How the creators of A Quiet Place made silence so terrifying

If audiences think about sound design in films at all, it’s usually in the context of dramatic effects: the zruuuuum of a lightsaber, or the noises the dragons in Game of Thrones make. But sound serves an altogether different function in John Krasinski’s directorial debut A Quiet Place. A potent thriller about a family trying to survive an onslaught of monsters with hyper-sensitive hearing, the film deviates sharply from the bigger, better, louder formulas used in most movies, and instead uses lack of sound to create a story filled with almost unbearable tension. It’s meant to make the audience afraid to make the slightest sound, lest they put the characters in danger. The film’s supervising sound editors, Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der... Continue reading…