Sound Effect

Silence as a Sound Effect

"Sound effects provide information about a scene, serve as a cue reference, help in mood creation, act as an emotional stimulus"—Heidi McKee (2006)

In the episode from Radiolab titled CRISPR, sound effect characterizes scientific information. Alternation of two sound effects directs the audience to draw the DNA sequence of E.coli in their mind. Without any visual cues, repeated blurbs and few explanations help us to cross the medium from aural to visual.

In another episode Lost and Found, sound editing sets the tone for scenes. The background music creates a serious mood when Emilie had an accident or when she was diagnosed with brain death. Cross-cutting and combining interviews from various people allow the audience to feel the tension. Overlaid on the text, sound effects are designed to build the context of a scene.

As I was reading McKee(2006), the sound effect that popped up in my mind was no sounds.

Gravity (2013) starts with this caption: "...... There is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible." While these captions explicitly set the context, the background music grows louder, hits the max volume, and stops with the first scene. Sudden silence concentrates the attention of the audience. And it is more convincing than the captions to feel that there is nothing in space.

Similarly, absolute silence in Interstellar (2014) enables the audience to feel space in a theater. When showing a massive explosion in space, the image is juxtaposed with the absence of sound. The audience expects a thundering sound of the explosion, but instead, the scene is layered with silence. It breaks the expectation, but the synergy between the silence (background) and image (foreground) supersedes the uncanny. As a result, the scene gains more weight and describes the characteristic of space better than any other means under the limit of having gravity.

Su Jin

Sound Effect

Silence as a Sound Effect