Silence within films

Real Steel

A silence within a film can be used for dramatic effect. A dramatic effect is often made on the audience when a long pause is created before a sudden loud noise or bang occurs.
                                           

Director Shawn Levy's review on 'Real Steel'

Throughout the trailer of Real Steel Shaun Levy has deliberately used passes to make the next sound or action in the trailer more dramatic and for it to have a greater impact on the audience. When watching the trailer a pause indicates that what is coming next is significant during the actual film, as Shaun Levy has only used the most important sections during the film to have pauses before them, before they are actually shown in the trailer. These pauses makes those sections the key moments of the film, so by watching a variety of small sections of the film shown in the trailer, the viewer is able to see what the story is more or less about. It also engages the audience to want to watch the full movie to see these major events happen.

Fast and Furious 6

Silence is also used in 'Fast and Furious 6' at 1.21 seconds into the trailer before the car hits the floor. If there was no pause before the car hits the ground i think everything that is happening along with the car crash would look too chaotic in that one clip of the scene. However Justin Lin the director, has effectively slowed down the tempo of the car hitting the ground so that the audience is just left watching the car in silence as it is passing through the air. This pause is really effective as the chaos that happened before the car was hit is no longer heard, it has disappeared and there is silence. A natural wind can also be heard as the car is ready to hit the ground which sounds great because if a car is in the air from a crash and it is about to hit the ground, there would naturally be some sort of strong wind because of the speed that the car is travelling at. So Justin Lin is being very true to the moment. Immediately after the silence the audience is then watching the chaos with its sound as it carries on. A pause is a great way to cause a climax before everything continues as normal.