The topic of this week’s lecture was audio, and the movie we watched in this lecture was “Elephant” from 2003, directed by Gus Van Sant and the second movie in his Death Trilogy, of movies based on actual incidents. This movie is based on the school massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. In the movie we follow several ordinary students at a high school, each living out their ordinary school life, totally unconcerned of the shooting massacre that is about to happen. Our task for this week’s topic was to take a look at the soundtrack used in the movie.
The movie is very slow in style and action, with very long shots with little action where we mostly follow students for a long time, not doing very much.ole movie almost seems neutral and banal sometimes, with very little action in it, and a long build up before the climax. One of the scenes is over five minutes for example, and this makes the movie a long and slow process to watch as the tension builds up and the school massacre starts. The quietness and calm of the movie also emphasises and increases how we see the two students planning and the great relaxation and how normal they think and act their horrible plan out, how incredible little feelings and consideration of how bad they are about to destroy their fellow students and their families life.
There are four elements of the soundtrack in a movie: narration, music, sound effects and the dialog. These elements are used in various degrees in this movie, but even though these elements may not be as clearly used in this movie as in many others, they still serve an important role for the mood of the movie.
There are few if not any elements of narration in this movie. This element of the soundtrack is mostly used in educational movies and documentaries, and even though this kind of tool to add information to the movie could be used in “Elephant”, since it is based on school massacres from realities, the director has chosen to let the characters and the story itself tell what is happening, through shots of students in their normal school life, letting us know or feel that something is about to happen which will change these students life drastically. We also know that one or two of these students are the actual gunmen, but all of the students we meet seem like normal people, including the two boys we later find out are the boys who is planning the school massacre. This increases the feeling that behind the apparently normal surface of these high school teenagers, there is so much inside everyone that no one knows about that can both be good or bad. There is more to a person than its surface.
The music used in “Elephant” suits the mood and the slow action of the movie. The main purpose of the music element is to add emotion to the moving pictures and to guide the audience to know what to feel in different sequences of the scenes. The music used in “Elephant” is most classical piano music, especially Beethoven, but also Hildegard Westerkamp, and probably has connection to one of the gunmen, Alex who we early in the movie meets playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise” to himself on the piano. In the final scene with Alex this song is also played in the background, maybe to remind us or illustrate that this is the same boy who we earlier met so innocently playing the piano to himself seemingly harmless.
The use of music in the movie has little purpose to build up tension in the scenes. The music doesn’t tell us clearly when the scenes are getting scarier, happier or more exciting, as a thriller or action movie would in a much stronger degree. In the scene where we follow the bulimic girls through the cafeteria, the music used is an exception, because then the music is very hectic and fast, using a lot of rhythmic instruments, maybe to illustrate the chaos and the hectic tension that can be experienced in a high school cafeteria during lunch break.
In “Elephant” the use of sound effects is very important to create the feeling of being on a high school. The most important sound effect elements used is the various sounds from students nearby that we can’t often see when we follow the various students on their way around the school, and we get the feeling of the students being just one of hundreds of other students on a high school. The noise from students, classrooms and other school activity is often used in increasingly and decreasingly degree, as to show that the characters are moving from crowded areas to less crowded areas and so on. Another important sound effect element used in this movie is the sound of the various shotguns and explosives. In the last part of the movie, when we follow Benny for example, there is no music, but the sound of screaming people, explosion sounds and gunshots tells us that something very bad is going on, and increases the feeling of being present the school when this is happening. I would say that this movie relies more on the sound effect part of the soundtrack to create the wanted mood and tension in the movie and with the audience, than the music.
At last it is the dialogue. The dialogue in this movie is special, because a lot of it was improvised during shooting, so a lot of the script was created as the scenes where shot. Most of the characters in the movie used their own first names and many of the actors didn’t have any previous acting experience. I think this was to make the characters seem more like normal students, with normal reactions and conversations. The dialogue is mostly very ordinary, and a lot of the time the characters doesn’t even say that much, if it’s not the students we follow through their random conversations, like Nathan and Carrie, talking about a party they’re going to and the girls talking about going to the mall.
So the contrasts when we first meet Eric and Alex, who also seems to have an ordinary conversation, and then we find out that it is actually about planning to kill their fellow students, makes the shock for us viewers bigger to find out who the gunmen are, and this turns up the tension in the movie slightly and keeps it going towards the end. From this point on, the dialogue in the movie becomes more and more surreal and unconventional.
So even though this movie was a movie without any particular action or excitement, it succeeded in keeping me as the viewer still interested, by building up a tension and an expectation of something very unusual that is going to happen, all of this much thanks to a special use of the soundtrack for it.
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