I don’t usually watch a lot horror movie or horror type of things because it is not good for health.(It scares me!) Nevertheless, I did watch several horror movies like リング, a Japanese horror film(I think it translates as “ring”, but I am not sure). I watched this movie few years ago with my young cousin. It still scares me now if I tried to recall the movie.
I do have a problem on my computer to get access to the Buffy episode, but I will try to do an analyze. In this unit, we learned there are three elements in a horror film: non-diagetic sound, diagetic sound and mise-en-scene. For mise-en-scene, just a terrified shocking screen will give enough scary feeling. Like staring, a reflection of some monster, etc.This kind of horror provides people a visual scare and their body will react immediately when they see some visual horror. However, only combined with sound effect, it can be called as scary. There are two types of sound effect. One is background environment sound or called non-diagetic sound. This is the sound that not provided by human but itself provide a spooky feeling before the actual visual horror appear. For example, we always know some scary moment will happen because the background music is spooky already. So non-diagetic sound is really important for horror. However, I don’t really understand is how diagetic sound works, but what I can guess is when people say something include horror element, it is really easy for audience to get such scary feeling. So what diagetic sound does is to strengthen the scary moment.
This is my view about horror. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts. 🙂
I feel sorry that you got problem seeing “Buff” which was an excellent horror movie. Your personal analyze on the three concepts – mise-en-scene, diegetic sound, nondiegetic sound- would be critical. First, you saying “For mise-en-scene, just a terrified shocking screen will give enough scary feeling” (2014), I want to add that “mise-enscene” would refer to broader meaning rather than a terrified shocking screen. It includes almost all elements showed in one movie, such as production design (sets, pros and costumes), color, lighting and actors’ performance. Then, as for non-diegetic sound, I would like to challenge your idea – “One is background environment sound or called non-diagetic sound. This is the sound that not provided by human but itself provide a spooky feeling before the actual visual horror appear” (Yiqi, 2014). A non-diegetic sound is represented as coming from a source outside story space, rather than simply by identifying “not provided by human”. My example of this would be the plot when the monster’s box in movie successfully absorbed people’s voice during their night sleeping time, meanwhile, a scary and unexpected background music suddenly came out. This scary and unexpected background music enhances the entire plot development, and arouses a feeling of horror to audience. I consider this example to be a non-diegetic sound as it is firstly invisible in the clip, then sound effect added for dramatic effect. Thirdly, diegetic sound would be an opposed definition of non-diegetic sound. It is the sound whose source is visible on the screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film, such as voices of characters. The example of diegetic sound I would recommend is the “victory” time when our young girl character in movie gets her voice back. At this time, this young girl screams out loudly which seems to be a victory against the sound-stealing monsters. I would say this is a diegetic sound because it is the voice of character (the young girl), which is the sound presented as originated from source within the film’s world. Hope my examples would help your understanding.
It seems that you don’t very enjoy the sense of horror. I can understand it and I know the movie “ring” you mentioned. It is a very famous horror movie and when I see it, I also feel scared. You mention the main three factors in the horror movie and they are mise-en-scene, diagetic sound and non-diagetic sound. I think these three factors exist in all kinds of movies and don’t just limit to horror movies. Mise-En-Scene decides what can we see in the movie because it consists of production design, colour, lighting, actor’s performance etc.From the Buffy episode, every characters’ performance, their surroundings even their make-up and movement are all the mise-en-scene. Digetic sound are the sound whose source is visible on the screen. For example, when Buffy are in the class and is talking with the professor. The voices of them are digetic sound and we know where the sound come from. Non-digetic sound are the sound whose source is not visible in the screen like the background environment sound you mentioned. These factors combined indeed can contribute to the sense of horror but not all the time.
I think the example you picked for diegetic sound is perfect, because unlike dialogues, the scream is short and sudden, albeit it lasts longer than a normal scream. The scream can let viewers make sense what is going on at that moment, and most importantly, we are emotionally empathized by the screaming sound. I can’t see anything better than a scream to fit the scene in 40. 45, and all other sound effects cannot do better jobs on that spot for sure.