Just a thought on the importance of music and sound

Over the past few weeks I have had the chance to watch films for other courses that I would otherwise not watch. It occurred to me as I was watching them just how important sound, including both the music and the sound effects, is in how we interpret what is happening. In one of the first lectures we were shown a clip about the music in Psycho and the effect of the music in explaining the emotional state of the characters. I started to think how different our understanding of films, and TV shows, would be if the sound was different. The idea that sound is secondary to the image I don’t see as being true. It may be ignored a lot of the time but I think that sound is just as important if not more so as it gives us as the viewer the ability to interpret the images that we see. Comparing older films with more recent films, for me at least, sound has become more important over time as the technology has improved over the years in how easy it is to understand the film and also how the film pulls you into the filmic world. I think that the importance of sound should not be over looked any more as it is vital for the enjoyment of film and TV.