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An Acoustic Exploration of Sound in Martin Scorsese's Movie Shutter Island

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An Acoustic Exploration of Sound in Martin Scorsese's Movie Shutter Island INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 An Acoustic Exploration Of Sound In Martin Scorsese‘s Movie Shutter Island J. Rajasree Menon, Dr. Ramanathan P V Abstract: Technology has a long history in the making of sound movies that often juxtapose movements with sounds. Establishing a unique parameter for the analysis of sound has often been a difficult task for scientists across the globe. Numerous interpretations and documentations on soundscape have ideologically established ‗sound‘ as an integral ingredient in film making; as the ultimate repository and supplier of humour, textuality and connotation. A movie does not bloom only on visual effects. It needs a meaningful soundtrack to add intelligibility and coherence to the visual experience. The present paper attempts to explore how the theme of violence, power, truth, grief and masculinity built on an effective soundtrack in the movie Shutter Island actively engages the audience to experience the real sensory impact of the movie. Sound, however, occupies a sharp sensorial realm worth attending to with some explicitness – even when one must admit that silence very often steals the show! The paper titled, ―An Acoustic Exploration of Sound in Martin Scorsese‘s Movie Shutter Island‖ theoretically examines the various techniques of soundtracks as employed in the movie Shutter Island. Martin Scorsese, the well-known filmmaker, has created a unique style through his fabrication and use of music to contrive the soundtracks of this movie. Scorsese‘s use of a unique pattern and style of sound effects in the movie Shutter Island, is one of the prominent and fundamental factors engaging our attention to enumerate the technicalities of soundscape in the acoustic phase of film making. Index Terms: Dramatic Music, Film Studies, Lobotomy, Music, Sound Film, Soundtracks, Still images —————————— —————————— 1 INTRODUCTION A ‗film‘ or a ‗movie‘ can be elucidated as a sequence of still There are untold varieties of styles of music depending upon images shown on a big screen to create the illusion of ‗a the nature of the film and what its creator expects to convey. walking, talking sequence‘ of animations. The focus of film is The movie Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese is an on the artistic, theoretical and the technical aspects. Motion exemplary example of the utility of the influence of sound and pictures or moving pictures are films that are developed music in creative art. through photography of original scenes with a motion picture camera. Many modern techniques are pressed into service in 2 SHUTTER ISLAND: MOVIE REVIEW filmmaking, which is both an art and industry, in addition to Shutter Island is an American psychological thriller released in being an employment generator today.An Optical soundtrack 2010, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Laeta is usually included in films which are a graphic recording of the Kalogrid. The movie is based on the 2003 novel Shutter Island spoken words, music and other sounds that ought to be in by Dennis Lehane. The movie begins with U.S. Marshal, sync with the animation of images. Amy Villarejio‘s Film Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule‘s travel to the Studies: The Basics defines sound: ―Sound as many critics Ashecliffe hospital in the Shutter Island in Boston Harbour for have taught us, functions in a variety of different ways. Not the investigation of Rachel Solando‘s missing case. Rachel mere accompaniment to the image, sound actively shapes Solando is a criminal patient who was imprisoned for drowning how we perceive and interpret the image. It directs our her three kids.The investigators find everything suspicious attention within the image, and it cues us to form expectations. inside the hospital especially the behavior of the doctors. The Just as elements of the image function motifs, so too do chief Psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley‘s disinterest in the matter of elements or types of sound. Just as images harden quickly co-operating with the investigation team‘s overwhelming into clichés, so too do elements or types of sound: thunder eagerness to check the records – as if he was rather shrinking cracks to announce a storm, cartires squeal to signal a from it – is one. How Solando‘s doctor Dr. Lester Sheehan left criminal get away, explosions in space make ―kaboom‖ noises, the island ‗suddenly‘ after Solando went missing, is equally and so on.