An Introduction to Film

WHAT IS SOUND? 389

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining(1980; sound: Dino
Di Campo, Jack T. Knight, and Winston Ryder)
opens with a series of helicopter point-of-view shots
that, without the accompanying sound, might be
mistaken for a TV commercial. In these shots, we
see a magnificent landscape, a river, and then a yel-
low Volkswagen driving upward into the mountains
on a winding highway. Whereas we might expect to
hear a purring car engine, car wheels rolling over
asphalt, or the passengers’ conversation, instead we
hear music: an electronic synthesis by composers
Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind of the Dies Irae,
one of the most famous Gregorian chants, which
became the fundamental music of the Roman
Catholic Church. The Dies Irae (literally, “the day
of wrath”) is based on Zephaniah 1:14–16, a reflec-
tion on the Last Judgment, and is one section of the
Requiem Mass, or Mass for the Dead. Experiencing
the shots together with the sound track, we wonder
about the location, the driver, and the destination.

What we hear gives life to what we see and offers

some clues to its meaning. The symbolic import

and emotional impact of this music transforms the

footage into a movie pulsating with portentous

energy and dramatic potential. Once we identify

this music, we suspect that it is warning us that

something ominous is going to happen before the

movie ends. Thus forewarned, we are neither mis-

led nor dissatisfied.

The sound in the scenes just described (or in any

movie scene) operates on both physical and psy-

chological levels. For most narrative films, sound

provides cues that help us form expectations about

meaning; in some cases, sound actually shapes our

analyses and interpretations. Sound calls attention

not only to itself but also to silence, to the various

roles that each plays in our world and in the world

of a film. The option of using silence is one crucial

difference between silent and sound films; a sound

film can emphasize silence, but a silent film has

Sound as meaningInceptionis about an illegal espionage
project that enters the subconscious minds of its targets to
gain valuable information. Dominic Cobb (Leonardo
DiCaprio, right), the leader of the team, has hired Ariadne
(Ellen Page, left), a gifted young architecture student, to
design labyrinthine dreamscapes for this work, but she (like
the viewer) is still in the learning stage. In this image, they
sit in a Parisian café that is part of a larger street scene
exploding all around them. Ariadne (like the viewer) is
astonished to see that they sit unhurt while the perceivable
world is destroyed around them, but then Ariadne awakens

in the design studio to realize that she has been dreaming

this episode. The action is crafted with such visual and aural

detail that everything we see——flower pots, people, wine

glasses, tables, chairs, automobiles——explodes in its own

unique way and with its own unique sound. Every sight and

sound image has been created and implanted in Ariadne’s

dream to show her (and the viewer) the power of the

“dreams within dreams” project in which she is now a key

player. Richard King, the sound designer and editor, and his

sound mixers (Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick)

won Oscars for the movie’s richly textured sound design.