Sound is one of many backbones of a successful film. Most of us hardly pay attention to how much sound (other than talking) really affects the impact of the movie on ourselves until there is none. Exploring the different types of sound used can give us a better understanding of the direction of certain films.

Dialogue: Dialogue is essentially how the characters in a film talk to one another (Goodykoontz, 2014). Dialogue helps the audience understand the story and helps us relate to the personalities of each of the characters and their relationships with one another. This is really the category of sound that best explains the plot of the film.

Sound Effects: Sound effects are used to enhance whatever scene they are used in, typically we don’t give much thought to them and that is a good thing. The sound effects are there to make us feel like we are really there. It can be for things as simple as birds chirping and leaves crackling as a character walks through the woods or for much more extreme effects like gunshots or car wrecks.

Music: Music is also used to enhance a scene in a film, but is typically more subtle than sound effects. Music in films can be divided into two groups, the score or the soundtrack. The score is typically music written for the film specifically and played by an orchestra to play in the background. Soundtracks are songs by artists, usually with words, that add to the emotion in a scene and also have to ability to make both the song and the movie simultaneously more popular than they would be on their own (Goodykoontz, 2014).

Just like in any other movie, the use of sound in Prisoners is crucial to providing enjoyable entertainment to the audience. The dialogue helps us understand the characters and what is happening in the story. We start to hear the anger in the fathers’ voice and the worry in the mothers’ voice as the weeks pass without finding their daughter.

Sound effects also played an important role in this film. As the police are approaching the suspicious camper expecting to find the kidnapper, the camper is put in reverse and the tires squeal as the engine revs. The camper then goes forward and slams into a line of trees. We hear the loud crack of branches breaking and the sound of broken glass as one branch penetrates the windshield and shatters it. This definitely impacts the dynamic of the scene as we see and hear how brutal the accident is, but in the dark night and with the torrential downfall of rain, it is hard for us to tell what happens to the young driver that was trying to get away. We have to wait in anticipation for the cops to search the vehicle to discover that the boy is still alive but is hiding in the bed of the camper.

Music is also vital in many scenes. The intense scene that stood out to me through the use of music is when Jake Gyllenhaal manages to find the last missing girl just as the older woman was administering her a lethal injection. We then follow Jake in his car, with the young girl who is now foaming at the mouth in the back seat, as he speeds through the dark night during a blizzard. His vision is blurred due to the inclement weather, as well as his eyes going hazy from the loss of blood and the gunshot to the side of his head. The music definitely intensifies this scene as he races to the hospital. Because the music is rather loud and abrasive it makes the heart rates of the audience rise all on its own.

Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). Film: From watching to seeing (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Prisoners. (2013, September 20). Prisoners Official Trailer [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIYZyINuizw&list=PLDVdFCWgvHe6g_eT30kfPsd74CWSuYyY-

The use of lighting in films is important when setting a scene and a mood to go along with it. In Prisoners, the director uses a combination of a couple different methods. Many scenes are shot using flat lighting. We can see this in the number of outdoor scenes that are in the film. We know that the movie is taking place around thanksgiving and the weeks that come after. The natural outdoor lighting is low and gives us the impression that it is in fact cold and rather cloudy outside as they await snowfall at the end of the movie. Low key lighting is also used in the indoor scenes that take place at the aunt’s house. We know that she lives in a rather run down old house out in the middle of nowhere that is cluttered with all types of odds and ends, making the house a little off putting.

High key lighting is yet another type of lighting used in the scenes that show the fathers interrogate the strange young man. The light is supposed to be coming from a construction light that was left in the abandoned apartment. This gives lots of light to the actor’s faces, but also creates dark shadows for contrast in the background.

All of these methods tie together to give this suspenseful, mystery movie the mood it was written for. There is a lot of sadness and anger associated in the film and a low key lighting being the emphasis of the film helped the viewer’s feel those emotions.

Goodykoontz, B., & Jacobs, C. P. (2014). Film: From watching to seeing (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc

The movie I selected to write about is Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. This movie came out last year, in 2013, and was written by Aaron Guzikowski. In the movie, two young girls go missing on Thanksgiving day. The girls had been outside with their older siblings and started messing around on a camper that apparently someone was in at the time. The girls then go back to the house to find a whistle that one of them had lost earlier. When the families realize that the girls are missing, the older siblings bring up the person from the camper.  The police find the camper and arrest the strange, 20 something year old man who was driving it. After 48 hours and no charges being placed on the young man, the police were forced to let him go. Not believing that the young man was really innocent, the fathers take matters into their own hands. They kidnap the man (who has the IQ of a ten-year old), torture him, and try to gain information from him. Those were some tough scenes to watch as the man would not give up any information.

Almost a week after the girl’s disappearance, another suspicious young man is being held by police for questioning. After searching his house and finding drawings of mazes all over the house, the police found articles of clothes that belonged to the young girls. When being questioned about the location of the girls, the young man managed to get ahold of the detective’s gun and shot himself in the head.

One girl had managed to escape and was picked up along the side of the road and brought to a local hospital. The father figures out that the aunt of the young man they kidnapped had something to do with the girls disappearance, and immediately drove to her house to talk to her. The aunt manages to get a gun turned on him first, drugged him, and threw him into a hole on  her property. The detective gets to the aunt’s house just as she is injecting the last young girl with poison. After a small gun fight, ending with a dead aunt and a non-lethal shot to the head of the detective,  the detective manages to  get himself and the girl to the safety of the hospital for treatment.

Both young girls are now safe and alive, but the one father is still missing. After being released from the hospital, the detective went back to the aunt’s property to see if anything had turned up. After all the other investigators leave the scene, we hear a faint whistle. The camera focuses on the detective and we can see in his face that he has it figured out and that the father will be saved.

This movie was filmed chronologically. I think that this made sense for the movie as the audience was able to follow along. As new information unfolded for the families and the detective, we were right there with them figuring it out as well. There were definitely moments of foreshadowing that we knew would come up later in the movie. The whistle was a good example. The young girl was looking for her whistle within the first five minutes of the movie, then when the father was kidnapped he found the little girls whistle in the same hole that he was being held in. Then at the end when we hear the faint whistle, we know that the father is still alive.

Images retrieved from http://basementrejects.com/review/prisoners-2013/