At a high enough volume, it may be possible for humans to perceive sound as low as 12 Hz, but even common objects can emit infrasound, something some horror movie music composers use to their advantage.įilmmaker Gaspar Noe admitted in an interview that he intentionally used sound that registered at only 27 Hz, just above the 20 Hz limit for infrasound, in his 2002 film Irreversible. Infrasound exists in nature, and is created by wind, earthquakes, avalanches, and used by elephants to communicate over long distances. Infrasound, which exists at 19 Hz and below, can be felt, but human ears begin to hear sound at 20 Hz. One unsettling and hidden “sound” that is given credit for freaking out an audience is infrasound-a low-frequency sound that cannot be heard, but literally unsettles human beings down to our bones.
When Jason’s sound is isolated, you hear breathiness in an echo but the surrounding music and bloody visuals work together, bringing the noise to a functionally creepy place. Just knowing that Jason might be in the room with us heightens our senses, and even though the sound is vocal, it’s unlike one any that a person would normally make. People who have seen Friday the 13 th learned that a specific sound (a human vocal noise described as “ki ki ki ma ma ma” by Manfredini) means that the killer, Jason Voorhees, is lurking nearby with his machete, even if he isn’t shown on screen. While some of these sounds are subtle, others stick out so much they become characters themselves. Taking a sound out of one normal context and then placing it into a new, scarier one can do this. Often these sounds are buried in the complex movie score or, sometimes, as subtle sound waves that give an adrenaline rush like a mini, internal roller coaster. Distressed animal calls, women screaming and other nonlinear sounds, which are irregular noises with large wavelengths often found in nature, were used in The Shining and other movies to create an instinctual fear response, as recorded in the test subjects of a 2011 study at the University of California. The sounds that do this to us aren’t always unusual but their deep rumblings or high-pitched squeals signal danger almost (if not actually) instinctively. “The sound itself could be created by an instrument that one would normally be able to identify, but is either processed, or performed in such a way as to hide the actual instrument,” says Harry Manfredini, whose music score for Friday the 13 th was cemented in the thrasher film genre of the 1980s.
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Since horror movies rely on music, movie score composers carefully consider how to use familiar sounds in unusual ways this distortion of reality unsettles us even if what we’re hearing is, in many ways, obscured. The way composers make the most out of their musical tools to induce fear is both an art form and a science. This is the brilliance of what music does in a horror film. The source for your anxiety is elusive, but it was carefully crafted through hidden audible elements that play on human emotions, causing your hairs to stand on end. You wait for the inevitable conclusion, fixed on what you might see, listening for the cue that a killer or monster is ready to attack-though nothing on screen hints at this. You, perhaps, feel you aren’t safe watching. A slow, growing hum murrs over footsteps, and you know the person isn’t safe. Nothing scary has happened yet-but you see a person walking, alone. You’re sitting in the movie theater it’s pitch black except for the dim glow on-screen.