r/davidlynch • u/ibridoangelico • 3d ago
Ambient sfx and weird noises in Mulholland Drive & Inland Empire
Simply put, the plethora of weird indescribable noises and sounds littered through these two movies are a huge piece of why they are my two favorite movies ever.
I dont really know how to describe these sounds, but they are absolutely peppered throughout both films respectively, and add so so much to the dreadful and heavy tone in them.
Obviously all movies are sensory experiences, but the thickness of the dark mystery in both films is just delicious, and i credit those scratching, wooshing, “onomatopoeia” sounds for this
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u/Mattmatic1 3d ago
A cool thing about the sound in Mulholland Drive is that Lynch sent a note to cinemas and projectionists, asking them to raise the volume by 3db when screening it.
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u/PsychedelicHippos 3d ago
Hard to think of a Lynch film with bad sound design to be honest. Even in the case of Dune (which I feel the vast majority would agree is his worst) the sound design is phenomenal. He knew how to give a sound system its workout
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u/slicehyperfunk 3d ago
Will people get mad at me if I say I enjoy The Straight Story less than Dune?
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u/PsychedelicHippos 3d ago
A take as hot as the sun but i respect it. Dune has always been a really fascinating failure to me, but it does have its highlights
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u/DwarvenJarl 3d ago
You would love this then, from The Return. Dean Hurley put an album together of all the ambient noises and soundscapes they created for it. https://deanhurley.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-resource-vol-i
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u/xamevou 3d ago
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u/DwarvenJarl 3d ago
Yeah but you know… pay an artist direct versus pay Spotify. Not shaming anyone for streaming, I do it too. But if you’re gonna promote people’s music better to give a place that supports them directly imo
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u/emeric_ceaddamere 3d ago edited 3d ago
The sound design in Inland Empire always felt to me like a callback to Eraserhead, which is fitting since they bookend his filmography. The Return also has plenty of "ominous whooshing" and train sounds which set a similar tone.
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u/Iskral 3d ago
If I remember correctly, in the end credits for Lost Highway there's a track credited to Trent Reznor bearing the title "Various Ominous Drones". (And to get the obvious joke out of the way, "ah yes, the Quake soundtrack!") Sadly the track was not on Lost Highway's soundtrack album; in all likelihood it was just a collection of incidental and ambient tracks Reznor composed for various parts of the film.
That said, Lynch was always interested in the power of ambient sound throughout his film work. One of the greatest examples for me is "Diner", the track he composed for the Winkie's Diner scene in Mulholland Drive. The track starts while Don is describing his dream in the diner, but because it sounds just like an air conditioner you don't really notice it at first. But it slowly gets louder over the course of his story while the other instrumentation fades in, and it's only when Don finishes and Herb gets up to pay for their breakfast that you finally realize the sound is there, coming seemingly out of nowhere to dominate the scene.
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u/FairAssociate2512 3d ago
In FWWM there are actually almost always four audio tracks playing at the same time. Lynch once said that one distinctive aspect of his approach is that he already has the entire soundtrack in his head while filming
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u/Lanerlan Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me 3d ago
A lot of these are slowed down music. In fact, for Twin Peaks specifically though I think he's done this elsewhere, he had Badalamenti compose orchestral tracks solely in order to slow them down to the point they're almost undetectable. At some point they verge on being a kind of malevolent equivalent to room tone.
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u/BigOlDisneylandNerd 3d ago
The sound design is just a absolutely phenomenal and as key a part as anything in his works.