ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a methodology for listening to soundtracks in an unsettling way in order to better hear the integration of film and place. Tying the concepts to the notion of faithful representation of a listening community offers a way of assessing fidelity on the basis of unsettling. The documentary film Soundtracker follows Hempton on a mission to record the singing of a meadowlark in conjunction with the rush of a passing train. Significantly, probing the fidelity of the film's engagement with Vancouver is left to the soundtrack. Treating film soundtracks as documents on a par with the files of the World Soundscape Project offers an alternative history of the Vancouver soundscape that unsettles the place to reveal rich and troubled histories that continually overlap. The chapter shows how acoustic profiling works to unsettle listening through an intermedial analysis of Vancouver by way of its representation across a variety of media that engage in documenting the city and its communities.
