Freekstorm VFX Blog

The Importance of Music in a Horror Film

One of the most important elements in any film is to get the score right! In a horror movie in particular, using extra-diegetic sound is an important tool which can be used to build atmosphere and suspense. When timed correctly, the right music can be used to scare the viewer witless, where dialogue and action alone would not be enough.

I’m afraid our little film would not have worked remotely as well as it did without the suspense music. Whatever other criticisms we received from viewers (and there were many) the sound and the use of music were judged to be very well done (hurrah! We did something right!) The film music starts off quiet and sinister, and gradually grows throughout the film until it gets louder and more dramatic towards the end, thus raising the suspense levels to the optimum level when the demon attacks.

In order to get the score right, Rich listened to various pieces of scary music over and over again. He did this by loading pieces of potential suspense music into a Windows Media player playlist and learning them off by heart. He then visualised each element of the film in his head and tried to put himself in the place of the viewer. He needed to figure out which pieces of music generated the right emotional reaction for each scene, and that meant that he had to build the whole movie in this head i.e. pre-viz both action and music, and then match them together perfectly in order to pace the story properly and build suspense. This sounds easier than it is, incidentally – many filmmakers employ professional sound designers to do this. Alas, we don’t have that option, so Rich had to try it himself. Personally I think he did really well, considering this was only his second attempt!

Dramatic music has the ability to alter our mood, manipulate our emotions and compel us to respond to the film in a different way. A film succeeds only if it generates emotion, which in turn is directly dependent on the sound. Emotion can be attached to any piece of film footage through effective use of the film-score. If used correctly, suspense music can be used to play on our innermost fears and thus create a truly effective horror movie.

Resources:

For our own little film-short, we used stock music, in paricular, Tunes of Terror from Stockmusic.net.

Labels: Diabolus Domi, filmmaking, sound