Hereditary Case Study
- Jun 24, 2019
- 8 min read
This trimester I’m working on resounding a trailer of the 2018 Film Arctic, and in doing so researching how other films use sound design as a creative tool is a helpful practice that will help guide me to get a better end result. To do this I will be doing a case study on horror movie sound design and will be looking into a few scenes from the film Hereditary. In doing this I will be looking at how the different audio elements work together not only from the perspective of the mix, but also looking at how these are used to convey particular emotions to the audience.
CONTENT WARNING: SCENES THAT SOME MAY FIND VIOLENT AND / OR FRIGHTENING WILL BE ANALYSED
SPOILER WARNING: ENDING SEQUENCE OF HEREDITARY ANALYSED (NSFW)
Hereditary is director Ari Aster’s debut 2018 horror film which follows a grieving family that are haunted by tragic and disturbing occurances (imdb). Hereditary was scored by Colin Stetson and IMDB (Internet Movie Database) credits Shaun Brennan as the foley artist for the film ("Hereditary (2018) - IMDb", n.d.). As I am intending on looking at how sound in film is used to convey particular emotions and sensations, I figured looking into Horror films would be a great case study as the visual and audio elements play such a huge role in immersing the viewer as part of the genre.
Here is an interesting video I had come across of a scene from a short film which shows the scene with music and without the music. As we can see there is a clear change in atmosphere and overall feel with the music involved:
Building tension is a huge part of horror movie storylines, and the main way this is done in many films is throughout the use of the score. Patrick Regan of studiobinder.com suggests that the key to what makes horror film scores scary is the balance of tension and revulsion. Tension, being where “It makes us tense up in our chairs, waiting, waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because we can't stand the waiting any longer. Revulsion, however, is the moment the shoe drops. It's the killer stabbing a knife into someone's chest” (Regan, 2017). Hereditary is one of the few films that I have seen in the cinema where I've really noticed the intricacies of the sound design that was happening, not only within the scoring but through the actual use of foley and sound effects as well. As a film that has few jumpscares in it, it does a great job at building atmospheres which made it a good piece to look into for this case study.
For this case study I’ll be looking at the end sequence of Hereditary where we can catch a couple of uses of sound design. I wanted to avoid using trailers as they are often heavily centred around music and don’t quite build as much of an atmosphere in the time that they have. I couldn’t find a singular video of the end sequence from Hereditary but managed to find a 2 videos broken into 2 parts.
The first video:
The scene begins with rather ominous music that consists of what sounds like horns and strings being played in dissonant tones and droning in pitch. These are mixed with a heavy reverb and the low end of the mix sounds like it has larger reverbs, making it sound cave like, there isn’t much high end present. After about 10 seconds in we can hear a new sound fade in that sits higher up on the frequency spectrum, this sounds like it has a ‘gate’ effect which is being automated to turn on and off, giving it a helicopter like sound. We can also catch some screeching violin (or perhaps another string instrument) sounds fade in and out of the mix. After about 26 seconds we can hear some squeaking sounds and the introduction of a low brass sound that fills up some of the low end of the mix - this is done at the same time the camera reveals a burnt body on the floor, which is done to help convey fear in the viewer.
I had done some research on horror movie sound design and found that a common technique in conveying emotions within the genre is by utilising the low end ‘infrasound’ spectrum of the mix as a creative tool. Infrasound is described as sounds that fall under the 20HZ range of the frequency spectrum, making it largely inaudible to the human ear. Studies have shown that infrasound can give audiences feelings of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine. (Amos, 2003)
According to steemit.com “The sound is a disturbance of molecules which makes it vibrate and sets up a resonance which impacts the next molecule and so a chain reaction until our ears pick it up. Since materials have all their molecules tightly packed together, the disturbance of the adjacent molecules occurs at a faster rate making sound travel more rapidly in the denser medium" ("Infrasound: The Silent Creepy Sound of the Horror Movies — Steemit", 2018).
A great use of these sounds is in the film Paranormal Activity, which uses low frequencies to provoke fear without actually using a score, we can see an example of this in the scene below:
Back to Hereditary, what's interesting about this scene is the sound design coming from the fireplace, instead of crackling consistently, we hear occasional sporadic crackles that sound glitchy and unpredictable. although we can see that the fire has mostly died out and this could be a result of the sound design sounding like that because there is little fire, it adds an extra layer of tension due to the spontaneous, creaky sound of it. The young male character who is walking up to the body (Peter) hyperventilates and this is relatively dry and doesn’t sound like it has much processing on it besides an EQ. When the lense focus changes from Peter to Annie, we can hear a wooden creaking sound effect, which I believe is used as creaking wood is often a trope seen in films when somebody is trying to sneak as gently applying pressure on something wooden creates this kind of effect. As the camera pans down we can hear more elements in the music begin to fade in and rise in pitch which builds tension. What’s interesting about this is even though Peter sees a man standing in the dark the music doesn’t drop yet and continues to rise and both the characters are standing very still, building suspense in the audience as we are left wonder what is going to happen.
