Sound - Miss B

Sound

music gives the movie an emotional stance. It changes the audience's emotions which give them a more positive view on your film by varying your music, either to make the audience, happy, sad, angry, scared, excited, emotional, and more. The "background" music helps heighten a suspenseful moment in the film. Anticipation and wonder keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

Sound effects adds illusion to the movie and the effects in movies are rarely a recording of the real thing. The way sound effects are used in the movie’s final mix entirely depends on the sound design. Off the top of my head, some effects could be: chairs scooting, glasses clanking, footsteps, traffic outside, water running, and buttons being pushed. Listen to a take with your eyes closed. What sounds do you hear? What sounds should be there to make the scene more complete ?

Diegetic Sound: Sound, which is part of the film world e.g. dialogue, music from a radio or jukebox. The sound can be on or off screen.

Non - Diegetic Sound: Sound, which is not part of the film world e.g. a soundtrack, sound effects, voiceovers

On Screen sound: You can see where the sound is coming from  (radio, car)

Off Screen sound: You can hear sound but cannot see where it is coming from, but it makes sense to the film world  (traffic sounds, coughing)

Parallel Sound: is when the sound you hear in a film is what is expected e.g. a scene with children playing on a beach the parallel sounds would be laughter, talking and the sea

Contrapuntal Sound: is when the sound does not match the expectations of what you are viewing an example of this is Jaws. The scenes of the beach are accompanied by the contrapuntal sound of the theme tune ‘dur dur’ which does not fit in with the happy images.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ5U8suTUw0

All films analysed had non diegetic music playing in the background creating a sound bridge to create a certain atmosphere. Some films such as the dark knight use dialogue, even if not that much – this usually gives us an insight to the characters motives or their relationships with other characters in the film. Silence and sonic exaggeration are 2 techniques used in dark knight, this is very tough provoking and does well to build up tension, which seems to be a strong convention for thriller films.

This research has made me understand my knowledge on why sound is used in thrillers and how it can be effectively used.