Films › Sound and score
Berberian Sound Studio
Directed by Peter Strickland, 2012
Peter Strickland set his film entirely inside a foley and mixing suite, and sound designer Joakim Sundstrom used that setting to make the mechanics of horror scoring the actual subject rather than the backdrop. Watermelons, cabbages, and knives become the visible sources of screams and violence we never see, and the film insists you watch the Foley artist's hands as much as the fictional screen he is scoring for. This is a study in synchresis, the way sound and image fuse into believed causality even when the two have no real relationship, and Strickland exploits that fusion until the protagonist, and the audience, can no longer separate simulated violence from real threat. For a filmmaker this is a compact demonstration of how much emotional weight sits in the sound department rather than the visual one, since the on-screen horror imagery is withheld almost completely. The tape hiss, reel changes, and analog degradation were treated as period-accurate texture rather than nostalgia, recorded on period equipment to avoid the flattening effect of modern digital clarity.
What to watch for
Watch how often the camera holds on the Foley table instead of cutting to the horror it is meant to be illustrating.
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