This blog entry is from Sound Effects in Science Fiction and Horror Films (Kelleghan, 1996).
Director John Carpenter, who creates and performs the music for almost all of his own films, agrees that the soundtrack should be implicit. ”[Y]ou shouldn’t be aware of what I’m doing. Yeah, when it’s scary or action-filled, you’ll hear it, and it’s fine. But you shouldn’t be sitting there listening to music, or aware of it. It should be working on you. … I don’t want you to be aware of the technique. I just want you to feel it” (Droney, 1995). However, sometimes the composer does want you to be aware of his technique. The most obvious soundtrack technique, known as”mickeymousing,” is just barely considered respectable by respectable film composers. Mickeymousing is when the music blatantly matches the action. When King Kong climbs the Empire State building, the music likewise rises and falls with each of his movements. In what has become a cliché, mickeymousing even has the music giving away the action about to happen (Bazelon, 1975). A heavy brass chord announces danger; a low, sustained tone creates mystery; sliding intervals of gliding strings imply seductiveness. This musical signal, that prepares the audience for the dramatic events to follow, is known as the stinger.
The modern audience has become sophisticated enough to be conscious of these musical cues. The recognition value of really successful music like the Jaws and Psycho themes allows them to be parodied. James Homer’s soundtrack for Aliens makes musical allusions to Capricorn One and Star Wars (Karlin, 1994), and it is parodied, in its turn, by Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness. In comedy films, composers can also use contrapuntal music that plays directly against the textual theme. When Stanley Kubrick introduces the song ”Try a Little Tenderness” to accompany two planes refueling in midair at the beginning of Dr. Strangelove, he makes a joke that contrasts with the dark and deadly implications of the rest of the film (Bazelon, 1975).
Synthesizers are almost always used in SF and horror films because they can produce otherworldly sounds. But for straightforward emotion, horns are used too. These are associated with pageantry, the military, and the hunt, so they are used to suggest heroism. Movies featuring death-defying heroes such as Star Wars and RoboCop use a lot of horns (Kalinak, 1992). Such triumphant music implies certain guarantees, however. Carpenter says that for his version of The Thing, he insisted on grim music: ”If we had made the audience feel that we were in a heroic situation, that movie would be a cheat. … When they hear that heroic sound they go, Oh, okay, everything’s going to be all right. But it’s not going to be all right …!” (Droney, 1995).
Bemard Herrmann’s theme for the Psycho shower scene uses high-pitched string instrument notes with very fast attack. Strangely enough, the theme nearly didn’t get written, as this was a scene for which Hitchcock didn’t want any music. But Herrmann wrote it anyway, and Hitchcock agreed that it was too good to throw away (Karlin, 1994). Herrmann also uses mostlystrings and percussion to build suspense in the movie Fahrenheit 451 (Darby and Du Bois, 1990). Lots of movies use high-pitched music to build fear.
In Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Planet of the Apes, after the three astronauts see the bizarre scarecrows up on the scaffolds, ”Goldsmith introduces high, exotic percussion sounds — metal twangs produced bystainless-steel mixing bowls” (Bazelon, 1975). Again in that movie, when the female astronaut is discovered in a state of advanced decomposition, the strings seem to scream (Darby and Du Bois, 1990). The 1951 version of The Thing features brass and high strings (Darby and Du Bois, 1990), though horns play along with the howling winds when the alien saucer is discovered in the ice — this version was heroic. High strings seem ideal to express stress and tautly stretched nerves (like in The Omen). Or, they can evoke weird psychic goings-on (like in Poltergeist or for the theme to The X-Files) (Daiby and Du Bois, 1990.
The sound mixers for the Michael Crichton movie Congo found that even high organic noises can build suspense. In the jungle, the birds and insects create a high ambient whine that pretty quickly gets on your nerves. As one of the mixers said, ”when they want to create a real feeling of anxiety, these insects are going to be played loud” (Kenny, 1995).
