Tim- Moving Image Soundtrack Report

KILL BILL VOLUME 1- The Bride vs. The Crazy 88

The big fight scene from the film features no diegetic speaking parts throughout, all except for a lot of yelling noises made by all of the characters when they are being stabbed and attacked. The music in the scene is non- diegetic to make the scene feel more over the top and more like a martial arts film.

More of the non- diegetic sounds are all of the blades being hit by one another, the loud blood effects that happen nearly every second and there are even a few instances where you hear some cartoon sound effects, which just adds to the absurdity of the film. The writer and director, Quentin Tarantino really wanted to parody and pay homage to classic martial arts films, which is why he decided to include such loud sound effects to accompany the chaotic scene.

KILL BILL VOLUME 2- Superman monologue

The sound from this scene from the “sequel” or “Volume 2” is very different compared to the first clip, seeing as there is no action whatsoever. This scene is part of the confrontation between The Bride and Bill. The character of Bill is a very manipulative character, and every scene he is in, he has a long, drawn out speech (like many Tarantino written antagonists). The soundtrack to the scene is completely diegetic; every sound from the scene is natural and has been recorded on camera, along with the rest on the acting and dialogue, of course.

Because this whole scene is just one character talking to another character, it feels very peaceful and it gives the audience time to relax and gives them a break from all the action that is included in the rest of the film. These scenes, that feature mainly natural and diegetic sounds; are very rare when it comes to a Tarantino film, but, most of his films include a scene or scenes like this, where the scene is almost completely silent and one character/a number of characters are having a long conversation that is irrelevant to the whole movie, most of his fans actually call this ‘Tarantino- ing’.

Inglourious Basterds- The Pub Scene

Another use of ‘Tarantino- ing’ is with this pub scene from Tarantino’s 2009 war film, ‘Inglourious Basterds’. In this scene, Lieutenant Archie Wilcox (Michael Fassbender), actress Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) are sitting at a table at a pub, playing a drinking game with Major Deiter Hellstrom (August Diehl). Similar to the Superman monologue from ‘Kill Bill’, this scene is a very quiet scene with all of the sounds being completely natural and diegetic to create a real pub atmosphere. This scene is extremely different compared to the ‘Kill Bill’ scene or any other scene like this because it is spoken entirely in the German language, creating yet another mood.

It isn’t up until towards the end of the scene where the sounds clearly become non- diegetic. The scene becomes tense and a lot of violent shooting occurs. The gun sounds are loud and chaotic and really set a completely different tone from the rest of the scene.

Inglourious Basterds- The Cinema Massacre

In this scene, one of the characters, Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent) is taking revenge on the Nazi’s who killed her entire family and tried to kill her. She does this by setting a cinema on fire that the Nazi’s are at. This causes panic, and creates a very frightening scene. The sound used in the film is a mixture of diegetic and non- diegetic sound. The sounds of all of the cinema patrons screaming, I think that they are all of the extras screaming as the huge fire erupts in front of them.

The sound of the fire can be considered fake, but by the look of the fire, I would say that Quentin Tarantino and the sound designers/recorders used the natural sound of the fire on set, to help create the real effect of a burning fire. Finally, Shoshanna’s feared speech on the cinema screen is heard, and it is very loud and has a slight echo to make it sound more like it’s coming from the speakers, so it does sound diegetic, but, this could be non- diegetic and could have been pre-recorded and edited in later in post-production.