How Sound Tells the Story

Ask people what they remember about a film and they will describe images. Ask what made them feel something and, more often than they realise, the answer was sound.

Interstellar is the loud example, with an organ-driven score that swells like the cosmos it is describing. But the moments that stay with me are the ones where the music steps back and the film lets space itself be quiet.

Arrival uses sound differently. The alien language is shown as shapes, but the film’s low, strange sound world is what makes the first contact scenes feel genuinely unfamiliar rather than just visually odd.

The lesson I take from both: a good soundtrack is not the film’s loudest element. It is the one that decides what you are allowed to feel, and when.