American Gangster - Sound

American Gangster - Sound

Before the scene even starts, when you're only at the production company, you get the mob movie feel with the dark eerie music.

This bridges through to the second production company that starts with a water drop strangely without the sound of water droplets. The sound here having you on the edge of your chair without even seeing anything from the actual movie.

Skipping through to the sound bridge over the blacked out scene... Matching the picture the sound indicates gasoline being poured over a mans head. The sound in this case characterises him as he is swearing in some European. This leaves the audience asking questions trying to piece together the puzzle. We already know it's based in New York which is full of Italians, this is a case of the sound we have setting the scene.

Frank Lucas then sparks a cigar. Despite the visuals showing us this we as an audience know as we can hear the click from the lighter and the pull of the cigar.

Frank then throws the lit cigar on the tied up man leading to his body being caught on fire, we can hear this. There's then screaming. We can hear the man and his chair hit the tire and the floor then Frank pulling out his gun and proceeding to shoot the man. After hearing Frank Lucas putting his gun back in his holster/waistband. This is interesting as due to the shot type we can't see by visuals however by sound we can tell Frank is putting his gun away. After we hear police sirens again setting the scene.

After there is a sound bridge over a blacked out scene then BOOM comes in the title of the movie. The sound seems different then the sound over the production company, leaving me questioning why they made this move.

Overall, sound is used to set the scene, incite fear into the audiences hearts, set the genre being a thriller, and characterise.