Classic horror films conjure up famous scenes of creatures and psychos ­- from Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man to the girl in the well in The Ring. But without subtle (and not-so-subtle) sound design behind them, the images would lose their power to scare us with those memorable ‘jump’ moments.

The horror genre has been anything but silent at the North American box office. As a result of the boom, Canadian talent has been behind the sounds on a number of high-profile shows. On the heels of the Saw films, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and George Romero’s Land of the Dead, there are several highly anticipated spookfests coming soon that have chosen to post their audio locally.

The soon-to-be released $40-million video-game adaptation Silent Hill, a Canada/France copro produced by Don Carmody and directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), is racing to an April 21 release date at Toronto’s Tattersall Sound & Picture, while another Carmody pic, the Ontario-shot flick Skinwalkers, is relying on Sound Dogs Toronto for its audio design.

‘The first challenge that we all face in terms of horror movies is that we’re dealing in the creation of elements that don’t exist in the real world,’ says Nelson Ferreira, one of three partners at Sound Dogs.

Skinwalkers is a case in point. Despite the fact that the plot involves a young boy who, on his thirteenth birthday, will transform into a werewolf-like creature, the sound designers at Sound Dogs were told never to mention the ‘w’ word. Similarly, the zombies in Resident Evil were not ‘zombies.’ They were the ‘undead.’

‘They were a lot more vicious and in your face than the zombies we created for George Romero,’ says Sound Dogs partner Craig Henighan, of the shop’s work on Land of the Dead. Henighan’s sound design credits also include Sin City and Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

It’s only natural that directors are very particular and demanding about the uniqueness of their soundscapes, even if werewolves do end up sounding, well… like werewolves.

‘We try to start fresh each time,’ says Ferreira. ‘You’re not going to hear the Resident Evil monsters in Skinwalkers.’

The challenge for the Silent Hill team involves not only making the design unique, but adapting the well-known videogame soundscapes of the titular Virginia town – including the fog, the real world, and the Darkness that descends on everything and transforms it – to the big screen.

‘You have to keep the ideas – the central characteristic,’ says sound designer Nicolas Becker, who had worked previously with director Gans in France on Brotherhood of the Wolf, ‘but you have to adapt it to the cinema and to the size of the picture. We wanted the real world to be casually naturalistic, precise, but never overplayed. We kept the idea of silence for the fog world and the idea of a wet metallic, industrial, rusty and noisy world for the Darkness.’

Another consideration was ensuring that fans would hear sounds that they’d recognize from the game, such as the approach of Red Pyramid, the radio static that affects the cell phones, walkie-talkies and radios that the characters try to use in Silent Hill.

‘One hundred percent of the sound is real sound,’ says Becker, ‘but some have a treatment to match with the low-fi style of the game.’

The Dogs’ Henighan says that, on any horror film, the first step is to find ‘a certain voice’ for the movie through discussions with the director, producers and picture editors. And then there are the practical issues.

‘You can’t just run out and record a werewolf,’ he says. ‘So you start looking at different types of animals that will work – dogs [for the male werewolves] and some sort of cat for the female werewolves.’

Generally, Henighan prefers to build his tracks from real-world subjects – such as insects and crickets, which he’s been recording for years – which he then transforms into, say, the sound of a needle going into an eyeball (which he did for Vincenzo Natali’s Cypher).

But above all, a horror sound designer has to keep the musical score top of mind.

‘It’s imperative that the sound tracks and music work together,’ says Jane Tattersall, supervising sound effects editor on Silent Hill and owner of Tattersall Sound & Picture, ‘otherwise we won’t get to hear the sound effects!’

On Silent Hill, composer Jeff Danna sent his cues to picture editor Sébastien Prangère, who would then give the sound editors stereo tracks so that they could cut around the music.

‘You think about the technical things that are going to play well and compete against music,’ says Henighan. ‘You can break it down to simply low, medium and high. You want some high-end sounds and some mid-range stuff that’s going to poke through and get in the mix.’

Anyone who has ever watched a horror film is aware of the way sound and music amp up the tension and anticipation of what’s around the corner. But often silence plays a pivotal role.

‘In each one of the horror or scarier genre films, I’ve always kept that so clearly in mind,’ says Stephen Barden, partner and supervising sound editor at Sound Dogs. ‘When we’re leading up to that jump moment, take everything out. Make it sound unnaturally silent, because that’s what’s going to drive that jump home.’

Sound designers agree that those silent moments are the most difficult to master.

‘Maybe it’s because everything is bombastic in our daily lives, and when it comes to doing something quiet or more texturized, you’re not always conditioned to go for that,’ says Henighan.

Silence also calls attention to itself, putting added pressure on the subtle nuances of the soundscape.

‘It’s a minefield to cut that quiet stuff,’ says Ferreira, ‘because you either lay that perfect sound in the perfect place or it’s the opposite – you’re messing with the drama. You’re tampering with the film. You’re ruining the moment.’

The Sound Dogs aren’t quite sure whether Skinwalkers will be ‘balls out’ with music like Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but Henighan is optimistic that there’ll be room for some of those silent moments to work hand-in-hand with a haunting score.

‘A lot of time simpler is better,’ says Henighan. ‘You may have tons of tracks to make up certain sounds for a werewolf and a zombie, but when you boil it down to its essence, what is it really doing for that character?’

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