Editorial: Music and sound design in contemporary audiovisual productions
Chloé Huvet, Grégoire Tosser · Filigrane · 2022
In memory of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson Since the widespread adoption of digital technology, it is striking to note that the sonic boundaries between words, sound effects and the musical score are increasingly porous. This is due to the combined influence of several factors, which the film musicologist Danijela Kulezic-Wilson summed up as follows: “an increasing appetite for subverting the traditional functions of the musical score, the impact of digital technology, the foregrounding of audiovisual sensuousness, and the absorption of different musical practices from the avant-garde to hip-hop and electronic dance music”1. Stemming partly from an international and interdisciplinary colloquium organised at the Université d’Évry in December 2019, the creation of a thematic issue in a scientific journal devoted to these questions appeared as crucial in endeavouring to classify the issues and challenges ensuing from this sonic decompartmentalisation, and to understand the renewed relations between dialogue, sound and music, as well as the role of silence. The renewed relations between music and sound effects in the digital era in fact remain a blind spot in film music research in the French language2, although we must of course commend the groundwork laid by Michel Chion and Laurent Jullier in their general-interest works on sound, which were pursued and developed in particular by researchers from the group ELMEC (Étude des langages musico-sonores à l’écran [Study of the languages of