The scene that I will discuss is in the very beginning of the episode that falls from the minute 1-3 of the episode. The scene basically starts in the class and a professor is explaining the class something when she calls Buffy, which in my guess is the main character, for a demonstration. Another student is also asked to demonstrate and in this demonstration she kisses the male student and suddenly all the room is dark and its only Buffy and the other student that was asked to demonstrate is in the class. After she hears a sound and there comes the moment of mystery. Basically, my choice for this part of the episode was because of the moment of mystery. The moment of mystery as I define it is a point especially in horror movies when the camera, background sound, characters and their expression give a type of unknown type of look or skeptical type of look. I named this term the moment of mystery because it will be easy for me to point out in this discussion. This moment of discussion seemed a perfect point in the episode that I felt could be used to describe both mise en scene and diegetic and non-diegetic sound contributing to the aesthetic of horror.
In the scene after the room get dark we can hear a suspenseful background music or more also like skeptical. This music basically gets louder and louder as the character approaches to the little girl whose singing and then there is a boom of suspenseful music as she turns and see the ghost looking character. That boom and its suspenseful music are examples of non-diegetic sound that basically creeps the audience in the beginning and try to bring them a shock of horror with the sound and face. However, the girl singing is an example of diegetic sound that is used to draw the character attention and show a “something wrong” nature but this face contributes highly with the mise en scene as to show something’s wrong. The location, background, lights and view of the little girl character were all in line with sound of her singing to successfully create the suspense before bringing the ghost to give the boom. Even the turn of the camera and the quick change of the character to a ghost were also part of the mise en scene to create the horror. Basically, they all contribute in some way to create the horror as the diegetic sound mostly created the suspense and both mise en scene and non-diegetic sound contributed to the suspense and boom.
We examined the same scenes, which is interesting to see. When Buffy kisses the male character and the light go dark, you get that ominous mysterious feeling. The term ‘moment of mystery’ is a great way to capture that entire scene. The only thing that I would challenge from your response is the little girl singing being diegetic sound. Would that not be considering non-diegetic sound as it is technically in in a dream? I understood diegetic sound as character speaking as if it were real life. I considered the little girl singing as non-diegetic sound as it was not actually happening and only in her head. Kind of like the dark and ominous music was playing in the background. I enjoyed your points of view on this week’s topic of aesthetics of horror.
Hi Marcus, Thanks for bringing up your viewpoint about the little girl singing being a non-diegetic sound. Although there is a strong point that because she was in her dream we can’t really consider her to be a character and therefore her singing in the moment is non-diegetic. However, I understood diegetic sound to be everything that the character in a movie or a T.V. show can actually hear. For example they won’t hear the narrator or the background music and respond to it so thats non-diegetic but since Buffy was responding to the little girls singing i would consider diegetic. Another point that I will bring up though it was a dream it was still part of the story as it had something to with contributing of the main story point. As also stated by Prof.Huette in the explanation of diegetic sound that “Diegetic sound is any sound presented as originated from source within the film’s world” and since the dream and singing was all part of the story and the film I would consider an diegetic sound.