TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

For many Americans, certain kinds of music, including hip hop and Muzak, are indistinguishable from noise, and quiet, real-life ambient sounds are often ignored. For such listeners, film scores must be clearly audible and often not explicitly “artificial” (i.e., digital) to be enjoyed. Most Matrix soundtrack albums consist exclusively of pre-existing songs quoted in the film, including “Rock is Dead” by Marilyn Manson, “Bad Blood” by Ministry, “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine, and other abrasive numbers. Digitally generated portions of the soundtrack are less popular, suggesting the movie appeals primarily to pop-music fans and fans of campy, action-filled, quasi-video game struggles between good guys and bad.

Digitalization also offers “a new take on silence”, including an “effective use of extremely quiet sounds such as room ambience just above the threshold of hearing”.^[7] In Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2009), silences and quiet, ambient noises abound. In one scene, beginning at 25:55, a scientist (Kate Winslet) asks the husband (Matt Damon) of an early pandemic victim whether the disease may have reached Chicago. Throughout much of this scene neither character speaks and there is no music, only a quiet, seemingly ambient buzzing that nevertheless grows slightly louder as the husband’s anger reflects his fear that his wife may have met a lover on her trip home. In the film’s concluding scene, ambient jungle sounds are entirely replaced at 0:20 by a mechanical rhythm track that accompanies a sick pig to its death in a Macau casino’s kitchen, and the fearful husband’s wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she compliments the casino’s chef, covered with infected blood.