Research : The Importance Of Sound In Horror Films

Music is used in horror films to create a suspense while watching the film, it creates an atmosphere which makes the audience sense the danger while watching it. Music is used within a hour film to make the audience feel tension when there is a build up to danger, this is effective because it makes the audience expect jump scare or a dangerous situation to occur. If music wasn't included within the films, the scenes wouldn't be as effective, you would hear more diegetic sound which would make the film have a smaller impact on the audience. However, sometimes silence creates bigger impact on the audience that music due to they mysteriousness of it, this can make the audience think that something is going to happen that may frighten or shock them.  

Prof Daniel Blumstein, who led the study at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the soundtracks of 102 of the world's most popular movies. From war films and dramas, to horror movies and adventure films.

The study, which involved composer Peter Kaye at Kingston University, London, looked at the music in films, as well as special effects and screams. The analysis showed that horror films had the most noisy female screams while adventure films had the most screams from men. Horror films also had an higher than expected number of abrupt shifts up and down in pitch, he reported in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Dramatic films had fewer than expected screams and lower pitched sounds than other genre of movie.

The study concluded that the use of these non-linear sounds was not random, but used to 'enhance the emotional impact of scenes'. An example of these effects are displayed within the film 'The Shining':

The Shining — 'Here's Johnny'

The sound within this film is so important as it is balanced out with the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. the non-diegetic sounds create tension that only the audience can hear, this is increased when danger starts to strike, the music is increased to create a tension while the audience is watching the film.

Finding out this information will help me when creating my main task, it will help me when placing music into my task. It will also help me on choising which kind of music I will place in the opening  scene to make sure that it is suitable and effective within the scene.