the narrative impact that sound design has over a broad audience. / Department of Telecommunications

This essay aims to explore acoustiographies of the interior and interpret the cultural impressions that they perpetuate. While I do consider the conventional iconographies of headphones and full-body suits (e.g., spacesuits) that filmmakers employ as tools to focalize a character’s internal subjectivity, acoustiographies often supersede or occur in lieu of such visual symbols. While the acoustiography of “leakage” symbolizes the disparity between the self-perception of the self and the social perception of the self, that of “head sound” aims at placing the audience inside the head of a given character by positioning the point of audition as if it were emanating from the character’s head. Leakage is a diegetic sound that is somewhat obscured or filtered by some barrier blocking the sound’s full frequency emission, whereas sound effects or music seemingly sounding from inside a character’s head, as for example through headphones, represent head sound. These acoustiographies of leakage and head sound play a crucial role in the filmic expression of a character’s interiority, which they accomplish through their ability to physically represent interior space, but also figuratively represent a character’s subjectivity. / text