The Role of Sound Design in Horror Film Suspense

[00:00:01]Narrator: Listen as Elisabeth Moss turns off the sink in this scene.

[00:00:04][water running] [handle squeaks] [silence] Now listen to it with a completely different sound design.

[00:00:15][water running] [handle squeaks] [water drains] In the first version, all sound cuts out.

[00:00:27]But that's a whole lot scarier.

[00:00:30]Sound has been an important element in film for a long time.

[00:00:34]But in horror movies, it plays an even bigger role.

[00:00:38]Leslie Bloome: When it comes to horror films, you don't want to give away the ghost.

[00:00:41]You don't want to give away the monster or the moment.

[00:00:44]Narrator: That's Leslie Bloome, cofounder of Alchemy Post Sound.

[00:00:48]And he just described the key difference between regular Foley sound and what he does as a Foley artist for horror movies, like "The Invisible Man."

[00:00:56]Normally, Foley focuses on sounds made by characters you see.

[00:00:59]But in horror, it's about the sounds of the unseen character, someone or something that may be there without the audience knowing for sure that it is.

[00:01:10]That's what ratchets up the suspense and primes the audience for a truly terrifying reveal.

[00:01:16]And maybe no film does this better than the one with an invisible villain.

[00:01:21]Take the simple sound of wind, a staple of horror-movie sound design, whether it's curtains reacting to a rush of air... [fabric rustles] or a flock of birds flapping against the breeze.

[00:01:33][gloves slapping] In a regular movie, you might hear wind when characters open a window or walk outside.

[00:01:42]But in horror movies, often the source of the sound won't be clear.

[00:01:46]For this next part, you might want to grab your headphones.

[00:01:50]This scene signals the Invisible Man's presence with mysterious whooshing sounds, created by flapping an old shirt.

[00:01:58][fabric rustles] You can't actually see where this wind sound is coming from, but as Elisabeth Moss' character, Cecilia, approaches the sink, the whooshes build in intensity.

[00:02:10][whooshing] And build... [whooshing grows louder] until each one sounds more like a rumble.

[00:02:21][water running] [whooshing intensifies] Still, the window is closed, and the curtains look pretty still.

[00:02:32]So the sound suggests something's moving inside the room.

[00:02:35]Exactly where, we don't know.

[00:02:38]There's another sound in this scene that confuses our senses even more.

[00:02:42][whooshing] [wind chimes dinging] Hear those wind chimes?

[00:02:48][whooshing] [wind chimes dinging] They're subtle, but disorienting.

[00:02:53]Especially because the sound isn't coming from something you can point to in the outside world.

[00:02:58]See, Leslie uses different kinds of wind chimes to accentuate tense moments in horror scenes.

[00:03:03][wind chimes dinging] Even if there aren't any chimes in the shot.

[00:03:08]It could be that moment that, you know, somebody hears a ringing in their ears.

[00:03:13]Narrator: That ringing in the ears is called a subjective sound -- something the character's hearing in their mind.

[00:03:20]In horror movies, subjective sound helps place you inside the protagonist's head, so you identify with their fear.

[00:03:27]Leslie: Then we have the one that was actually used in "The Invisible Man."

[00:03:31]Narrator: It's how the Foley artist handles the chimes that makes the sound creepy.

[00:03:35]This is what Leslie calls a "demented wind chime," [ding echoes] a sound Alchemy made for "The Night House."

[00:03:44][ringing] They created it by putting an old telephone bell on a rope and swinging it around.

[00:03:52]The slower you swing it, the creepier it gets.

[00:03:56]Even the most common sounds require special treatment in horror movies, like footsteps.

[00:04:02]Alchemy has a huge shoe collection for this purpose.

[00:04:06]I know how each one of these shoes reacts to every one of these floor surfaces.

[00:04:11]Narrator: In a non-horror movie, you'll likely know exactly where footstep sounds are coming from and how close they are to the central character.

[00:04:18]But in horror movies, sometimes the most effective footsteps are barely audible, so you really have to strain to hear them, just as the protagonist is doing.

[00:04:28]To soften the footsteps of the Invisible Man and match the sound of his neoprene suit, Leslie walked around with rubber gloves over his feet, adding a yoga mat to mute the sounds even more.

[00:04:40][quiet footsteps] The result?

[00:04:45]You might not even be sure you heard anything at all.

[00:04:49]That uncertainty is the bread and butter of suspense in horror movies.

[00:04:53]Barely perceptible sounds can make you doubt your own senses, just like the character is doubting theirs.

[00:05:00]And that makes the viewing experience that much scarier.

[00:05:03]What places you even further into the protagonist's shoes, literally, is the sound of their footsteps.

[00:05:10]She is, like, nervously shaking.

[00:05:13]I'm going to try to portray that in her movements, in her footsteps.

