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The Uncanny Sound Illusion That Creates Suspense in Christopher Nolan's Movies. Ever notice how Christopher Nolan’s movies (Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige) feel like an anxiety attack? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. But the director does have a knack for creating an unnerving degree of tension.

Turns out he’s using a little bit of musical magic to do it. The magic is actually a science- based audio illusion called a Shepard tone. Named after psychologist Roger Shepard, a pioneer in our understanding of spatial relation, the effect sounds like an infinitely ascending or descending scale. The tones are constantly moving upwards or downwards, but they never seem to reach a pinnacle or nadir. This is accomplished by stacking scales on top of each other—typically one treble scale, one midrange, and one bass—with an octave in between, then playing them in a continuous loop. A Shepard tone is sometimes referred to as the barber pole of sound.

You can even see the similarity, when you hear it and look at the spectrum view of a Shepard tone. Don’t listen to this too long, or you might lose your mind: Anyways, Christopher Nolan just loves this. With longtime collaborator Hans Zimmer, the acclaimed director has used a Shepard tone in almost every one of his films in the last decade. I Want To Watch The Full Movie Of Open Water 3 (2017).

He even writes his scripts to match the effect. In a recent interview, Nolan explained how he used Shepard tones in his newest film, Dunkirk: The screenplay had been written according to musical principals. There’s an audio illusion, if you will, in music called a “Shepard tone” and with my composer David Julyan on “The Prestige” we explored that and based a lot of the score around that. And it’s an illusion where there’s a continuing ascension of tone. It’s a corkscrew effect. It’s always going up and up and up but it never goes outside of its range. And I wrote the script according to that principle.

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I interwove the three timelines in such a way that there’s a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity. So I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. Knowing this, you gain a deeper understanding of films like Interstellar, Inception, and The Prestige.

It also explains why these films seem somehow inconclusive. A Shepard’s tone creates a conflict that can’t be resolved, just like Nolan’s plots.

Iran Has Pivoted to Video. The classic US stereotype of attempted Iranian ideological indoctrination via chants of “Death to America” and such has been old hat for quite some time. As noted by the New York Times on Saturday, in the past few years Iranian pro- government propaganda efforts have increasingly taken the form of rap videos glorifying the country’s military, spread on sites like local You. Tube equivalent Apparat and apps like Telegram.

The Times rounded up some of the most high- profile attempts to appeal to the nation’s youth by pairing Iranian rappers with sweeping shots of military personnel and CGI- infused battle scenes, some of which are pretty over- the- top. They’re fascinating to watch, especially at a time when the current presidential administration has gone full hawk on Iran. They’re also more than a little uncomfortable, both because they show an oppressive government’s approach to a digitized era of propaganda and, if we’re being honest, they do kind of resemble pro- military media produced in places like the US. One video highlighted by the paper features Amir Tataloo, a musician with a “hard- partying, gangster- style reputation,” who extolled “our absolute right / to have an armed Persian gulf” while singing alongside naval personnel on the frigate Damavand. A battalion of Iranian youth carrying flags retaliate by charging towards the water, conjuring up a gigantic tidal wave which sinks the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Another released in 2.

Seraj Cyberspace Organization, which is affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Basij volunteer militia, shows Iranian- backed fighters in Syria taking the fight to ISIS insurgents flying the terror group’s infamous black flag. The video features Hamid Zamani, who the Times noted was the mastermind behind the anti- imperialist song “USA.”“By Zaynab, we are the defenders of Damascus!” the singer croons as a sniper takes out an ISIS fighter in slow- motion. Qassem Suleimani annihilating US troops and naval forces.“The Americans threaten us, we want to say, . One of the more obvious examples is the NFL, where flashy flyovers with high- tech military jets, troops marching with flags and even camouflage jersey sales have been a fixture for years, and the military has pumped tens of millions of dollars into patriotic displays at sports games. Others include the close relationship between the military and the video game industry, or its tight collaboration with the movie industry. Indications are strong President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking ways to back out of the US- Iran nuclear deal, per CNBC, which would set the stage for tensions to escalate rapidly—though with stakes a good bit realer than CGI tsunamis and bullet time.