Her (2013) and Sound Design

Sound is one of the big components of “Her” (along with colour). The film uses the sound to emphasize the internal and external emotions felt between the characters. The film uses silence to showcase the feeling of loneliness that plagues Theodore’s life. He starts the film living vicariously through other people’s relationships. In the scenes of him by himself, they use the silence to emphasize the fact that he is alone without human interactions. The film also uses silence in certain scenes to raise the visual storytelling. Some scenes use the external emotions and facial expressions to tell the story instead of sound or dialogue. The scenes where the beautiful score comes in, they use it to strengthen the emotions or showing the passing of time. In the sex scene, they use only the music. The scene has no visuals, but that is the point. They use the dialogue and the musical score to bring intense emotion and realism to the scene. The scene is much more believable when you only hear what is going on, seeing the scene play out would lead to a more unrealistic scene. They use the score to show the passing of time, similar to “La La Land”. “Her” shows off the passing of time by giving each “section” its own unique style of sound, similar to “La La Land” giving each season its own unique style of sound in the score. The film also emphasizes the realism though Scarlett Johansson’s performance as Samantha, the AI that Theodore falls in love with. Johansson’s vocal performance as Samantha is very three dimensional, giving human like qualities to the AI. Samantha shows various emotions from excitement, sadness, and love to name a few through the use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice. If they used a real AI’s voice, the character would have felt less realistic, leading to a possibly cheesy film. The film brings a realistic story of love with two unlikely lovers though it’s use of Sound Design. They show the deep emotions and give the characters multiple dimensions though its use of silence in certain scenes and the beautiful score by Arcade Fire in other scenes. “Her” definitely deserved the nominations for Sound Design at the Academy Awards because this film showcases excellent achievement in Sound.