Sound Analysis

Sound Analysis: The Lovely Bones

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Sound Analysis: The Lovely Bones

Introduction

Sound is a vital part of any film or video production that many people often overlook. If you watch a video online, we can often forgive poor image resolution, but if the sound quality and design is awful, we will not put up with it for long. Sound design for film can be a complex affair, adding and creating all new meanings to a scene. I have chosen a film for sound analysis, to have an idea of the ways in which sound can be used and influence an audience. The name of the movie is The Lovely Bones.

Based on the bestseller by Alice Sebold, and directed by Peter Jackson, "The Lovely Bones" revolves around a young girl, who after being raped and murdered, awakened from heaven to watch the movements of her murderer. She is also seeing the sadness and then healing of her family due to her death. In the movie, she is not deciding whether to take revenge from her murderer or to forget him since her family was healing from the pain. She has to choose between revenge and the desire to see their loved ones heal from the pain.

Sound analysis of the last scene

Towards the end of the film, there is a scene that uses sound design very effectively to enhance the emotion and action of the situation. In this scene, Susie's sister Lindsey sneaks into the murderer's house while he is out as she is suspicious of his involvement in Susie's death. She searches the house and finally finds a loose floorboard and concealed under it she finds a notebook containing plans for Susie's murder. However, while she is reading the book the murderer returns home. The sound design uses a mixture of non-diegetic and diegetic sounds to engage the audience.

The sound design uses lots of silences to greatly intensify the scene in various places. As Lindsey creeps around the house looking for a way in, the 'mood music' creates an unnerving drone of noise underneath the action. This slowly builds until the moment when she kicks in a basement window and lands inside, at which point everything goes silent as if she is entering a strange world of her own. This effect is used again when the murderer pulls up in his car and enters the house. Generally ...