History of Music in Horror Films Essay

Furthermore, by associating with the sound effect, the frighten scene at that time can convey its full potential. In every horror movie, especially cartoon (I think), mysterious jungle and haunted castle are very useful. In the magnetic jungle, there will be many unexpected things which the audience cannot predict, and that is the most interesting part in horror movie. People’s imagination is magneficent. The more they want to know something, the more they will imagine it in an ugliest and scariest image. Moreover, combine the scene with the thunder sound, it will be more scary. Similar to the jungle is a haunted castle which also contains many scary elements. Another detail in the movie which is also adequate is the torch when Sherk and his friend enter the castle. The light from the torch is very weak and can only illuminate a narrow area. To the audience, it pretty normal, but if you imagine you are the character in the movie it is another story. Visualize you are entering the haunted castle, and the only thing you can use to see the around is the torch. You cannot see everything clearly, and you will imagine that there will be something come out of nowhere. The filmmakers are very intelligent when using this material because they understand the audience’s spychology: they scare what they do not

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In the movie he used music to create suspense. Like when something bad was about to

Later on in the day, after a field trip to the local planetarium, Jim meets a group of kids that are troublemakers and want to fight with him. As a conversation begins, music also begins in the background, yet quickly changes when the gang wants trouble. The music becomes fast, louder, and more suspenseful. The style of mickeymousing, "type of score [that] uses music as a literal equivalent to the image" (Giannetti, 231), was also used in this same scene. Jim and the character of Buzz are fighting each other with knives, and at every jab of the knife the music changes and becomes more dramatic and even more suspenseful. It is said that, "music can serve as a kind of overture to suggest the mood or spirit of the film as a whole" (Giannetti, 233). Later on, James Dean's character is asking his father for advice, and the music becomes quiet, slow and mysterious. Another scene where the score plays a vital role in the atmosphere is during an argument with Jim and his parents. Jim and his father are yelling, and when Jim grabs his father as if to hit him, the music turns scary and very intense.

The sound of keys in the right moment, the crinkling of money. The sound in Jaws to indicate that the shark was coming. We hear the last sputtering burst of flame, the gushing of red fluid and the last gasps of the creatures ( Barsam pg.388) In the “War of the world’s “the movies sound effects, more than its music produce

In “Edward Scissorhands”, despite the low lighting on the mansion to make it appear more gothic, whimsical music plays when the viewer’s first see the visually interesting topiary Edward himself made near the beginning of the film. This was to catch the audience’s breaths away, take them totally by surprised, and make them engrossed by the beautiful garden at the front of the creepy run-down mansion. Tim Burton uses non-diegetic sounds often to touch the audience’s feelings, make them opened their eyes that despite their initial assumptions of the gothic mansion, the factory, or even

Horror films must tap into people’s deepest fears if they are to effectively scare people. There are many ways of doing so. Certain horror films employ so-called jump scares to frighten people when they least expect it. Others make use of lighting, shadow, implications and sound effects in order to hint at something that may or may not be there. Films like Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a good example of the latter kind of horror film.

In 1928 ground-breaking technology made it possible for movies to have sound. This revolutionized horror films because sound gave an extra dimension to terror. Noise built suspense and signaled the presence of a threat. (Wilson) Instead of a monster suddenly making an appearance without warning, music would signal that they were near. Growls, Snarls, footsteps, and screams allowed the audience members to feel like the victims of the movie.

In Mitchell’s It Follows, he enlists the help of composer Vreeland to create music for his film. Traditionally a composer for video games, Vreeland’s music consists of the 8-bit type music that is consistently found in Vreeland’s main line of work. Whereas “traditional” horror films may carry orchestral music, Vreeland’s music is synthesized and therefore stands out because of it. In combination with his composer’s music, Mitchell also uses silence and natural ambience to further break the horror music stereotype. Where more popular horror films would use silence, darkness and loud sounds to help increase tension, Mitchell uses silence and music to do that instead. Vreeland’s music, which mainly contains higher pitched music enhanced by low beats, is mainly used during key moments that involves the Follower. For example, during our second introduction to It, the music consists of high pitched (flat sounding?????) notes

The horror genre of film is particularly interesting when it comes to musical accompaniment, as it is generally perceived as more integral to the film as a whole than in any other genre. In fact it sometimes gets so overwhelming that viewers turn the sound off, because the music is creating the nerves and the tension. A horror film has nowhere near the same effect without the music, because viewers rely on it for cues that something is about to happen.

While well-crafted sound design and sound effects are so very necessary in the creation of a film, music touches the emotion, the psyche, and the things you cannot see. Sound design and effects don’t do this nearly as efficiently and naturally. Without music it would be much more difficult to follow the emotional ups and downs of a film. (Freer)

Music can either make it or break it in a movie, especially a silent film. Silent films were very unique to their time due to the fact there was no way to record the audio or score until the 1930's with the introduction of sound-on-film technology. Before then music had to be either played on a sound-on-disc technology such as Warner Bros. "Vitaphone", or it had to be played live. Murnau hired the help of a German composer and musician Hans Erdmann to do the composing of the film score for "Nosferatu" which ended up being his magnum opus. Erdmann set the bar for all future horror films inspiring heavily the British Hammer horrors of the 50s with a frenetic, tense and jarring sound track. Erdmann used his musical prowess to create a rhythmically

What make a scary movie scary would be the Music, Actors/Actresses, and Scenery. Music plays a big role in Scary Movies with the Sounds and effects. Music in a Scary Movie can make a person get chills, jump or even scream. A second huge role would be the Actors/Actresses. The Actors/Actresses make or break whether the Scary Movie is good or bad. Not only the Actors/Actresses, also the producers and moviemakers. They decide what Actors/Actresses say, the only question is. Can they play their role? Finally it comes down to the Scenery. Without having Scenery the Movie would just be one black screen. Having Scenery gives the audience a chance to use their imagination, like “What’s over there?” or “Where did they go?” and lastly “How’d she disappear?”

By writing the storyline a certain way a film can manipulate the emotions of the viewer. While production elements like music and sound can also do this, multiple scientific experiments have concluded that the context of the film is what has the most impact. What we watch has a much stronger emotional effect than say the music. A study conducted by UCLA evolutionary biologist Daniel Blumstein found that music alone was enough to elicit an emotional response from an audience however when paired with a film whose storyline did not match the theme of the music it was the context of the film that dominated. Daniel Blumstein said "I think in this case there is a visual dominance, here we find that when you put the two [video and audio] together, you lose the acoustic affect you had before.” What this means is that scary music paired with a normal film produced normal emotions and normal music paired with a scary film produced fear. This means that the narrative elements like the plot, the characters and the actions of the characters are more impactful than the production elements and therefore better at portraying gothic

thin sound such as a flute can be used to set a mood of fear and horror. Again