Personally, my favorite sound to analyze is non-diegetic sound, because of how effectively it evokes emotion while being so stealthy. Half of the time when watching movies, you hear the non-diegetic sound, but you don't realize all of the effects it has on the current action shown on screen. To prove this, here is the famous "Get Out of The Water" scene in the 1975 Jaws film.
Within this clip, there are many factors of sound that are used to create a sense of emotion. We can hear on-screen, diegetic sound when the ocean waves crash to help us feel a sense of peace and calmness. When the children and adults both begin to yell and scream "get out of the water!', this usage of dialogue allows us to understand the state of panic occurring within the minds of the audience. The most impressive usage of sound in this clip, however, is the usage of non-diegetic sound starting at 1:32 - the iconic sound motif associated with Jaws the shark in all of the Jaws movies. As soon as the audience hears this, we instantly are suspicious and then immediately anxious, assuming that impending doom is soon to come. This sound is specifically used for the audience and to get us to react to the film, and the characters in the movie cannot hear it. Another interesting trait about the non-diegetic sound beginning at 1:32 is its usage of loudness. It starts off rather quiet yet still audible, but then proceeds to become very loud right before the attack, showing that the louder the sound is, the closer death is. Could you imagine if, leading up to the shark attack shown in the above clip, the scene had been quiet? We would not have felt nearly as scared as an audience, which would have taken away from the overall feel of the film.
Here is another great example of the importance of non-diegetic sound in Jaws. The first part of the clip shows this scene without any background music. Then, the second half shows the same scene but with background music present. The emotions felt when watching the former and the latter differ greatly. In the first half, we don't know what to feel as viewers because the scene feels bland. Instead it feels more like real life, because we don't actually walk around with a soundtrack following us every day. However, in movies, we basically demand it to be present. It shows us the gateway towards what to feel, which is why in the second half of the clip, we first feel anxious waiting on the men to tie up the bomb and to shoot the shark, followed by a feeling of relief after the mission was completed successfully, all thanks to the power of non-diegetic sound, and sound in general in movies.
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