Rob Szeliga: Listening to Films in Different Places (recording)

From the cinema and art gallery to the laptop and mobile phone, how are films experienced in different acoustic spaces and playback contexts?

In this talk, I introduce the structure of film sound through the lens of listening. Designed for filmmakers of all levels — whether you work in artist moving image, animation, or narrative shorts — I explore how soundtracks are shaped, heard, and experienced across different contexts: cinemas, galleries, and online platforms.

We will consider how each screening environment influences the audience’s experience of a film, and the particular kinds of attention each setting encourages. I will also suggest how these modes of spectatorship can be integrated into a holistic approach to audiovisual practice — one that unites concept (pre-production), creation (production), editorial (post-production), and presentation (screening) into a single, connected filmmaking process.

Topics covered:

• The Cinema as a Listening Space: Experiencing sound through embodied listening
• Film as a Sonic Medium: How sound compels us to listen
• Dialogue, FX, Backgrounds, Music: How these elements behave across different spaces
• Playback Matters: How space, context, and technology shape what we hear
• Deconstructions and Exploration: Contemporary artists working with sound and moving image in the gallery
• Multichannel Sound: From early talkies to Phil Spector, Janet Cardiff and Apocalypse Now
• Site-Specific vs. Mass Distribution
• Film as Performance: A film changes according to each playback setting and context, thus it is ‘performed’
• Integrated practice: How can filmmakers apply these insights on film, sound, and listening to their own practice

Rob Szeliga is a London-based sound designer working across narrative film, documentary, animation, moving image installations and web-based audio media. He is a graduate of the National Film and Television School (NFTS) and since 2016 has been a frequent visiting and associate lecturer at the NFTS, Goldsmiths, London College of Communication and the Royal College of London. His ongoing research into cinema listening and film sound can be found at: https://cinema-of-noise.com