Drive - Sound Effects Analysis

Drive Write Up.

A getaway driver played by Ryan Gosling waits for two criminals to commit a burglary. The Driver makes clear before the crime that he haves a rule that he will give anyone who hires him 5 minutes to commit the crime and if they are not back within the time he will drive off and leave them.

The purpose of the opening of drive is to build up tension and to draw people into watching the rest of the film. They do this by using a lot of different techniques. One of the ways is to use sound. Sound is a good way to build tension. It makes viewers wonder what's going to come next and they like that there's is a lot of unanswered questions that they want to be answered when they watch more of the film. 

How certain things in the clip have qualities and how they build tension.

- The Ticking Watch - As soon as the two criminals leave the car to commit the crime, Ryan Gosling sets his watch on a timer of 5 Minutes. As the crime is being committed all we are shown is Ryan in the car and all to be heard is his timer on his clock ticking down time. This builds tension because the ticking gets louder and is a low tone and we know that the police are on their way and by this we know that there isn't much time left and when the sirens get louder this creates even more tension as views will be really attached and don't know if they are going to get away in time or get caught by the police.

- The Police Radio scanner. At start the Scanner is muffled when Ryan Gosling is trying to tune it so he can hear the police communicating with each other. Once tuned it starts to create tension as we can hear what the police are saying to one another. The tone of the policemen voices is quite low but are still clear so we can hear what they are saying. The volume of the radio is quite quite and becomes harder to hear once the radio is switched on.

- The Car Radio. When Ryan Gosling turns the volume of the radio up it is automatically harder to hear what the police are saying to one another and what information they are sharing. This means that we may not understand 100% of what is going on with the police's situation so we may not know what is going to come next and whether the police know the location of the two criminals and whether or not they are going to get busted or get away.

Environmental Sounds (Alarm, Gun Shot, Police Siren) - The Environmental sounds have a big effect as they give us an idea of what is going on. for example, we get an idea already that what is going on is a bad thing but this is even clearer after the first two environmental sounds occur. The gun shot to open the door to the building and the alarm a few seconds after the two criminals enter the building. A short time after, we begin to hear the police sirens getting louder and louder which shows that they have got a really good idea on what's going on and where its happening.