The Integrated Soundtrack in Practice: an Electroacoustic Sensibility to Composition in Film Sound Design

This practice-led doctoral research investigates integrated approaches to filmmaking through the lens of sound design and electroacoustic composition, advancing a relational understanding of film practice in which creative processes emerge through dynamic interrelations between filmmakers, materials, tools, and narrative aims. Grounded in iterative creative work across a portfolio of films, the research develops knowledge through practice, positioning sound not as a discrete layer within film production, but as an integral component of a continually evolving creative environment. The central finding is that integrated filmmaking is best understood as an interrelational process: a complex, open-ended field of correspondences in which creative decisions arise through the co-constitutive interactions of people, materials, and ideas. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s theorisation of relational space, the research demonstrates that filmmaking processes are not linear or compartmentalised, but heterogeneous, emergent, and perpetually under construction. In this context, films are not the execution of pre-defined plans, but the outcomes of shifting negotiations between shared understandings of a film’s story, the affordances of available materials and tools, and the evolving experiences of those involved in their creation. Within this relational framework, sensibilities associated with electroacoustic composition are not applied externally to film sound practice, but drawn upon organically as part of the creative process. These sensibilities—particularly attentiveness to the characteristics of sound, and to perceptions of sources, causes, and motion—enable a mode of working in which materials are understood in terms of their capacity to convey experience in relation to the film’s evolving narrative. This facilitates a multi-functional and fluid use of sound, in which conventional distinctions between dialogue, music, and sound effects, as well as between audio and visual domains, become permeable and contingent. The research further demonstrates how concepts from spectromorphology can be reformulated as practical, experience-oriented tools for creative decision-making, extending their use beyond analytical contexts in electroacoustic music. By foregrounding perception as central to both the understanding and creation of film, the study argues for an approach to filmmaking that prioritises experiential coherence over categorical organisation. Ultimately, this thesis proposes a reconceptualisation of integrated filmmaking as a relational, process-driven practice defined by openness to emerging possibilities and constraints. It contributes to both film sound scholarship and creative practice by articulating how films can be understood—and made—as dynamic constellations of interdependent processes, in which meaning arises through the ongoing negotiation of relationships within a continually unfolding creative environment.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Davidson, Ross

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/a142c48b-c93a-4d39-9a21-61d942a35f08/download