Music in Thrillers

I was going through clips of thrillers on YouTube and saw one of the very well known psycho (Alfred Hitchcock). I noticed the music to be the real builder of tension and when in gets towards the action it becomes more and more terrifying. This showed me how important it is to get the music or sounds used just right as it can make a scene effective, tense, possibly uncomfortable and like in psycho when the music was just spot on extremely memorable. People who have never watched a thriller know that shower section of music in psycho. So the search for a great piece of music or sound begins...

Memento's opening music: lots of strings, low, slowing building, more thoughtful than scary, not as aggressive or violent music, but makes you wonder whats going on. It is because of the style of music that when you see the Polaroid photograph of a man who had clearly been murdered, there is loads of blood and yet you don't flinch at this incredibly violent image in fact as it starts to fade you look at it harder, even when you see the man who has just photographed this victim you feel calm and puzzled as to why the man is doing this awful thing. This is a key example of how the music can completely control the mood.

Bourne Identity, in this particular piece of music there is a great sense of urgency, things happening fast, it has a clear pulse to the music and feels like you a running, there is a great deal of tension and you feel insecure and unsettled, you feel like whoever is running could be dead any minute and you worry for that person's safety. Another great piece of music and yet completely contrasting to the other piece of music above.

So we need to decide whether we are doing a violent opening, thoughtful opening, a intense opening. We need to decide the pace and the content and choose music to reflect the mood.