Sound is an aspect in horror films that is most over looked but just as important as actual footage. Without sound the scenes would not be as distinct for example in a scene where someone is going to be killed the sound would build up with the scene and then there would be a loud noise to go with the scene to make it better. The reasons why sound scares the audience, "Scientists have found that many of the emotionally-evocative moments in some of the most popular films are enhanced with a sound score that exploits the human brain’s natural aversion to the non-linear sounds widely used in the animal kingdom to express fear and distress." A way that anyone can see the importance of sound when trying to show a scary scene is to turn off the volume whilst it is on and it would not create no where near the same effect.
The sound within horror movies can be so important for example most horror films have there own theme tunes and specific played when the victim usual dies, these is very helpful and when played audiences can usually link them to the film in which it was originally played in.
When sound is shown well in films
Psycho
Sound is shown very well in films such as Psycho. the scene where they are in the shower and the curtains open and a lady gets stabbed is a great scene where it shows how powerful the sound can be. the reason why it is so powerful is because there is basically all sound that makes it scary for example, as the shower curtain is drawn and the man is standing there with a knife and the woman's scream is very powerful and has a great impact on the audience. Also the build up music and the drop of the music works very well also to build tension and then scare them as the killing starts. The build up was so good that the music has become very popular and common to people. The video of the scene in Psycho which shows this all is just below.
Jaws
Another film in which sound is shown to be very powerful and has a huge impact on the type of message it is trying to get across to the audience. the reason why it is so good in jaws is because the build up music to the killing scenes are very good because they have deep bass sounds which gradually gets louder and faster as the shark begins to get closer it sounds as if it resembling a heart beat of the victim or the audience. This is also another film in which the music has become very popular. The soundtrack of the theme tune of jaws is below.
The Auditory symbol
In most horror films, a certain melody or sounds serves as a symbol for the main threat in the film. This is achieved by a extracting a small portion of the films characteristic sounds and assigning it to the main threat by playing the sound whenever the threat is back into focus. The use of the auditory symbol helps the producers of the film by adding the threat without actually using any visual representation.
Over all i have found from my research that sound is just as or more important than the actual visual footage that is shown. Without it music or sound in the clip it would not get across the type of message it wanted to its audience. Therefor it is very important and when creating a film sound is probably concentrated on more than the clips as this probably creates the most tension which is key in horror films.
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