Alan Splet’s sound design for David Lynch from the perspective of film horror

Abstract

The American sound designer Alan Splet (1939-1994) participated in the production of 25 films. With director David Lynch he created sound effects and ambiences that were freer of links to verisimilitude. They worked together on the short film The Grandmother (1970) and the feature films Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984) and Blue Velvet (1986). The strong surrealist influence in Lynch’s filmography stimulated Splet’s solutions that resemble the sound work of the horror film genre, which is even recognized in the recent 2017 season of the TV series Twin Peaks, directed and with sound design by the filmmaker himself. This article deals with sound editing procedures that are more common in the filmography of this genre, compared to the editing of sound effects of that sound designer.