In an article on the sound of Hereditary written by Marisa Miribal, she mentions that “The manipulative method of utilizing silence and natural sound design in film is a technique that elevates tension and terror. Noises heard in everyday life and recreated on camera through Foley artists can evoke more dread on a primitive level and conjure relatable realism allowing audiences to put themselves into the shoes of the characters, making horrific moments on-screen linger and haunt viewers long after they leave the theater”(Mirabal, 2018), that being said, the silence in Hereditary not only momentarily puts the audience into the realistic environment of the character, but it’s also a way of using the tension and revulsion scare tactic that I mentioned earlier. The tension is stopped by a knock / bang sound which is a “Things That Go Bump in the Night” type trope of horror movie sound effects, however this is rather gentle that startling.
After this, as expected with the tension and revulsion technique we have the jumpscare!
This part of the scene is mostly driven by the music, which is very loud and most of the other foley and dialogue elements can’t be heard over it. Underneath the music we can hear some of the grunts and screams from the characters plus clothes sounds when they stumble. The door to the attic closes audibly. This is where we can hear the banging on the roof of annie's head, which is dull (not much high frequencies) and sounds cloth like but become much more of a banging, high end sound when the camera changes to the outside of the attic, adding some realism to the characteristics of the sound depending on the room the audience is ‘in’. When she stops banging the music stops too and we can then hear sounds of flies buzzing around. According to an interview with the sound designers on this film, this was done by using layers of fly swarms mixed with singular fly sounds (Andersen, 2018).
The video ends here but the rest of the sequence can be seen in the next video below:
Again as the camera pans to reveal something, the music cues in time with this to immerse the viewer in an audio visual sense. What’s particularly interesting about the score in hereditary is how some of the elements come off as rather unfitting for typical horror movie scores, which in my opinion gives off an unnatural, creepy feeling. An example of this happening is when the camera pans to the candle ritual, we hear an almost angelic choir / pad sound which on its own connotes something mystical rather than disturbing, I’ll come back to this later as its a huge part of the ending sequence.
The scene progresses with a droning string sound in the background rising in volume as does the sound effects of the flies. At about 24 seconds we can hear some of the infrasonic frequencies appear when the character realises the horror that they are looking at, and this is reinforced through the audio. The fly sound effects also get brought down in the mix, which I’m assuming is done so it’s not overly distracting for the viewer, this also clears some room for the dialogue. When the dialogue starts some foley can begin to be heard again with footsteps and cloth movement, the dialogue itself is somewhat unclear but that is likely just from the character mumbling, however when he slaps himself in the face its relatively loud and bright in the mix.
Some of the gore sounds then begin to rise in the mix and are panned to the right of the stereo mix as per where Annie is positioned in relation to the camera. The fly sounds disappear completely and make room for the gore sounds which are highly detailed and crisp sounding, this is usually done this way in films to make the viewer cringe at the detail of sound and gives an almost ASMR like effect. After this we can again hear an example of unexpected sound effects, as instead of a generic loud Jumpscare sound we hear glistening metallic almost wind chime like type effect, then the scene ends with the music stopping and peter jumping out the window with the gore effects still continuing, some ambience of crickets can be heard low in the mix.
Thats about all that really happens in the ending sequence that is worth discussing, however the ending track of the score that happens after this is particularly noteworthy as a final touch to the film.
The final ritual scene happens after this features music which is the opposite of what the audience expects the scene to sound like, and this gives off a very twisted and disturbing emotion as the music that can be heard is rather triumphant and uplifting, giving the audience feelings of confusion and unsettlement. The use of horns in a major scale makes the piece sound victorious however on screen we are seeing a dead family, the two contradict each other in a way that I find particularly noticeable. In the climax of the film the music presented is most unlike the other tracks in the film that in my opinion really engages with the audience, on top of this the weirdly natural sound of the dialogue and ambience (very dry with no reverb) after this adds a final layer of realism.
Thats about all for the analysis of some of the sounds used in Hereditary, I think that this film is a great example of how audio plays a big part in conveying a particular emotion and would be eager to view the rest of the film from an audio perspective to see whatever techniques are used.
Thanks for reading!
References
Amos, J. (2003). BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Organ music 'instils religious feelings'. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3087674.stm
Andersen, A. (2018). Behind the creepy sound of Hereditary (and why it's so intense): | A Sound Effect. Retrieved from https://www.asoundeffect.com/hereditary-sound/
Hereditary (2018) - IMDb. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7784604/
Infrasound: The Silent Creepy Sound of the Horror Movies — Steemit. (2018). Retrieved from https://steemit.com/stemng/@greenrun/infrasound-the-silent-creepy-sound-of-the-horror-movies
Mirabal, M. (2018). HEREDITARY: An Insidious Soundscape Of Tension And Terror. Retrieved from https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2018/06/04/hereditary-an-insidious-soundscape-of-tension-and-terror
Purdom, C. (2016). Retrieved from https://news.avclub.com/some-of-the-scariest-sounds-in-horror-movies-are-the-on-1798253775
Regan, P. (2017). How to Use Suspenseful Music: Mastering the Film Score. Retrieved from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/film-score-suspenseful-music/
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