Screaming

[Fred588]

While I am unaware of any real case of someone drowning in mud or quicksand, I can say with some authority that screaming generally does NOT take place in cases of water drowning. When a person is struggling in a water environment that is more than they can handle they rather quickly become too busy breathing hard to scream, or even call for help. I have personally been involved in four instances where a person went under before they called for help even once. Three were rescued by others and the fourth rescued himself by jumping from the bottom. I have also been involved several times in cases where a person was getting into real trouble and had to be assisted, and in none of those cases was there an audible call for help. When there was a call for help it was done by means of waving.

This, of course, describes the real world and not the imaginary one of movies. I see no reason why a movie character cannot scream but I also see no reason why what screaming is done has to be done in any particular way.

With respect to screaming in a movie while sinking, having made a few movie scenes myself I can add a few observations. Doing a quicksand scene with any struggling at all is hard work. The actress must do quite a bit of physical work to do a submergence and doing a slow submergence is actually even more work. Right around the point when the mouth goes under, breathing can be a delicate issue, with a risk of gagging should some water or mud get into the mouth unexpectedly. This often complicated in some scenes by reaching a point at which the eyes are partly or even fully submerged even when the mouth is still above the surface. The actresses work hard at this.