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Fine Arts professor and 1986 Engineering graduate David Novack is teaching a class for this year’s Year of Sound. He aims to show students the importance of sound in film and its effect on an audience.

“I love sound,” Fine arts professor David Novack said.

Novack, a 1986 Engineering graduate, is currently teaching “Film Sound: History, Aesthetics and Subversion,” one of the classes offered for this year’s theme, the Year of Sound. He is also curator, along with his wife Nancy Levy-Novack, of the Penn Alumni Film Festival and sound editor and producer of award-winning documentaries such as “Burning the Future: Coal in America”, “Kimjongilia” and “Songs of Odessa.”

Novack said he has a lifelong passion for sound design, music and film. After graduating from Penn, he attended the Berklee College of Music. After that, he went on to become a sound mixer for the film industry for over a decade before he came back to Penn.

In Film Sound, Novack teaches students about the history of the development of sound in films. From the silent era to the transition from analogue to digital audio, sound plays an important role in the experiences of the audience.

“In some ways, sound is able to drive the emotional response of the audience,” Novack said. “In other ways, sound is able to subvert expectations from the audience.”

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For example, when technology made it possible to synchronize sound with pictures on a screen, there was initially controversy over whether or not sound would improve or detract from the movie-going experience, according to Novack .

“As technology got better, we started really expanding upon the possibilities of what sound…and various qualities of dialogue could do for a film.”

The transition from analogue to digital audio also made a significant difference in the movie-going experience, according to Novack. Moving away from the low quality of analogue audio to the “sonic detail” of digital audio in the 1970s, filmmakers gave audiences a direct sound experience and allowed them to be “enveloped by the sound.”

“That power enables the film maker to drive narrative … [and] to create an experience for the audience member that transcends simply looking at a moving visual image and listening to dialogue,” Novack explained. “It becomes a much more powerful experience.”

Related: Hip hop to headline at Year of Sound

To encourage his students to listen closely to the sounds of everyday life, Novack gave them an assignment called full sound immersion. The assignments ask students to sit in any space for a short amount of time and focus on what sounds they can hear. Another part of the assignment is to look at a scene from a bird’s eye view and imagine the sounds you think you would hear.

He encourages everyone to immerse themselves in the sounds of their surroundings.

College senior Sarah Van Sciver said she sat in a quiet room for her assignment. Although the room seemed silent, there were sounds of the ticking clock and the running refrigerator. “It made me aware of how dramatic silence can be,” she said.

“No one ever really thinks about it,” College junior Samuel Horn, who is also in the class, added.

Novack will be teaching Film Sound again in the spring semester to finish off the Year of Sound.

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