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Ilija Cvetkovski abstract


Abstract

It’s pretty easy to hold a couple of quiet shots and then pop a face onto the middle of the screen out of nowhere, following and accented with a loud bang. Anyone will jump because no one knows when the sound will pop. But is that creating real fear? Are we actually afraid for the characters? Or are we, as an audience member, afraid of a sound? Most of us watching contemporary horror films, and we have no idea what’s coming, we plug or cover our ears. The sound template that is used for every horror movie to scare us! And yes, we will be scared and frightened of the loud impact and noises, rather than the picture! I just hate watching a horror movie and predicting what’s coming only by listening to the music. The main impact, of course, is not the visual, it's the deafening and sudden sound. So cheap and all it does is it kicks us out of the film into reality. Might as well switch it off then. Most of the new horror movies rely on loud sound effects and music which are the “noises” why we actually are scared since it's unable to achieve with something else, like editing or visuals. This paper will explain the complexity of loud sound design in the contemporary horror movies, the jump scares, the music and all predictable parts, instead of the normal or minimalistic approach, where we build fear and tension using the elements and sounds from the movie itself.