Non-diagetic Sound:
An example of non-diagetic sound occurs when the creepy, skeleton-looking man opens the small box and the dark and ominous music starts to play. The music continues as the white smoke-like things come out of each person’s mouth that the camera pans onto and then immediately stops when the smoke is collected into the small box. This music adds to the drama of the scene and implies that something bad is happening. This music clearly comes from outside the story space and is solely for dramatic effect. This scene is also an example of an improbably sequence of events, is relatable because the people are sleeping and unknowing about the world around them, it is dark and ominous, and the scary skeleton-looking man at the end is unexpected and frightening.

Diagetic Sound:
An example of diagetic sound in this Buffy the Vampire Episode is when the young girl is singing during Buffy’s dream. This sound is off-screen, yet we know that it is made by something in the story because Buffy reacts to the sound. She asks the man with her whether he hears the sound and follows the sound until she finds a young girl singing. This diagetic sound began as an offscreen sound and then became an onscreen sound when Buffy followed the voice into the hallway, where she found another character, the young girl. I chose this specific scene because I found the voice of the young girl singing to be purposefully creepy. In addition, she was found alone in a hallway staring straight ahead, which added to the spooky feeling. This scene fit perfectly with the common elements of horror. Buffy was having a normal day in class, when she is called up front to kiss a boy in front of the class, suddenly the class disappears, and the room goes dark, then a spooky young girl’s voice begins to sing. This scene demonstrates an improbable sequence of events, is relatable to the average college student because of a normal day in class with other students, the scene becomes dark and ominous, and the young girl singing is unexpected and frightening.

Mise-en-scene:
An example of mise-en-scene occurs during the part of the show where everyone loses their voices.

–       Production Design: The set is very dreary looking as Buffy and her friend walk through the town. People are crying and stores are closed. Then, they buy white boards to write messages to each other. These props are used to exemplify just how difficult it is for the people to talk.

–       Color: The mood is set using darker brown and gray colors in order to show what is going on in the town with people unable to talk. It show that the whole town is breaking down with the difficulty of living without voices.

–       Lighting: The lighting is darker and casts the scene as very somber. The lighting looks almost brown.

–       Actors’ Performance: The actors show their emotions very clearly through the expressions on their faces of shock and concern. Once Buffy and her friend get to Giles’ house, they look exasperated.

All of these things contributed to being able to easily discern what was happening in the scene. The people’s emotions were clear, as was the desperation of trying to fix the problem. This shows that without talking, movies and TV shows can still be followed quite easily. This contributed to horror because it was a very unlikely scenario to happen to an entire town. The mood was downcast and you couldn’t tell what was going to happen next.