The Importance of Sound - The Shining

Yesterday, I sat down and watched Stanley Kubrick's The Shining - a film full of weird psychological happenings and make-you-jump moments. I absolutely loved it. It terrified the hell out of me at some points, but over all, it was a really great, refreshingly interesting film and cinematographically, I thought it was amazing. The vast setting of the actual story -the large empty hotel in the snowy mountains -completely supports the dark thrilling film and the performances are really convincing.

One thing that was very apparent to me whilst watching this film, was the use of sound. In last thursday's lesson, we studied the use of sound in film and I haven't been able to get the ideas of the different categories out of my head - and when watching The Shining, I found how important it was as a dramatic technique, especially to this particular film. The string sections made me jump alot, and I often thought, when watching, "If this music wasn't playing, I wouldn't be looking at the screen through my fingers. In this one film, I realized how prominent sound is in films in attempt to evoke emotion and feeling in the audience.

In the start of this particular scene, the importance of music really hit me and I realised if this scoring was not there, I would not have been wondering what the hell was going to happen ("Is he going to kill someone?! Are those freaky little girls in blue dresses going to appear?!") - music can utterly change the entire tone and atmosphere of any scene.

Although The Shining is considered to be a horror film by many, I can definately define the thriller aspects in it. It is pschyological and its meant to make you question the characters and also the state of our humanity when put into isolation - basically, it's a film to make you think without being conventional in any way.