According to Robert Bresson the cacophony of reality captured in the filmmaking process must be tamed. Therefore the unwanted sounds detected by the microphone must be somehow controlled. This requires a team of sound editors and mixers tasked with organising the placement and level of individual sounds in order to bring definition and shape to the soundtrack.

During the 1960s Jean-Luc Godard explored some of the aesthetics of the Cinéma Vérité approach to documentary-filmmaking. In his 1962 film Vivre Sa Vie, Godard intentionally avoids any post-production voice replacement or studio sound effects. Instead, he records all voices and location sounds directly on to a single unedited track of tape.

*Vivre Sa Vie* [1962] dir. Jean-Luc Godard

Writing about the film at the time, author and film theorist Jean Collet said:

“Jean-Luc Godard’s idea was simple: apply to the sound the same demands as to the pictures. Capture life—in what it offers to be seen and heard—directly [...] The interest offered by this method is obvious: the director opts for the real rather than the realistic. Being “realistic” always implies having a point of view on what is real, an interpretation of the facts. Here, an attempt has been made, thanks to the special machines used, to establish a material point of view rather than a human judgment. The microphone is capturing what it picks up, just as the camera is, and the artist avoids intervening at this level of the creation.”