In one of his interviews, Jordan Peele claims that he got a lot of inspiration from Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” for his movie “Nope”. The correlation between the two films didn’t quite register with me at first, but after watching this YouTube video that breaks down specific scenes and sounds from both movies, it’s a super cool comparison and you can definitely see the similarities that they share.
A major focus of the video is the sound aspect of Nope – it consists of mostly diegetic sound throughout the film, which adds to the realistic feel of the movie and makes us feel more immersed in the events that take place. During the beach scene in Jaws, the audience is on edge knowing that there is a shark attack brewing. The background noise consists of normal sounds that you would hear on a beach, people talking, waves crashing, radios playing, etc. But then we hear a scream coming from the water and our anxiety rises, thinking that it’s the shark’s new victim. We quickly find out that it’s just a girl screaming because her boyfriend lifted her up out of the water, but that sound triggers us to think of the worst and adds to the suspense. The same can be said about the scene in Nope where OJ is standing outside in the dark with Ghost. It has an eerie wind sound, the horse sneezing, and overall it’s quiet but diegetic and normal; then a loud noise comes from the house, which again makes us frightened about what that means. We see that it’s just Emerald playing music to dance to, but that sudden introduction of a new sound scares the audience and keeps them on edge for something horrible to occur. The diegetic sound and focus on otherwise overlooked day-to-day noises heightens our senses and gives us a “calm before the storm”.
Another cool part of the sound in Nope was the creation of the noise coming from the alien thing (I’m still not exactly sure what to call that creature). It was supposedly a combination of screams like you are on a roller coaster, and screams like you are getting eaten by some mysterious entity that flies around like a hungry UFO, which makes for a very uncomfortable noise. At first from a distance the sound could be interpreted as just wind, or the normal noise that a flying saucer would make, but as the story goes on, we learn that it’s much more than that and gives the sound more attention and meaning. It eventually conditions the audience to start to feel anxious whenever that noise sounds in the film and it’s a super cool addition to the already creepy creature.
Overall, the video has great insight into the movie and certain elements that I definitely missed on the first watch, so I highly recommend watching it!
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