ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to demonstrate the contribution of music, sound, and voice-over commentary to the rhetorical discourse of industrial films. Frank Lewin’s article series “The Soundtrack in Industrial Motion Pictures” (1959–60) presents best-practice guidance and thus provides access to the conventions of recording and mixing of music, sound, and voice-over commentary in industrial films of the period. Audiovisual analysis of films made by the Shell Film Unit in the 1950s confirms Lewin’s prescriptions: sonic and visual elements are examined separately, in combination, and in the context of production. I argue that such analyses enrich our understanding of the sound worlds of these films and enable the identification and evaluation of techniques of audiovisual rhetoric in films of persuasion.
