Sound decontruction of a film opening

A Nightmare on Elm Street

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_DjzN8410

The opening scene to A Nightmare on Elm Street begins with the noises of heavy breathing that is heard over machinery and the killer making tools out of metal. This is effective because hearing the human above the other sounds that should be louder makes the killer seem more dangerous than any of these items. The many diegetic sounds include filing / sawing metal, using a blowtorch and tapping metal to mould it into shape. This is accompanied by non-diegetic soundtrack of high pitched strings playing quietly in the background to build tension and suspense.
 

When the titles appear, the soundtrack starts to play a tune of two notes still of strings. The killer pierces his glove with knives on the fingers through a sheet of material which is accompanied with a scream, heightening the fear felt by the audience. The soundtrack gets lower and a woman runs down a corridor where there is dripping heard from pools of water on the floor, which is an easy sound to make. As she makes it to the end of the corridor, the soundtrack gets louder which generates more suspense and there is low, evil laughing heard at some points by the killer, who remains unseen, creating fear of the unknown in what is about to happen.
 

There is then more breathing before the woman turns around at a jump and a sheep runs into the corridor too, then there is a high menacing laugh, still unseen. The woman breathes in heavily at the scare and runs away. She climbs stairs in what appears to be a factory that is creating these metal, machinery and steam noises. There is a noise of a cog turning slowly and squeaks of machines as she still looks around, moving quickly. The camera pans down from where she is on a path above to the ground below where there’s a shadow that slowly moves and a laugh is heard again, building more and more fear.
 

She slowly walks through a narrow path where steam is heard and seen coming out of machines, and then the killer scratches his metal claw against a pipe to create a high squeaking noise. She turns towards it and we can see his claw tearing through material again and tearing downwards, making a ripping noise and his silhouette bursts through, and she starts to run away, breathing heavily and shrieking. She tries to hide but it is a dead end and he catches up, and she screams extremely loudly. However he walks past and there are many sheep and childlike noises again that get quieter. She walks forward slightly, confused, and then he bursts up behind her and shouts loudly, making her scream very loudly again.
 

This ends up being a dream and there is knocking on her bedroom door when she wakes up in a fright, and her mother talks to her for a minute before leaving.

 

The sounds used are very effective in this opening scene because they add a sense of horror and fear, and build a lot of suspense for jump scares which are always in horror films. All in all, most of these noises can be recreated quite easily. We wouldn’t ever be able to film in a factory that would make the machinery noises so couldn’t make them, nor would it be easy to make steam sounds from pipes. The rest of the diegetic sounds would be simple and effective to use to build fear in the audience. The non-diegetic soundtrack would be easy to make for me because there is a ‘voice’ setting on a piano I own called ‘strings’ and plays string music, so it is quick and wouldn’t cost anything to make or take a lot of effort.