KUBRICK AND SOUND DESIGN

NoFilmSchool.com has published a couple of short, interesting articles that should be of interest to all Kubrick fans. The first one covers How Kubrick Built Atmosphere with Diegetic Sound, proclaiming our Stanley as having provided us with "one of the finest examples of diegetic sound that we have to date". It continues:

With so many other revolutionary filmmaking techniques in his repertoire, it's not often we find ourselves focused on Stanley Kubrick's audio strategies. His favoritism of diegetic over non-diegetic sounds, however, was essential in building the atmosphere for nearly every one of his films. Candice Drouet's 1.000.000 Frames series chronicles just that:

The article continues after the above video, going on to describe what diegetic sound is, exactly (it isn't that difficult a concept to grasp), and pulls out a few more examples of what they proclaim to be some of Kubrick's best work using the technique.

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The second NoFilmSchool.com article asks What is Contrapuntal Music, and How did Kubrick and Tarantino Use it in Their Most Famous Scenes? It goes into great detail in an effort to describe what is, in essence, simply the use of music that not only doesn't tell the viewer how to feel, but is actually expressive of the opposite emotion that the onscreen events would likely inspire. Think Kubrick's use of "We'll Meet Again" at the end of Strangelove, when the fact of the matter is that (SPOILER) with every human being on the face of the Earth killed by the Soviet Doomsday retaliation, we actually will NOT be meeting again, ever.