Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "How Nope Tricks Your Ears" video.

  1. Surely, with that jaws example, there’s more to it than that? The scream we take to be of a possible shark attack, only to learn it’s a girl having fun with her boyfriend, takes place while the character of Brody is being talked to by that chap we saw in the shot. Like Brody, we the viewer are trying to see and hear past him, not paying attention to what he’s saying, straining over the sound of his voice as Brody is, which serves to heighten the frustration and tension of the audience. That is using sound design to draw us into the lead character’s mindset, as we are sharing his frustration and doing exactly what he is doing, looking over his interlocutor’s shoulder and listening to everything but his voice. This compounds the effect of the scream, which suddenly penetrates while we were straining so hard, doubling the shock value and compounding the ambivalent sense of both relief and disappointment when we realise it was not the shark. The partial disappointment is not that we want to see another victim of Jaws, but that we, like Brody, want a resolution to the ongoing terror. And we are aware that this resolution can only come at the cost of facing more horror. That was the brilliance of that scene. Not just the false alarms and the smoke and mirrors of Spielbergs red herrings, but the way he puts us inside Brody’s psychological box with him, by using another man’s voice in that way. We know we should be listening to him - Brody, as a member of the community, who has a responsibility to listen to this businessman expressing his concerns; the audience as people following the plot, knowing we might miss something of importance - but we both, audience and character are trying to tune him out, making us more attuned to, and vulnerable to, the frequency of screams.
    3