The violin in Psycho is so effective because it is used as percussion (Daiby and Du Bois, 1990), suggesting the knifestrokes. Deep sounds also sound percussive, and in fact you can feel them literally penetrating your body if the volume is strong enough. Jaws uses a sinister but very simple double bass which begins in long, heavy notes gradually acquiring a much faster attack (Darby and Du Bois, 1990). Another example of low music for suspense occurs in the opening of the Malcolm McDowell vehicle Time After Time. A prostitute stumbles past a London pub. We hear garish popular Victorian music from within. Then this switches to a deep, ominous double bass as the prostitute looks up and sees … Jack the Ripper. But she thinks she sees just a well-dressed gentleman, so the soundtrack cleverly switches back to the pub music. The music is sinister just long enough for the audience to register the threat, but it doesn’t insult us by playing on and on during the murder of the prostitute (Daiby and Du Bois, 1990).
In the Star Wars movies, the appearance of the villains onscreen is likewise accompanied by deep or military sounds (Darby and Du Bois, 1990). What most audience members don’t notice is that most protagonists also have their own theme music. The main Star Wars theme, written by John Williams, plays whenever Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia face important decisions, and when Obi Wan Kenobi dies.
The same was true of the old Star Trek series, when the soundtrack used to be composed by a live orchestra watching the film footage. Bach character had his or her own individual theme music, which was always played whenever they were on screen (Whitfield, 1968). Mr. Spock’s theme, for example, is played by ”an instrument that couldn’t possibly be romantic, a bass guitar, down in the low register, with no resonance. It just klunks out the theme” (Karlin, 1994). Star Trek Classic also played with the voices of alien characters. They would electronically raise or lower the voices of these actors to create an inhuman effect. A dangerous cat woman in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has a voice made of real cat noises mixed with distorted James Brown screams (Spomitz, 1989). To make ”alien” languages sound real, they are sometimes made from spliced-together bits of exotic Earth languages, such as Gikuyu and Nepali. This causes much hilarity when the movies play in countries where these languages are spoken (Berger, 1984).
Though horror films can often feature supernatural creatures and events, ironically enough what they need is an uncomplicated sound that will disturb the audience viscerally rather than interest them intellectually. For instance, the sound studios of horror movies are frequently littered with fruits and vegetables to make various body-snapping sound effects. The recent Hellraiser IV went through a lot of melons (Stokes, 1995).
Another interesting monster sound was achieved in the made-for-TV movie based on Stephen King’s The Langoliers. The langoliers are nearly all mouth, so they needed to have a predatory effect. But King had described the sound of their approach as being reminiscent of Rice Krispies. Although the langoliers, who literally eat the world, would realistically require combinations of grinding, screeching, scraping and the crunching of metal, pavement, and earth, the executive producer wasadamant that they should not sound mechanical. Sound editor Ray Palagy says, ”We actually spent an entire day recording cereal sounds — dry cereal, wet, mushy; in a bowl, in a tub …” They took all of these sounds and made processed versions of all of them. Then they added effects such as Velcro, car doors, subway screeches and lion growls to yield ”signature” sounds that are hard to categorize as animal or machine. Because supernatural creatures such as the Langoliers are based on no equivalent in the real world, they have to sound unique (Eskow, 1995).
Another example of sound design ingenuity can be found in the opening of Terminator 2. The camera pans across burned-out car bodies and a devastated playground from the year 2029 A.D. We hear a desolate wind … and then, CRUNCH! A robotic foot crushes a human skull. The sound of the wind actually comes from the crack of an open door to the main mix room at Skywalker Sound, combined with the sound artist vocally going ”whoooooo.” The sound of the crushed skull is actually a pistachio being crunched by a metal plate (Kenny, 1991).
