Films are produced usually using three different types of sounds: human voices, sound effects and music. These three sounds are very important to make it seem realistic to the audience. In any film, the music achieves a number of advantages to its success: it creates atmosphere, establishes the setting, calls attention to some elements, reinforces or foreshadows the narrative developments, it gives meaning to a character’s actions or translates their thoughts and it creates emotions.
The Importance of Sound in Horror Movies:
In horror movies, the sound is crucial since it helps create that certain atmosphere that brings fear in the audience. The atmosphere makes the whole experience of watching the movie breathtaking and more enjoyable. The sounds can also be used to highlight the intensity of specific parts or key moments of the film that they want to stand out to the audience. In some movies, the sounds and music are the only things that describe the intensity of the action taking place. It emphasises the fear or pain of a character of an action taking place letting the audience know something is or will happen to them. The tone plays a big part since it warns the audience who can sometimes predict horror is occurring or is about to when you can’t see anything on the screen.
How is Sound used to scare?
Sounds in horror movies can scare the audience in two different ways: by being sudden (if a loud screechy noise suddenly jumps ups), or by generating a ‘frightful’ tone. A sound causes an interesting reaction in the brain in terms of fear that is different from the reaction the brain experiences from seeing something scary. Also, the sound information travels faster to the brain than the sight information which is why sounds are usually scarier than images and are crucial to creating a dark atmosphere in horror movies. There are ‘non-linear’ sounds that are very common in the horror genre since they evoke an emotional response in humans. Non-linear sounds are sound waves that have very high amplitude in comparison to the usual diegetic and non-diegetic sounds from musical instruments or dialogues in films. Examples of these sounds are the distress calls of wild animals, a child’s cry and a sudden change in frequency of an acoustic instrument like the violin.
The Stereotypical Sound Effects used:
There are some very common sound effects that are used in most horror movies such as creaking doors, footsteps, howls, storm, bats, creepy violin etc. This helps the audience easily establish the genre. They create tension within the scenes and are used to highlight a key moment to allow the audience knows something is about to happen to the character: this is called highlighting. They allow the audience to experience the unknown and gather mystery to create dramatic irony.
Directors and Marketing of Sounds in Horror movies:
Directors want the audience to have a breathtaking experience every time they watch the film. They toy with the audience’s emotions by using sounds, for example by showing the characters pain or fear and making us connect to them. Some directors choose to create their own soundtrack that is replayed in the trailer or every time a murder repeats in the movie as a type of marketing.
A very common one is JAWS, the composer John Williams mainly uses strings and the tone and speed gradually increases and becomes more intense which helps us predict something will happen. Once the audience hears it in the movie it creates excitement and fear from knowing something is about to occur. This soundtrack is used in the trailer as well as multiple times in the movie and has become a main effect in the film.
Conclusion:
From the interview with the three girls and the research I did on sounds in the horror genre, I learnt that the horror sounds and effects are easily recognised and are very stereotypical on purpose since they create the right atmosphere so that the audience can easily identify the genre and that they give the sense of tension and fear in different ways.
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