Creating The Sound Track

Creating our soundtrack took about three days work. It was both fun and challenging. Over the course of filming our film, Harry and I came up with a few ideas for the sound of the finished piece. We only vaguely thought about it as we went along, we did not go into much detail. For example, we would be filming a shot and one of us would come up with an idea and say "this would work well," or "we should do this here." We didn't make any notes as such, rather mental notes. This did help however, because once it came to uploading the footage and editing, we had a basic idea of what we wanted.

Once the final parts of the footage were uploaded and edited, I brought my synthesizer into school to do some work on the soundtrack. This is a type of keyboard that produces abnormal sounds... Perfect for our film. We agreed that there would be lots of incidental music to fit the genre. Lots of small parts to fit the character's emotions at that point. We also wanted to leave in quite alot of the sound picked up by the camera, aka diegetic sound, to add realism. However we would have to be careful that the sound picked up was not of a poor quality. This was key with the first sequence in picking up the sound of the wind/basic outside noises. Mainly we wanted the sound to be fairly surreal yet realistic as if it was in the character's own mind. I will go on to explain this later.

The first thing we added to the film was our sound motif, the tune of the film. This was something I came up with earlier on, but felt it fitted in well with the film so we decided to use it.

Next up was a haunting sound on my synthesizer. One that filled the space lightly but still gave a good mysterious, chilling effect. This was to set the tone of the film as a spine tingling thriller, and to create a cold opposite outside, to the hot red lights of inside the house. Diegetic sound at this point is his footsteps and the wind, which works really well with the synth to create a cold chilling effect. During this part, Barry looks up to the sky and hears the noise that triggers his visions. It's also done on the synth and is based on a fog horn. After 4 bars of the solo synthesizer, some strings come in that play an incidental piece that is adapted later in the opening. A flute comes in at this part giving a warm, homely effect as Barry reaches his home. However, as the door is slammed shut, so is the music. This works well, it is sort of in your face, and acts as a good barrier between the two settings.

As he gets into the house there is a deafly silence. This 10 extract was inspired by The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola.) The silence is so strong that it gets the audience to listen so hard meaning that they stop moving etc to listen harder. This technique creates lots of suspense and works well in our film. After the silence, during the rotating shot around Barry, comes a complex process. On my synthesizer is a touch pad. If you touch this pad and move your hand around it whilst playing a note, the frequency and resonance of the note is changed, creating a 'wah' effect. This part relates back to the sentence in the introduction I said I would explain. Basically, most of the music is based on what I imagine the character to be thinking/hearing in his mind. My inspiration for this idea, was the sound you (or maybe just I) get when you have a dream and you die and you (or I) get the sudden sound in your mind of sheer horror that you are dying. I wanted to recreate a similar concept with this, but slightly less extreme. I think it helps you relate to the character and get inside his mind, and get to grips with the way he is feeling.

As he sits down, it returns to a vague silence. One of the diegetic sound features the camera picked up was the sound of the big clock in the room. This provided a challenge to get each tick in time with each cut, i think it came out fairly well in the end. We put a touch of emphasis on it to give the film a bit of rhythm and to act as some form of a count down.

As Barry sits down and turns the TV on, you can hear the diegetic sound of the news. This also shows conventions of a thriller, however I won't go onto that in this section. As he watches, i use the pad on my synth again. I play a bass synth and start with low frequency getting to high frequency quickly. This is the exact same sound as I explained earlier in the dreams. It also represents the build up, and calm before a storm. The frequency builds up and then once at its peak, it cuts for a second or two. (Inspired by Lord Of The Rings, 2003, Peter Jackson.)

After this the red lights come on and with regards to the sound, there is loads going on. I think there are about 4 different synth parts at this point, all combined to show the power of the vision. During the next shot of the shadow on the wall, I went back to the incidental music from earlier, but moved it up a few octaves to create a scary feel, inspired by Drag Me To Hell (2009, Sam Raimi.) However I was not keen on this part, as I thought it rather cringy and stereotypical, but the audience feedback we received encouraged us to keep it. This overlaps all four synths (which were turned down slightly for clarity.)

The next shot is introduced with a bell ringing twice. This bell indicates the start of the vision, but was not powerful enough just as a normal bell. So to counter this, I added distortion and amp simulation to the bell. This gave it a really powerful timbre which worked extremely well as it is so sudden.

After this comes the sound of the end of the world. This is what we had envisioned it to sound like. And it came out really well. Over the top of this is also the same foghorn effect to show that the sound is linked to the visions. As he walks up to the TV the same confusing synth comes in to show is feelings and that he is in some form of a trance.

The original slap on the shoulder was taken out of the film due to the light switch being heard. We rerecorded it and put it in place, but it turned out to sound like a light switch anyway, but there you go.

The first and only piece of dialogue in the film was fully picked up by the camera. We just had to turn it up full blast to make it coherent. As Barry turns to the TV, he can hear it, therefore its diegetic, then one of my favourite parts of sound is the screaming noise as the peephole effect is used. This is used to show power of the vision and also to make the audience jump when they think all the trouble is over. As he turns back to Gregg, another synth is used to create a creepy noise and feeling, as if to say... "What the?"

Finally, the original sound motif is used on the last title. It is adapted by putting in a few strings and creating a more grand, vast feel, as the end of the world is quite a vast deal.

(All sounds were made using my synthesizer on GarageBand, and some, from straight through the camera.)

I used a synthesizer to give it a modern, futuristic feel and strings to give it a grand more meaningful feel. I think this combination works well with the genre of 'Visionary' because it is a timeless film. It could be remade into a medieval film, but could also be remade into a film set in the year 3000, so it gives it that anonymous feel.

I could not be more pleased with the way the soundtrack came out and could well look into it as a career.