star wars sound analysis

Star wars: A new hope. – Trash compactor

In this analysis I will be explaining how diegetic and non-diegetic sounds enhance the trash compactor scene in star wars IV and how these sounds have an effect on the audience.

The scene starts of with Luke, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess Lea in a middle of a fight against the storm troopers. From the sounds of the lasers and the tone of their voices you can tell that they want to get away from the conflict. Luke and Han are telling Princess Lea and Chewbacca to jump into the trash compactor to avoid conflict with the storm troopers. Luke then tells Han to jump in and not too long later follows behind. After this, all of the characters are in the trash compactor together, talking about getting out. Luke then tries to shoot open the door, which is a bad mistake as the laser then rebounds of the walls, which results in the characters trying to avoid the lasers. At this point you can tell the characters are starting to get annoyed with each other as everyone is shouting and arguing, due to the current situation they are in. They then realise they have bigger issues when they hear strange noises coming from the piles of rubbish. Suddenly, Luke gets pulled under the water by a worm like creature, which makes Han start to try and shoot it before it really harms Luke. For a moment everything goes quiet as Luke is still under the water, which indicates that the other characters may have though he had died. As Luke gets back up, the walls of the trash compactor start to close in, causing everyone to worry. Han tries to stop the movement of the walls with a pole, Luke radios C3PO and R2D2, although there is no response, Chewbacca tries to get the door to open, and Princess Lea stands there hopeless. R2D2 then decodes the computer, stopping the trash compactor.

Diegetic sound is where the sound is visible on screen or where the source is implied to be present by the narrative in this particular scene. An example of diegetic sound would be the sounds of the lasers and the robots. The first couple seconds of the scene show conflict between the protagonists and the antagonists, whereby they are using lasers to try defeat each other. The noises produced by the lasers create a futuristic and discordant sound. The laser sounds were produced through synthesizers and the sound was synced with the actions shown on the screen. However, it produces conflicting musical sounds, whereby the audience can tell that it is set in the future.