[49]. (Amy Villarejo, 2007)‖Background music is significant and is a point of interest to the audience. The used in movies to connect emotions and rhythm. authorities permitting ‗restricted‘ entry into the hospital – ‗censoring‘ their ‗freedom‘ in ward C adds to the mystery. The lighthouse is a picture of a completely foraged structure. Crowning these, come the disturbing dreams of Daniels whose _______________________________________ beloved wife Dolores Chanal has been assassinated in a fire J. Rajasree Menon is a research scholar pursuing her Ph.D in the set by a local arsonist Andrew Laeddis.Daniels, determined to Department of English Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri investigate ‗whatever it is‘ in the Ward C, and in the lighthouse, Campus, Kollam. She obtained M.Phil degree in 2018. She has ‗smells a rat‘ in conversation with one patient named Noyce. participated and presented papers at various seminars and He learns of several ‗mysterious happenings‘. Those, patients conferences. She has published articles in national and taken to the light house to be lobotomsized, more often than international Journals Dr. Ramanathan P V has been working in Amrita Vishwa not, do not survive. That, everyone in the asylum is playing a Vidyapeetham since 2005. He received M.Phil and Ph.D degrees ‗complicated game‘, etc.Daniels, ‗nosing into‘ the lighthouse, from the University of Madras. His areas of interest include English catches ‗a significant scent‘ to things from a lady‘s claims that Language Teaching, Literature, Religion in Literature and Religious she is the real Rachel Solando, the former Psychiatrist at the Poetry. He has presented several papers at national and Ashecliffe hospital. Rachel, the psychiatrist, is experimenting international conferences and seminars in these areas. He is a member of the English Language Teachers’ Association of India with psychotropic medication and trans-orbital lobotomy in an (ELTAI) and the Comparitive Literature Association of India (CLAI). attempt to develop mind control techniques. But ‗curiously‘, before reporting the results of her experiments to the 4916 IJSTR©2020 www.ijstr.org INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03, MARCH 2020 ISSN 2277-8616 authorities ‗she was forcibly admitted in the hospital as a patient‘. Returning to the hospital, Daniels finds no trace of 4 CONCLUSION Aule. So his best surmise is that Aule must have been taken to The stunning, and unexpected closing of the movie Shutter the lighthouse. He breaks into the lighthouse to discover Dr. Island leaves the viewers in an eerie excitement that comes John Cawley who has actually been waiting for Daniels in the closest to the description ―a rush of mystification‖ – and it is, lighthouse. ‗The drama‘ closes with the revelation that Daniels indeed, a ‗pleasant mystification‘. From the beginning to the is actually Andrew Laeddis, the most dangerous patient in the end, the movie successfully creates an atmosphere where asylum. He has murdered his wife Dolores who, in her each note makes mystery follow mystery, making the viewers depression, had drowned their three children. All these ride on crust after crust of the strong waves of curiosity. What ‗confusing characters, incidents and turmoil‘ were no more begins as a US Marshal searching for a missing patient than the clever master plan of Dr. Cawley – is the final concludes as a role-play game manoeuvre stage managed by resolution awaiting the audience. The hospital staffs too are a the doctors in the Asylum – where every sound Scorsese part of the whole drama, which is but a ‗test‘. Dr. Sheehan and supplies adds an ‗artistic‘ to the depth of the drama portrayed, a nurse have been posing as Aule and Rachel Solando. which cannot but leave the viewer ‗more happily confused‘. Laeddis suffered from migraines due to the withdrawal On the technicality of the maker of this movie, one is inevitably symptoms from medications. Laeddis faints and after reminded of the words of Andrew Dix in his book, The Basic sometimes he awakens with a realization that he needs Film Studies:―The language of film analysis aids in our task of lobotomy because he does not want to ‗live as a monster‘. It watching films closely to notice their construction. We may would be ‗more ideal‘ to die as a good man. isolate six elements of what is ―put in‖ to a given shot, or of 3 CRUCIAL SOUNDTRACK AND DRAMATIC mise-en-scene: setting, lighting, costume, hair, make-up, and MUSIC IN SHUTTER ISLAND figure behavior. Cinematography encompasses all that is to do The whole ‗drama‘, the way it is beautifully presented to the with the camera: framing, angle, focus, movement, and audience, affords a great arena of and good scope for the compositing. The five types of edits (cut, dissolve, fade, wipe, study of sound and its effects exploited in the compilation. and iris) serve different functions in different contexts, whether The movie is an involving grand mix combining sounds and within the system of continuity editing associated with the music, and words and stills with moving images. The opening narrative form of classical Hollywood cinema or other scene of the movie is a boat in a wide shot emerging through cinematic contexts. Finally, the three types of sound (speech, a thick curtain of fog. This effectively creates a sense of music and noise) actively shape how we work with images.
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