In the first episode of season four of Breaking Bad, Gus, the boss of a large drug operation, enters an underground meth lab, where his cooks, Walt and Jesse, are quietly seated. Slowly, Gus descends -- clank, clank, clank -- his shoes tapping against the metal stairs. Without speaking, he walks to a dressing area, meticulously removes his his suit jacket, ring, and eyeglasses, and zips into a biohazard suit. The room is dead silent.
During the three-minute scene, there is little dialogue, and a minutia of sounds can be heard: squeaking chairs, footsteps, the swooshing of pant legs, and slow, steady footsteps. Then, with little warning, Gus raises a boxcutter, slits the throat of one of his trusted workers, and holds the man’s head as it spurts loud, gushy streams of blood across the room.
As the scene’s plot thickens, and as the dialogue picks back up, its easy to forget about the atmosphere of tiny sounds you’ve been exposed to. After all, they were so natural sounding, that they seemed to be picked up on the set -- at least that’s what Gregg Barbanell, the man who created them, wants you to think.