Sound Analysis: Kill Bill

Analysis of Sound: Kill Bill

In class we were asking to watch a scene from Kill Bill Vol. 2, and the first time we watched it we had to close our eyes and try to guess what was going on in the scene.  As I had never watched the film before I found that this experiment was very effective as it made me understand how important the use of sound is when making a film.

The sequence begins with the sound of loud banging, which is overlapped by a western style short piece of music, which is further overlapped by the sound of heavy breathing which progressively gets louder and louder as the sound of both the bagging and the music stops.
I found it quite difficult to really understand what was going on, but the heavy breathing indicated to me that someone was in some sort of distress.  When watching this part of the sequence I found that I was correct about the distress, and the reason for it became clear when I found out that the heavy banging was the sound of them being enclosed in a box.

The next noticeable sound that we hear in the sequence was something that sounded like thumping, or something falling on top of something else. The loud breathing has stopped by this point, but then begins to pick up again with the beginning of the thumping sound.  This sound continues in short periods within the sequence gradually becoming quieter as if it is getting further and further away. The reason for this thumping sound doesn't become a lot clearer when watching the who sequence with my eyes open, but the title of the clip states that she is being buried alive and therefore the sound must be the sound of earth being poured on top of her.

woman's screaming becomes more urgent and hysterical, she has short bursts of screaming and it sounds as if she is bagging on something.  When watching back it can be seen that she has pulled out a torch and is banging on the box that she is trapped within in an attempt to escape the situation.  

The scene ends with all the sound cutting out to create a very tense and suspenseful ending.

When putting the who sequence together with my eyes open I found that being able to see what was going on didn't really make the whole sequence that much more suspenseful as the director hadn't put many shots of what was going on and a lot of the time the screen was black anyways.  This proved to me the importance of sound within a sequence in that it can give a lot more away than what the actual images show.