Sound technique · used in 5 films
Choosing an odd or unexpected instrument for the score. The unfamiliar tone makes the world feel fresh, strange or psychologically unsettled.
Examples
Alfred Hitchcock · 1945
Miklos Rozsa's score uses the theremin, an electronic instrument played without touching it. Its wavering, ghostly sound suggests a disturbed mind. It tells you something is wrong before any character says it.
Where to see it: The hero's episodes. Whenever his mind turns to the lines and the memories behind them, the score's wavering theremin gives the scene its eerie sound.
Stanley Kubrick · 1960
Alex North wrote the score using unusual instruments, including the ondioline, an early electronic instrument. The music sounds a little strange for an ancient setting, so Rome feels less like a museum piece.
Where to see it: The score throughout the film. The unusual instruments underline both the gladiator school and the march of the rebel army.
Francis Ford Coppola · 1979
Walter Murch's sound design and the Doors' 'The End' are woven into the film alongside Carmine Coppola's score, as if they were all one piece of music. You can never cleanly sort what you hear into 'music' and 'sound'. The noise of Vietnam is the music.
Where to see it: The opening sequence. Helicopter blades and 'The End' blend with the images into one single statement.
Mamoru Oshii · 2004
Oshii asked for a huge music box, which was played back in an underground quarry and recorded with eight microphones, and the folk chorus grew to 75 performers. Both sounds make the world feel old and haunted at once.
Where to see it: The parade: A parade sequence, drawn from a religious procession and a temple in Taiwan, passes through the film's false reality.
Christopher Nolan · 2014
Hans Zimmer built the Interstellar score around a custom pipe organ and treated its long held tones as the sound of deep time and cosmic scale. The organ connects the film's science to its spirituality. It's the church instrument in space, and it makes the physical world feel religious.
Where to see it: The Endurance's approach to Saturn. This is the first time the score uses the full organ against the silence of space.
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