In today’s Cinema Studies seminar we did an experiment that really made me appreciate what sound brings to cinema on a whole new level.

First, we listened to the audio of a scene from a film while closing our eyes. We didn’t know what the film was, we just had to listen and experience the scene purely through the sound. The scene was from one of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which I haven’t seen, but without seeing the scene, I was almost certain it was from the trilogy because of how immersive the sound was.

Then when we watched scene with visuals, we took note of every sound we heard. Someone in my class managed to note 70 different sounds in a single scene. Seeing the visuals along with the audio assisted the scene make sense, and gave you some perspective within the scene, but I was surprised just how much of the scene I had been able to figure out without seeing a thing.

We watched the scene one final time, without any sound. It still made sense, but there wasn’t really any suspense. Of course, this was only one scene that happened to be incredibly dependent on sound. But it illustrates just how much you can communicate to an audience with sound