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Horror Sounds

The Woman In Black (opening sequence)

The Woman In Black is a drama horror directed by James Watkins.

Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe), a lawyer, is recently widowed and grieving the loss of his wife when he is sent to a remote village to put a deceased eccentric's affairs in order. Soon after his arrival, it becomes clear that the villagers are hiding a terrible secrets.

The sound effects of the opening scene set the general movie in place.

The very first sound effect is a non-diegetic, the soundtrack. The soundtrack is a quiet, slow paste music compose mostly by piano sounds with electronic effects.

 

This soundtrack sets the all movie, as it is done purposely to create tension straight away to the audience. It show that this is movie is a horror and the style of the movie is going to be a slow paste to build up tension and the feeling of uncomforted even when not lots it is actually happening.  This soundtracks carries on for the all opening sequence getting louder throughout the scene.

Then around thirty seconds we have a clear pleonastic sound of a tea pot of ceramic against a tea mugs, this sound is repeated as the scene shows two mugs.

The sound track then covers up all the other sounds. This as part of the audience that watched this movie and analysed I believe created frustration as you could see objects and those three girls playing with their toys but you couldn’t hear anything apart the soundtrack.

At this point of the sequence ( one minute) the soundtrack changes getting louder and louder and sounds of bells are added into to it to give the sensation of time (in the past, timing running, it is time).

More pleonastic sounds appear then when the three girls possessed to mysterious creature get up and start walking towards the three windows.

The steps are over exaggerated, as they walk they step on their toys and tea set breaking them, this is highlighted with the pleonastic sounds.

The soundtrack never stopped so we can assume it is going to be a sound bridge for the next sequence.

When the three little girls trough them self down the windows  we can hear their mother’s scream.

The mother is not shown screaming we can only hear the loud desperate screaming .

The opening scene is of big impact as it set the all movie, we can clearly understand that this movie has a cruel storyline, it is going to be a horror as in the first few minutes the audience felt already strong emotions and has already and idea of the general movie. It is slow paste.

 

Annabelle (basement scene)

 

This is a slow paste scene and it start with the diegetic sound of the main character walking in the basement corridor. the step are pleonastic even though the location is completely silence. This make those sounds stands out even more.

There is the pleonastic sound of the character opening door and walking in this little cage to take some stuff.

Diegetic sound here is dominant and the silence effect creates the intensity throughout the all scene. There are long pauses of silence and the diegetic sound even though they are pleonastic create a quite environment that make the audience feeling uncomfortable as they know that this is established as a horror movie.

Then we have a the diegetic sound of a child laugh at the top of the other diegetic sounds. We cannot see the child and the character also interact with it as she looks surprised.

This sound carries on for few seconds until we can start feeling the worried and concerned of the character.

Then we have a pleonastic sound of a pram rolling at the end of the corridor. this sound is diegetic as we can see in the background this pram coming up from nowhere. The sounds stop and a child cry starts going off loudly and it seems as they are in a basement that it echoes as well. This is a pleonastic sound.

The character slowly start walking toward the pram and we have the pleonastic sounds of her steps. This gives intensity to the scene as after each step there is a pause but in the background the baby is still crying.

Ones the character gets close enough to the pram all the sounds for three seconds stop.

This moment is of high effect as the audience knows that something is about to happen. This horror shows that silence is one of the scariest sound you could ever find. The audience is always looking for sounds effect to make them feel something, but it comes up to the silence they need to work out what to feel, obviously the shots and the settings made the all scene intense and scary.

After those three seconds a hands comes out the prom and grab the character’s arm. The character then runs away.

 The is a big different between the two; The Woman In Black uses lots of non-diegetic sounds to build up intensity throughout the scene, Annabelle uses diegetic sounds and silence.

They both use pleonastic sounds for the same purpose, get the audience attention.