The Sixth Sense: Lighting, Sound, and Production.

    The Sixth Sense is a well-loved classic thriller movie from 1999.  It was directed by M. Night Shyamalan and had Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Os as the leading roles.  The story centers around an 8 year old boy, Cole Searthat (Haley Joel Os) has a supernatural ability to see dead people wherever he goes.  A successful child psychologist (Bruce Willis) that gets a little too wrapped up in his work, finds Cole and makes it his sole mission to help him through his problems.  Together they figure out that the ghosts are finding Cole because they think he can help them in some way and they can find peace.  

    A key element of thriller films like this one is the method of editing used throughout the film.  “To intensify feelings of fear in the audience, film artists use sound, lighting, timing, motion and other stylistic devices” (Fu).  In The Sixth Sense they altered the lighting and sound during the suspenseful parts to create a deeper reaction in the audience. In the opening of the film you can hear an eerie sounding violin playing and the theme of classical music carries on throughout the film.  The high pitched whining of the violins really seems to put people on edge and adds to the suspense of the situation. Another aspect that adds suspense is how light or dark a certain scene is. For example, whenever Cole runs into his ghosts the lighting gets really dark and the violins in the background get louder.  “The unusual lighting causes tension in the audience” (Fu).

The production of The Sixth Sense was quite a process in the beginning.  Originally the story was going to be about a serial killer and Bruce Willis was going to be a crime photographer and his son would see the ghosts of the victims (Variety).  M. Night Shyamalan rewrote the script ten times and eventually worked it into the movie we know today. This film was nominated for 45 different awards and won 19 of them. Some of the awards won are as follows: Top Box Office Films, Best Young Performer (Haley Joel Osment), Best Director, Best Male Breakthrough Performance (Haley Joel Osment), Favorite Motion Picture, Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Horror Film.  It also received a rating of 85% from review on Rotten Tomatoes. The first weekend it was released it made 26 million dollars and the next four weekends after that it made anywhere from 20-29 million dollars each weekend.

In 2016 The Sixth Sense was number 89 on AFI’s Top 100 list of movies from the last 100 years.  When this film was first released in theaters it was number one at the box office for a solid 5 weeks and raked in 40 million dollars (Atlantic).  The reason behind The Sixth Sense’s immense success is mostly due to how well they pulled off the twist at the end. The movie started off with a graphic scene of an old patient breaking into the psychologist’s home and shooting him in the stomach.  Before finding out what happens to the psychologist the plot line introduces the boy and you kind of assume that he just healed from his injury. At the very end it is revealed that the psychologist actually died from his gunshot wound and was one of the many ghosts visiting Cole to try and find the help they need.

SOURCES

Fu. “Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) Taxonomic Revision of Rochefortia Sw. (Ehretiaceae, Boraginales). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e7720. Https://Doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e7720.” doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f.

Nichols, Mackenzie. “’The Sixth Sense’ Turns 20: M. Night Shyamalan and Haley Joel Osment Tell All.” Variety, 2 Aug. 2019, variety.com/2019/film/news/the-sixth-sense-turns-20-m-night-shyamalan-haley-joel-osment-1203259434/.

Sims, David. “How ‘The Sixth Sense’ Conquered Hollywood in 1999.” 

The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 Aug. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/how-sixth-sense-conquered-hollywood-1999/595558/.

“Sixth Sense Movie Cole Important Effects.” – SameDayPapers.me, 6 Sept. 2017, samedaypapers.me/sixth-sense-movie-cole-important-effects/.