Brief - Sound

Sound in thrillers is essential to creating the correct mood throughout the film. It creates a sense of confusion and wariness toward the audience. The audience then feels the emotion the director wants them to feel at a specific moment in the film, completing the task the sound was created for.

Non-digetic sound (sound that is added in pre production) is the main reason for the audience feeling different forms of emotion that the audience show towards a film. Eerie tense non-digetic soundtrack makes the audience feel scared and afraid of the sequence of events that is about to occur. Soundtrack involving a violin usually portrays sadness, making the audience feel upset to a point they may cry.

However, digetic sound can be uses effectively to portray a picture. A gun shot can portray a sense of violence, and laughter can portray a sense of humour. One film that uses this technique very effectively is No Country For Old Men (2007, Joel and Ethan Coen). Throughout the whole of the film, the directors purposefully don’t use any non-digetic sound. The directors rely completely on the digetic sound (sound that should be there) to portray the picture that they desire. This effect is used brilliantly as it creates a tense atmosphere throughout, as well as the special effects emphasise this point the directors try to make. Take into account the use of pleonastic sound, the choice of voices in the sequence and the lack of ambient sound to heighten the tension and keep the audience wanting more.



Another key aspect of sound that can influence audience reactions is contrapuntal sound. This is sound that is opposite to the action that is occurring. A famous example of this occurring is in the film A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick) when Alex DeLage rapes a women whilst singing along to ‘Singing in the Rain'. This act usually suggests insanity amongst the cast, as well as quite effective in creating enigmas that are usually answered later on in the film.

These then for our thriller plan to be the main pieces of sound we plan to use in our thriller, as these are the main aspects in which we need to create the enigmas that we desire. Brad Hart gave us an inspiration for some eerie non digetic music from an application on his Ipod Touch. It was a keyboard application that allowed you to change your ipod into a keyboard and change the sounds like a real keyboard. The sounds he played were slow and deep, producing a soundtrack that would be perfect. Also in terms of contrapuntal sound, David huxford owns a music box a home that plays an interestingly relaxing tune. This music type would most likely be related to memories or a dream which we have in our thriller.

- David Huxford