Sound and Editing used in Thrillers

Sound:

Sound is used in thrillers to help the audiences understanding of what is going on. Sounds are used to evoke characters feelings and emotions and get a response from the audience. It is also often used to symbolise both the protagonists and antagonists movements in the scene. By carefully using the sounds employed in the scene it creates the right mood and atmosphere and in the context of the thriller genre, helps to build suspense and tension.Thrillers are typically noisy and they uses lots of diegetic sound throughout the film. Common sounds include bangs, ticking and screams, they use these sounds to build tension and to create suspense. These sounds are normally heard by both the audience and the characters and they are normally very jumpy. Non diegetic sound is also used in thrillers. They sometimes use a steady drone which puts the audience at unease. Also as the action increases in the film and the tension builds the music speed up and increases in unison. Hitchcock used sound in a very new way than was typical at the time. For instance in Blackmail he demonstrates ongoing tactics, such as: withholding sound from the viewer to pique curiosity which is shown in the murder scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POMvKwfBVWo, there is no sound during the murder and we can’t see what is happening which leaves us wondering what exactly is going on. It subverts our expectations of a murder as we would expect lots of screams but we don’t get anything. He also exaggerates sound as a form of narrative emphasis and creating tension through both ambient noises and silence. Further, in a world where music was the dominant form of narrative accompaniment, he stripped music score away from his scenes and instead used the act of singing (and whistling) as a suspense device. Lastly, Hitchcock’s manipulation of human speech ranged from technical malfunctions of telephone calls to dizzied audio abstraction of the characters’ subjective thoughts.

Editing: 
To create tension thrillers use pace. Fast cutting can help to create suspense. The pace of the shots usually go in unison with the music. Cross cutting is a common editing technique used cutting between the victim and their threat. This sequence normally ends when the two individuals or groups meet in a final climax. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmptU7vEkNU . This clip from inception is an example of cross cutting. The editing creates tension in the film because we see the same character in two different places going through dangerous things in both places. His life is in danger in both places which creates tension for the viewer because we don't know if he is going to survive in both of the situations. Motivated cuts are often used in thrillers to make the audience want to see what happens next. A motivated cut is when a character is looking out of shot with an expression on her face that makes the audience want to see what she is seeing. This is a very good technique to use and an example of this is in the film The Silence of the Lambs when the women is looking at the board and it makes the audience want to see what she is looking at.