After watching the assigned Buffy the vampire slayer video, I noticed that there were a lot of examples of mise en scene, diegetic sound, as well as non-diegetic sound. Although there were multiple examples of non-diegetic sounds the scene that I would like to talk about is when the strange creature places and opens the odd wooden box on the table, inside a house at night while everyone was sleeping. Soon after the box was opened and everyone’s “voice” was leaving his or her bodies, odd background music with whispering voices started to play. The purpose of this music is to set the mood that something bad is about to happen. This background music is an example of non-diegetic sound because it’s source is not visible on the screen nor is it present in the action. I believe that the non-diegetic background music and whispering voice definitely contributed to the aesthetic of horror for the episode because it was during a crucial part of the story because it leads to the plot of the story.

Moreover, an example of diegetic sound that I want to talk about is when Buffy and her friends are all together at Giles’s house watching the news on their town. This is an example of diegetic sound because the source of the sound is visible in the screen. I choose this scene because it clearly shows that only everyone in their town has lost his or her voice, whereas others outside of the town still hold the ability to speak. I would say that this contributes to the aesthetic of horror and overall story line because it shows that the epidemic is only happening within their own town and the news caster stated that, “no one can go in or out until the syndrome is identified or the symptoms disappear” – which means that no one outside of the town can help them.

There multiple examples of mise en scene that I want to talk about because the episode was crawling with examples, of course. The first example is the lighting of the episode. Although the lighting is nice and bright during the day, most of the episode took place at night where it was dark. This contributes to the aesthetic of horror because it gives off a scary unknown feeling. This is very common in all horror films. The next example are the costumes that the “gentlemen” wore for their parts, this helped to create an unknown creature for the story. Without the costumes there wouldn’t be any unknown creatures and then it wouldn’t be a horror.