Music of There Will be Blood

The use of sounds and music, in my opinion, in "There will be Blood" was excellent. Music was not only used as a background noise or to set a mood, but it was also used to convey emotion. The scene when the first oil well explodes while HW is on the oil derrick and causes injury to him shows this well. After the well explodes, music or sound comes on. The sound is created by a chaotic combination of drums. There is one deeper sounding drum that can be heard to sound like a heartbeat, specifically Daniel Plainview’s heartbeat. And as Plainview’s emotions show that he is getting more and more excited the tempo of the drumming increases. So at the start of the explosion the tempo is slow and then as Daniel realizes HW is hurt the tempo increases until Daniel has HW back in a safe place and tells him “You’re safe.” At this point the tempo slows, but then it increases again as the fire starts in the well. The drumming only stops when Daniel realizes that there is a lot of oil to be had. At the height, the drumming is at a deafening roar and nothing else can be heard and it happens when he’s trying to get HW back to safety. The sound of this scene clearly expresses how Daniel is feeling. The chaos of the music not only shows the chaos of the scene but also the chaos that Daniel is experiencing.