Without even knowing it, movie soundtrack makers appear to mimic the sounds of animals in distress.
Biologists analyzed sound patterns in movies of war, horror, action and old-fashioned drama in a study to be published in Biology Letters. They compared the noises to what animal-communication researchers know as "nonlinear vocalizations."
That technical term spans what bioacousticians describe in terms of "noise and deterministic chaos, sidebands and subharmonics, and abrupt amplitude and frequency transitions," and most anyone else refers to as screeches of alarm. (In particular, lovers of "Meerkat Manor" and bioacousticians alike appreciate those animals' unique calls.)
The harshness and unpredictability of these sounds is thought to be a vocal adaptation fine-tuned for quickly capturing a listener's attention. And if that's true, then "we might expect them to be also used by film-score composers and audio engineers to manipulate the emotions of those watching a film," hypothesized University of California, Los Angeles biologist Daniel Blumstein and his Biology Letters co-authors.
Guided by best-of polls from various internet film sites, Blumstein's team extracted the soundtrack of pivotal scenes in 102 classic movies, from Lawrence of Arabia to Aliens. They fed the recordings into analytical tools designed by bioacousticians at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
When all the diegetic noise and abrupt amplitude fluctuations and changes in tonal frequency bands were added up, the soundscapes of those key scenes resembled animal alarm calls.
"The use of these simulated nonlinearities is not random, but rather appears to be specifically used to enhance the emotional impact of scenes," wrote the researchers, noting the non-linear attributes of distorted electronic electronic guitar and flutter-tongued flutes. Of course, directors often borrow directly from the sounds of animals, a la King Kong's roars. Though perhaps the most horrifying animal sound of all, the eponymous language of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, was generated entirely on the Trautonium.
The researchers do not directly address whether non-linear vocalization analogues became part of the cinematic vernacular through conscious emulation of the animal world, or because it just felt right. Even at our most refined, an ancient nature seeps through.
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Citation: "Do film soundtracks contain nonlinear analogues to influence emotion?" By Daniel T. Blumstein, Richard Davitian and Peter D. Kaye. Biology Letters, Vol. 6 No. 6, December 23, 2010.