Iconic sounds are very prevalent within thriller films. Sound effects and music used within a film that have a meaning or are associated with something. An example of this would be police sirens signifying that a crime has occurred or that characters may have to flee. Police sirens alert viewers and characters to incoming police so it is common for a reaction to occur from this situation.
Within the thriller genre especially in more psychological and horror themed thrillers, a classical form of using actual instruments as music rather than synthetic sounds is used for authenticity and to build real tension and this is where these sounds are most commonly heard in recent years. Insidious is a perfect example of this, to build tension clashing music that crescendos is used to build tension with real classical instruments that used to create tension in the past.
However, iconic sounds are not always negative or so obvious. A simple sound like a bicycle bell is used in many ways. It is useful in confirming normality in a scene. Also as a sharp bell or alert. When watching it may go unnoticed but we will take heed of it without even thinking about it and it affects how we understand a lot.
A final use of iconic sounds is relation. Being able to relate or know the music well. Popular songs are often chosen for certain scenes so that the viewer can be almost reassured and enjoy the film more because a popular song in a certain scenario such as pop music at a positive resolution.
Evaluation:
This task was definitely the most interesting task we had to complete. We had never really noticed iconic or specific sounds to mean anything before but once we had done our research we discovered the actual importance of them. How just a sound like a tractor would indicate a countryside setting or a tire screech would alert viewers to an escape or chase. Using the information we gathered we would like to adopt a few iconic sounds into our thriller opening so that it better fits the genre as our plotline and idea would be partially uncommon.
By doing this research, this will help us to create and use iconic sounds for our opening sequence to a Thriller film, which would make our opening sequence more believable and suitable for a thriller film.
It also will help us to choose the appropriate thriller background music and it told us the sort of sounds related to a thriller.
Maxwell St. Hill, Juriz Castillo and Andrew Fernando