The Terminator 2 sound crew got very inventive. They had to design the sound of the T-1000 Terminator moving into and out of liquid metal, the quality that makes him virtually indestructible. ”It’s not really liquid …” sound man Gary Rydstrom says. ”It doesn’t have any bubbles in it. It doesn’t gurgle. It doesn’t do anything visually except flow like mercury …” So Rydstrom gathered a number of sound elements and played them while watching the screen to see what sounded good. When the T-1000 is just sort of flowing and transforming, that’s Rydstrom plunging a microphone covered with a condom into a mixture he made of flour and water with Dust-Off sprayed into it.
For the sound of bullets hitting T-1000, Rydstrom slammed an inverted glass into a bucket of yogurt, getting a hard edge to accompany the goopy sound. In the psychiatric prison where Sarah Connor is held prisoner, the T-1000 flows around and through a gate of steel bars. That sound is actually dog food being slowly sucked out of a can. (Kenny, 1991)
So far it sounds like fun and games, but sound mixers face a lot of difficulties beyond inventing new sounds. One problem is trying to read the film director’s mind. Directors usually don’t know anything about music scoring and don’t know how to articulate what kind of soundtrack they want. For example, the producers of the Star Trek: Next Generation TV show wanted the Enterprise transporter to sound like its old recognizable self, but at the same time to sound more high-tech and intense. And Gene Roddenberry ordered them to ”add a sense of mystery.” So the sound mixers took the basic musical chord and added a series of tri-tones, performed on the Synclavier. By the time Generations rolled around, the sound has changed quite a bit, always finding some new high-end sparkle to match the new opticals (Kenny, 1995).
Rydstrom, sound designer for Terminator 2, says, ”Your first thought when you see a lot of special effects is that sound’s job is to not only do something as fantastical as the visual, but also to make it real. It’s not competing with the special visual effect, because people perceive the visual and the sound differently. Walter Murch had a way of putting it: The eyes are the front door, and the ears are the back door” (Kenny, 1991).
But one thing is certain: As visual effects for movies become more and more sophisticated, we can be sure that sound effects will need to be more and more inventive — even if it’s only to think of things to do with a condom, yogurt, or a dog food can.
References
Bazelon, I. (1975), Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Berger, I. (1984). Soundtrack of the Lost Ark, Audio 68.11, 130.
Blake, L. (1995). Sound for Film: Go Back and Listen: Classic Film Sound Tracks, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.8, 110.
Darby, W. & Du Bois, J. (1990), American Film Music: Major Composers. Techniques, Trends, 1915 — 1990. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Droney, M. (1995), John Carpenter: One-Stop Movie Shop, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.12, pp 112-8.
Eskow, G. (1995). Animal Meets Machine: Sound for The Langoliers, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.5, pp. 162-4.
Kelleghan, F., (1996), Sound Effects in Science Fiction and Horror Films [online] available at <http://filmsound.org/articles/horrorsound/horrorsound.htm> [Last accessed January 3rd, 2015].
Kalinak, K. (1992). Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Madison: U of Wisconsin P.
Karlin, F. (1994). Listening to Movies: The Film Lover’s Guide to Film Music. New York: Schirmer.
Kenny, T. (1996), Monkey Business: Vocalizations for Jumanji, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 20.3, 113, 118.
Kenny, T. (1995) Sound for Three Summer Blockbusters, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.6, 76-86.
Kenny, T. (1995), Star Trek Generations, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.1, 72-83.
Kenny, T. (1991), T2: Behind the Scenes with the Terminator 2 Sound Team, Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 15.9, 60-62, 64, 66, 116.
Moshansky, T. (1995). The X-Files Files. Mix: Professional Recording, Sound and Music Production 19.6, 89, 91-93, 216.
Spotnitz, F. (1989), Stick it in your Ear, American Film 15.1: 40-45.
Stokes, J. (1995), Using Sound Effects: Foley, Post: The International Magazine for Post Production Professionals 10.10, 73-84.
Whitfield, S. E. and Roddenberry, G. (1968). The Making of Star Trek. New York: Ballantine Books.
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