Film audio pace

We explore the concept of film pace expressed through audio to analyse the film at a semantic level. We use domain knowledge to derive a number of measures for film audio pace. We then apply the audio pace to examine two semantic concepts: counterpoint and narrative structure. Counterpoint is a method used to highlight a salient event by contrasting the visual and audio aspects of a film. We divide narrative structure into visual narration, action, and audio narration, plot development. We hypothesise that changes in the narrative structure signal a change in the audio pace. We then test this hypothesis using eight films of varying genres. A pattern was established linking the audio pace features, guided by the properties of the audio energy, to the narrative structure. The method was successful in determining the narrative structure for seven of the films, achieving an overall precision of 76.4% and recall of 80.3%. © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.