Lost in Space
Opening this. I concur with a merge.
One thing to note is that Chirping Crickets has a double-use: to indicate that a joke has fallen flat. That should be distinguished.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2019 at 12:58:57 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lost in Space
Double Post: Actually, I'm wrong. Chirping Crickets is explicitly about a flat joke. Quieter Than Silence is about depictions of silence. They are related but not the same. Please do a wick check to see if there is actual confusion before proceeding with this topic.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2019 at 12:59:16 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
he/him | Image Pickin' regular
Going by that definition, these examples on Quieter Than Silence are actually aversions, as is most of the real life section.
- Used very effectively in Vanilla Sky, where in a crowded bar the already unsettled protagonist mutters he wishes everyone would shut up, and all ambient noise suddenly stops dead. Seen in the cinema, for a brief moment you'd think the audio track had failed, as the camera doesn't cut away immediately when this happens. Then when it does, everyone in the bar is looking right at the protagonist, in deafening silence. Very unnerving.
- Done so perfectly in Equilibrium that the commentary says audiences thought that the movie itself had been accidentally turned off. It's completely silent and totally black for several seconds.
Clock is set.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I'm wondering if Quieter Than Silence needs a visit to the Trope Description Improvement Drive because it starts off sounding like it's about those scenes in a show or film where all sound cuts out. The scenes that end in a moment of absolute silence where the camera pans away from a character or group of characters who are sat in complete silence, staring into space. It's usually after a heavy reveal or a dialogue of heavy emotional or political or plot significance, to emphasise the sheer emotional weight of what's just happened in the scene.
It then seems to get confused with the other tropes, which creates a bit of a messy description that leaves me wondering what the trope is really about, especially given that crickets chirping and tumbleweed don't usually get used in the same way (either for comedy or tension rather than the kind of weighty 'baring the soul' moment of scenes that use total silence).
Just a thought anyway.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Clock is up with no progress; closing.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Chirping Crickets and Quieter Than Silence seem to be describing the exact same thing: cues to the audience that the silence in the audio is intended. They also both mention some of the same common variants:
It's unclear to me how these tropes coexisted for 5+ years with nobody noticing, especially since one of them links to the other. Either way, I move that we:
Thoughts?
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