The project analyzes the relationship and role that music plays in building tension in horror movies. To investigate the topic, three types of film music were identified: traditional, ambient, and soundtrack. Subsequently, nine horror scenes were chosen that were believed to induce tension, with three being traditional scores, three being ambient scores, and three being soundtracks. Each traditional and ambient score and soundtrack clip was from a different horror subgenre that included supernatural, body, and slasher horror. The music of these nine clips was then analyzed using spectrograms to create tension arcs that were compared to the visuals in the scene. An experiment was then conducted that took these nine scenes and separated them into three variables that included sound+video, video only, and sound only. Participants were placed into one of three groups associated with these variables at random, and were asked to rate their feelings of tension in each clip via a tension slider. Their responses were then compared to a theoretical curve that was created from the analysis of the clips. The results showed that there was a small correlation between the theoretical response and the responses between sound & video. There was another small correlation between sound+video and sound. This showed that music created tension in a similar way to the complete scene, except for in the case of soundtracks, and that music is possibly a larger contributor to tension than the visuals of a scene.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46230 |
| Date | 22 May 2023 |
| Creators | Perez, Jennifer |
| Contributors | Yust, Jason |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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