Today

Today wasn't too bad! The main body of the opening has now been edited and we are about to show it to our potential audience in order to see if they prefer it in film noir or Sepia tone. Of course, sepia tone is a huge change from our original plan but still looks good. In terms of soundtrack, we are very impressed with the soundscape in our production and think that it really helps to build up suspense/enigma! 

Hopefully audio clips of our sounds will be posted in due course. They are all royalty free and so can be used in our project freely.

One is not impressed however at the fact that Nicole is currently editing a film of all my 'daft moments' from the preliminary task. We'll leave that one there!

Shutter Island soundscape

As Hazel previously mentioned, we have decided to look at soundtracks as part of the editing process. This particular post analyses part of Shutter Island in terms of it's soundtrack.


This is relatively simple in terms of sound. at the start of the clip, all we can hear is talking and rain. This makes the dialogue stand out and means that more attention will be payed to it. Obviously the dialogue is important. It would be unrealistic to use a condenser mic mounted on a boom pole to record this audio due to the special effects at the end, so I would guess that the dialogue was recorded in a studio post filming. This will stop any noise from wind and the water etc. Of course, the main difficulty with this is lip syncing, certainly not an easy thing to do.

As the clip progresses, the audio starts to build up with more and more layers. The rain can be heard from the beginning however it would seem that it gets louder as the clip progresses. This is more of an illusion than anything else however it adds to the tension of the clip. The tension is clearly building up with the dialogue and so the other sounds must complement this. I would say that the rain is actually Foley sound. It has been recorded post filming and is not necessarily actually rain!

Up to now, we have only heard sounds that the characters can hear; these are called diegetic sounds. Non-diegetic sounds cannot be heard by the characters. They are used to help tell the story to us. The non diegetic sound is the ever so slight build up of a repetitive low pitched sound. Lower pitched sound can often be found in Thrillers. as it builds up suspense. This sound of course slowly gets louder and louder until the door opens and there is a crescendo. This is where the sound suddenly stops, helping to build tension. When the door does open, there is a horrible screech; this is the hinges and is a diegetic sound. The rain is then evermore louder. This illustrates the fact that the two characters are now in the open and are in perhaps in danger. Rain is a predictor of bad things.

The final layer of sound is the deputy speaking. This would have most certainly have been done in a studio and has been edited to sound like it is coming from loud speakers. The editing of course makes it sound much more realistic.

The sound builds up to make a soundscape and all adds to the tension. Diegetic sounds make it seem very realistic whilst non diegetic sounds help to build up the tension.

Soundtrack analysis

Now that we've started editing, I thought i'd start looking at how sound tracks effect the over all effect of a thriller film. I decided to look at the music and sound affects used in the opening of Inception. This is the opening sequence of Inception:



Instantly the music starts with low deep notes. Although it is quite a simple piece of music to begin with, the notes are slightly off so it makes the audience feel on edge and unsure.Then the music starts to layer and slightly higher pitched, shorter notes are added very subtly, which increases the off putting, unsure feeling. There is also an added eerie tone, like on note being held for a large proportion of the set up, this is typical of lots of thriller films as it adds suspense to footage instantly. As the actually footage starts, softer high string instruments are added in, lighting up the mood of film. This is also very off putting as the combination of the low slow music and high quicker notes confuses the audience. The string music quickly ends as the action starts. As the shot changes and they change  location, the music partly comes to a halt and a deep dong like noise plays for a moment. From this point, the music although it is still important, is over powered with speak.

In the first 1:08 the layering of music is very important in building up suspense and creating tension in the film. The layering helps to make the audience with uneasy and slightly off as they know something is going to happen but some of the layers hint something bad may or may not happen. Listening to the soundtrack from Inception and other thriller films, I'm starting to realise that layering is very important in creating the right feel/mood and tension within a thriller film and we should consider this when adding soundtracks to our thriller opening.

Today was rather interesting

Editing did not go as smoothly as we would have liked it to today. We spent most of the lesson attempting to add a 'Sin City' effect to our project. 

This ended in our female character having blue lips... not quite what we wanted! 

We also added a few sound effects such as the gun shot. This sounded absolutely awesome! 

In the next few weeks, we will be exploring thriller sound scapes, stay tuned for more.

Possible soundtracks

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?genre=Horror seems to be a good site for royalty free music. There is no 'Thriller' category but there is a 'horror' category. Some of the tracks in this category seem appropriate. They are 'Aftermath' and 'The house of leaves'.

Update... 08/11/12

Well, We're getting there... slowly!

Filming day went great, albeit after a shaky start! None of out actors turned up for various reasons so we had to think on our feet. Luckily, after Hazel running down the street and grabbing one of her friends, we had a main male character. This was a huge relief, but we still didn't have gangsters. After some discussion, we decided to proceed with no gangsters, which worked out really well in the end. We have come to the conclusion that our opening actually works better without them.

Other than this, the only problem we had was lighting. The lights were too bright! After lugging heavy equipment up a staircase and then having to assemble it, I was rather disappointed when it turned out that we actually only needed one light, the smallest one, which wasn't on trussing. Down came the lights, trussing and stands with only the small Birdie remaining. It was conveniently stuck to a roof fan using electrical tape. Trying to keep it in the same position all the time was difficult, but we managed.

Our male actor; Martin was absolutely excellent, especially considering he had just been dragged out of bed to help with our project. Jazz, our female actor, who also just happens to be Hazel's sister was not only a great actor, but also very helpful in terms of making sure filming went well. She knew exactly what she was talking about.

We are now in the editing process. Yesterday, all the video clips were arranged into folders respective of whether or not they were good takes. Today was the day that we began to edit the beginning of the sequence. We are now using Final Cut Express, which is much better than imovie. A full tutorial on Final Cut from our teacher; Miss Hill, will take place tomorrow.

Filming day

On wednesday, we completed all the filming of footage needed for our film. The previous night, things started falling apart as we were all talking over Facebook, checking the things we needed. We discovered that all of our extras, and our main male character dropped out, leaving us with only one actor. Another quite large problem we realised, was that none of us had remembered to take a tripod from school. We all arrived at our location (Hazel's house), by 11:00am and were set up by 11:20. After some rushed reach-outs on Facebook the night before, we managed to get an actor for the main male role and Adain found a tripod he had.
- obviously it's clear from this, that we all need to improve on our organisational skills...

Generally speaking from there on out the filming went really well and we all cooperated with each other in a reasonably professional way. Haha. We managed to get all the filming done in one day and finished by half past four, really happy with our footage. Now all that's left is to start the editing process first lesson back!!