[00:05:17][wood creaking] Narrator: To play this up, the artists at Alchemy don't use just any regular floor.

[00:05:27]I need old, crappy wood, I need a really bad subfloor, and I need really crappy nails that are going to move within the wood.

[00:05:35]Narrator: Leslie made a custom one that met all those requirements, partly using 65-year-old wood.

[00:05:41]Each corner makes slightly different kinds of creaky sounds, which emphasize the sense of unsteadiness.

[00:05:48]Like you're -- again, literally -- on shaky ground.

[00:05:53]To cap it all off, there's this.

[00:05:56][handle squeaks] The accent sound.

[00:05:58]That's a sharp, pronounced sound that stands out against the subtler, more ambient ones we've been hearing, indicating to the audience that something is off.

[00:06:08]Leslie used an old sink to create this unsettling squeak.

[00:06:12][handle squeaks] But that came out sounding like too big a piece of metal, so he used a towel to dampen the sound.

[00:06:19][handle squeaks] But what really makes this [handle squeaks] [silence] scarier than this [handle squeaks] [water drains] is the way everything else goes quiet after the sink squeaks.

[00:06:34]It's not realistic for all the sounds to suddenly stop right when the faucet does, but sound in horror movies isn't always about realism.

[00:06:42]Often it's about creating a heightened reality.

[00:06:45]It doesn't have to be wall-to-wall sound all the time.

[00:06:47]Having that brief moment of just silence and then, "Wham!"

[00:06:53]To me, that's powerful.

[00:06:54]Narrator: Here, the few moments of absolute quiet put the audience on edge right before the moment of attack.

[00:07:00]And when that moment does come, the contrast is that much stronger.

[00:07:05][thud] [Cecilia choking] Leslie: I'd like to make this grab just a little bit larger than life.

[00:07:14][thud] Let's get a grab on more skin.

[00:07:19]We'll layer the two of those together.

[00:07:22][smack] And I want to throw in, like, a little bit of creak, just when she's getting lifted up.

[00:07:27][smack] [rubber squeaking] That's a hit and a grab and the whole nine yards, so, you know, she's in trouble.

[00:07:36]Narrator: Now let's watch another scene and see how these suspense sounds play out together.

[00:07:40]The accent sound comes earlier in this scene in the form of a jarring phone ring.

[00:07:45][phone buzzes] The phone has an unnaturally loud echo against the wood.

[00:07:51][phone buzzes] And it's startling because of its contrast with the otherwise quiet attic.

[00:07:57]But that's sort of a fake-out, because afterwards we return to quiet, which can give the audience a sense of false calm.

[00:08:05]Cecilia's shaky, creaky footsteps are actually crawling sounds in this scene, which put the viewer right there with her as she moves across the attic.

[00:08:14][gentle thudding] Leslie accentuated the sound of the creaking floorboards using his custom-made "creak box."

[00:08:23][wood creaking] Earlier we saw how subtle footsteps and whooshes signaled the bad guy's presence.

[00:08:34]Here, it's the faint rattle of a ladder in the distance.

[00:08:38]She hears something, and it jars her.

[00:08:43][faint rattle] Now, we don't need climbing up the ladder, because that would be just -- we've given away the farm.

[00:08:50]Not too loud, not too big.

[00:08:51]He's trying to sneak up on her, too.

[00:08:54][ladder rattles] Narrator: Since all we hear is that rattle, we don't know exactly where the bad guy is, throwing our senses off yet again.

[00:09:02]That's crucial because it's priming us for this jump scare.

[00:09:09]Part of why that reveal is so terrifying is because of the proximity of the Invisible Man.

[00:09:14]By giving us minimal hints as to his whereabouts, the sound design tricked us into thinking he was farther away.

[00:09:19]Leslie: When he gets splashed with paint, [rattling] at that point, the cat's out of the bag.

[00:09:26]Narrator: The big moment here called for some bigger and messier sounds.

[00:09:29][sheepskin splats] Leslie: We don't want to dump paint everywhere, but we need it to sound thick and gooey.

[00:09:34]Narrator: The best tool for that are these scraps of sheepskin, which Leslie says are "nastier" than your usual towel or rag.

[00:09:42]Leslie: But it holds a ton of water in it, which gives it a very, you know, very gooey, visceral kind of sound to it.

[00:09:51][splashing] Narrator: To maximize moments like this, horror movies have to walk a fine line, figuring out how to hide a character while revealing them at the same time.

[00:10:02]They accomplish this with subtle Foley and sound design that goes beyond realism to create a heightened reality where your ears and mind are playing tricks on you.

[00:10:16][footsteps] [creaking] [TV clicks off] Man: Don't let him haunt you.

[00:10:26]Cecilia: Hello?

[00:10:28][heavy breathing]