The Power of Sound

FilmStack Challenge #4

Photo by Denisse Leon on Unsplash

This month’s FilmStack Challenge, Challenge #4 brought to us by

Swabreen Bakr

is a fun one. It is all about SOUND.

For this challenge, you can choose to share either your favorite needle drops, composers, themes, monologues, usage of voice-over narration, or directors who use soundtracks to further their storytelling. Expand upon how these key moments of sound usage helped to shape a scene or contributed to the emotions you had while watching it.

This challenge is designed to get you to think about an element in film that is invisible—but sound shapes the image as much as the image shapes sound.

Sound is one of my favorite elements of film to play with. It is so often overlooked but can add so much and in such a subtle way to any scene. You can use it to highlight character’s emotions in a way that no one will notice but they will definitely feel. An exaggerated ticking clock can create pressure, even if no clock is actually in the frame or the scene. A baby crying in another room, louder than anything else in the scene, can express the psychological weight that sound has on a new mother. There are so many creative ways to use it.

I even write sound directly into most of my scripts. In one of them, the father character was largely defined by the constant loud noises he made, sound became his audio signature. In Unclaimed, the script I’m working on trying to make now, one character’s emotional journey is expressed and heightened through the environmental sounds around him. Using sound this way opens up new layers to explore character and theme.

I have mentioned in multiple past posts that one of my favorite uses of sound is in The Zone of Interest. The horrors of the concentration camp in that film are not seen (except through the smoke stacks in the distance), they are only heard. The sound becomes a major narrative element. The distance gunfire, and sounds of machinery, mixed with the unique score by Mica Levi that uses manipulated human voices and oddly directional music, enhances this unsettling and horrific atmosphere. You want to watch something with mastery of sound it is this film.

My other favorite thing about sound is how powerful the lack of sound can be. How loud silence is when used effectively. This is not a film but the first thing coming to mind with this was in the Game of Thrones “Red Wedding” episode. In this episode, after one of the most horrifying, violent, and heartbreaking scenes of that show (maybe any show ever), the credits roll and instead of the theme song we are used to hearing at that point like clockwork, we get SILENCE instaed. We are forced to sit there and feel the intensity of what just happened. No distracting melody, we just silently sit there, devastated by what we’ve just seen. At first you don’t notice so deep within your own sorrow, then it hits you. It was just a perfect tribute to the loss of our beloved characters.

Other films that immediately come to mind when thinking about sound are the iconic sounds from Star Wars—like the hum and clash of lightsabers, or, of course, Darth Vader’s mechanically filtered breathing, which sounds as if it’s coming through an intercom. See an image of Vader and you instantly hear it. Just make that noise and anyone who has seen the film knows exactly what and who you are referring to. And then there’s John Williams’ Imperial March, just a few notes and you instantly feel that sense of power and authority. You hear it and you know something serious is about to go down. And it sticks with you for hours afterward. Another film that used sound as a major narrative element is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that five-tone musical phrase used to communicate with the alien visitors. This film is showing the power of sound as it uses music and frequency as a kind of universal language.

Llyod Dobler - “Say Anything”

I also love the power of any great song mixed into a great movie, too. Songs can add so much emotion to scenes. I mean who didn’t feel the love in Say Anything when Lloyd Dobler was holding up his radio playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel? How every teenage girl wished someone would do such a romantic gesture one day for them. Or how could you not cry when Whitney Houston busts out singing “I Will Always Love You” at the end of The Bodyguard?

“Top Gun”

Great soundtracks also played a big role in the music background of many of my memories. Growing up my mom loved Top Gun, so that soundtrack was often blasting through our home. Hearing the first notes and lines of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”, how can you not get excited and picture the engines revving up on the runway? Music can instantly transport you back to those moments of a film and you can feel the familiar scenes and characters you enjoyed. I’m dating myself here, but when I was a teenager and we used to actually go buy cd’s and there were so many soundtracks that I would listen to over and over. The Singles soundtrack (being so in love with Eddie Vedder as was every other “grunge” teen at the time) was on repeat often, the Garden State soundtrack, and the Pulp Fiction soundtrack were played often as well. For doing homework I loved the score based soundtracks like Requiem For a Dream, Braveheart, or the Titanic soundtrack.

Sound can be used is so many ways to make us feel and fall in love with cinema.

I highly encourage everyone to think more often about this element when working on your projects, as creative use of it can bring so much more to them.