ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how labor and workflows have adapted to the conditions of digital production and postproduction, especially to the potentials of nonlinear editing and digital audio workstations. Rather than focusing the analysis on narrative and stylistic rationales for the change, the chapter emphasizes instead the digital technologies and the workflows they give rise to. The point again is not to offer a technological determinist account of the digital scoring practices in lieu of narrative and stylistic concerns but rather to understand better how narrative, style, and technology all interact. In sound production as much as special effects, digital production opens new possibilities for sound, music, and storytelling, facilitates some things but also forecloses others. Traditionally action film had been structured around a series of action set pieces, and these sequences had long been scored with music that was more focused on the kinetic element than on elaborating the dramatic action.
