Unsung & Unseen: How Music & Sound Design Create Immersion in Adolescence

Rare use of non-diegetic music

BANG! The sound of a gun being fired or a door slamming shut. CRASH! The sound of a window being broken or a glass of water shattering on the floor. Click! The sound of a switch being flipped or the clacking of heels against a tile floor. Sound design is an important but often overlooked element of media, and that is typically by design. The choice of what the audience hears and doesn’t hear helps build out an environment as much as what is shown within the frame of any given scene. The series Adolescence is very intentional in its use of sound design, often going from purely diegetic sounds of a given environment to slowly fading and muffling those sounds away to be replaced by the non-diagetic score as a means of depicting the emotions going on inside a given character’s head.

“Atmospheric score creeps in”

In “Episode 1” of the series, this use of sound design to create atmosphere and build tension is already on full display. The entire sequence of the swat team entering the Miller residence all the way to the moment they load Jamie into the police van is done completely without any kind of musical score, instead relying on the diegetic sounds of the given environments to set the tone of the scene. The pounding sound of the swat team moving up the stairs, shouting at the family to stay on the ground, the sounds of drawers being opened and clothes being ruffled through all come together to help the audience live in the same anxiety that the Miller family is going through in that moment. Meanwhile, during a few quieter moments in between the more procedural moments such as when Jamie is being transferred over to the station and being processed once he arrives, all the sounds of the environment and dialogue slowly begins to fade away as the atmospheric score creeps in while the camera locks in directly on Jamie’s face. The use of the score in this way paired with the camera’s specific focus on Jamie himself gives the audience a sense of the emotional turmoil going on in Jamie’s mind. Like a glimpse into his thoughts and emotional state without the need to directly spell them out through dialogue. The pairing of the actor’s performance, the way in which Jamie is focused on within the frame, and the use of sound design all compliment and build upon each other to make those individual moments stand apart from the scenes that largely feature the sounds of the environment and focus more broadly on multiple individuals within a given scene.

“Properly balancing the sound of dialogue”

“Episode 2” starts with officers staring at the memorial for Jamie’s victim. We hear the sound of a gate creaking open and rattling as it hits the wall before the camera even pans towards the source. It takes a few seconds before the camera pans over and we are introduced to Mrs. Fennimore, a teacher at the school, as she lets the two officers in. This is an example of how the use of sound design in a scene can cue audiences into events taking place within the space without actively revealing the person or thing that caused it until later. It’s a very innocuous case in this particular opening scene. A similar instance of this occurs only a few minutes later with two teachers discussing the fall out of the murder with parents constantly hounding them on whether or not the school is safe. We can hear the sound of a drum kit being played as it slowly grows louder and louder. The camera continues following the teachers walking until one of them closes a door leading into a music room where we as an audience see the source of the drumming. A student can be seen practicing on a drum kit. Upon closing the door, the sound of drums is muffled but still persistent as the conversation between the two teachers escalates in urgency, their voices much louder in the sound mix. This leads into heading into a stairwell where the camera changes focus from the teachers to two students walking. A school bell can be heard ringing. As the students walk out to the courtyard, the sound of other student’s chatter can be heard getting louder as the two students continue their walk. All of this highlights the use of not just diegetic sound in a sense of setting up an environment, but how volume is utilized to create a more textured environment without music. It also shows the tricky balance that all shows and films have to navigate. The ever persistent challenge of properly balancing the sound of dialogue and the sound effects of the environment the characters occupy. If the background noise stays the same as the subjects approach a given sound source, it can come across as fake or unmotivated. However if you treat all the sounds of an environment in a way you would to simulate precisely how loud they would be in real life in relation to how each source and subject is to the camera, the sounds of the characters' dialogue can be drowned out completely making what they are saying completely indecipherable.

Adolescence

“A sense of the emotional turmoil”

as a series has a very tricky task. By nature of it all playing out in one take, the way that sound is utilized must be very precise in a way that other series may not necessarily have to consider. With a camera in constant motion and being unable to simply cut away to a new space, the way that the sound of the environments and dialogue must be mixed has to be done with great care in order for it all to keep the audience’s focus where the creators of the series want it to be. Whether that be through the chaotic scene of a police raid, the hustle and bustle of a primary school courtyard, or in the removal of all diegetic sounds of an environmental in favor of an ambient score to highlight the inner turmoil of a character. Adolescence as a series highlights precisely why sound is so important in the world of visual storytelling and the way in which sound is utilized in film and television immerses an audience into the narrative without them even noticing it at all. 

(Writer: Tomás Whitmarsh, Photo Editor: Ben Borchardt, Producer: Hannah Perez)