Ashlea Hickin
Media Studies
SOUNDOGRAPHY
We completed our sound research as a group because we feel that sound is one of the most important components of a film. The sounds allow you to set the scene and immediately create an unsettling yet intriguing atmosphere for the audience. A lack of sound may make the film unrealistic or unprofessional therefore having less overall effect on the audience. In order to gain more of an understanding as to what our target audience expect, we asked them a question about sound in our audience research questionnaire. From this, we learnt that our target audience expect it to be minor key and orchestral as they feel that these are the sorts of things that are more unsettling. We also took into consideration the fact that most people said that their favourite horror/ apocalyptic film was World War Z because this suggests that the sounds used in this opening are very effective. We found this information particularly useful because it meant that we could use the opening score as inspiration for our own score.
We began our research by searching on Sound Cloud for copyright free music to get a sense of what was available to us. We found two which we feel would be suitable for our film which can be listened to below:
We choose both of these tracks because we felt that the repetitive beat in both of them is quite taunting and spooky. We also felt that the minor key in both suggests danger and makes the audience feel at risk because of the unhappy tone of the score. The instruments used in both are effective as the piano in the first one is uncomfortable to listen to as it is slightly more high pitched. In the second one, the use of the electric guitar mixed with addition of a synthesiser adds to build more suspense and has a feeling of the unknown.
After considering both tracks and referring back to our audience research, we decided that track 1 would be better suited to our opening as we plan to include it as part of our montage. Also, it is similar to the score used in World War Z so we could feel confident that it would appeal to our target audience. This would be our inspiration to create our own version of the track.
We decided that we wanted to create our own track so that we could personally tailor it to suite points in our opening and as a group, we decided to ask one of our friends, Jess Grant to help us. We decided to ask her because within our group, we are not very musical, however, Jess plays a variety of instruments, making her the perfect person to help us. Bernadette first contacted her face to face where she asked her if she was available and showed her the sound clip. I also messaged her later on and in response she sent us some recordings of ideas she had which can be listened to below. Also below is screenshots of the messages I sent. From here, we will contact Jess again and arrange a time when we cans start to construct and record our score.
In regards to sound effects, these will be added in during the editing process to ensure that they give maximum effect to the audience. They will also make our opening more realistic and interesting for our audience. The sound effects that we plan to include are:
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Leaves under feet
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Branches cracking
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Zombie heavy breathing
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Screams
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Creaking trees
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Wind
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Heavy breathing from people