We haven’t decided whether or not we want to use music throughout our film, but I at least need to have options if we decide we do want to. So I’ve been in contact with one of my friends Joseph De Blasio, who goes to VCA and studies music and creates some really cool tunes. I’ve shared a few examples (first 10-20 seconds of each link) that show the sort of clean ominous background music stuff he can create.

We decided on creating sort of a “colour palette” by having samples of 4 different ideas, but I haven’t got them quite yet, which isn’t an issue for the project but an issue for pb3. Some of the ideas that we wanted to express were something more dramatic with an emotional impact, quite consonant, in the sense it has like a definable chord progression/melody etc. Another idea was to work with a more surreal sound, by doing a test with signal noises.

In terms of the timing of the project process though, music is more important in post-production for us. I personally have had trouble actually picturing the sort of film we are creating, and the vibes we want to ensue, but I’m sure in editing I will have a clear understanding, and will be able to decide whether or not we need or even want music.

I have started creating a sound bank to get into the flow of audio recording and to have extra some sounds when going into the editing stage. Obviously some aren’t exactly accurate and some aren’t even related, I just thought I’d have some things just in case. In our first scene we have a woman weeping uncontrollably, so I just thought I get a recording of someone crying and see how well it works.

In the kitchen scene there is a plate that smashes on the floor, and I’m pretty sure the actual smash happens out of the shot so we can easily just use the sound, so I wanted to do a rough audio recording to see if it works.

I also have never worked with creating a sound scape before, like I have created realistic atmospheric sounds before, but never dramatic and theatrical that are needed I guess for the surreal feel. After hearing that David Lynch creates some cool ominous sounds just by blowing into a mic I thought I may as well try and see how it goes (below).

I then used my stand up fan to see if a more constant air pressure works more or less. Below is a recording with the zoom mic facing the fan.

I then noticed that if the microphone was not facing the fan directly (below clip), it has less of that crackling static sound heard in the audio clip above. Having the mic not facing the fan makes it sounds more realistic, like actual wind, so this doesn’t achieve the sort of surreal effect that Lynch wanted, so it perhaps won’t be as useful if we use it in our soundscape.

Having done some of the wind experiments, I then went and filmed a friend saying a few lines from our script, and wanted to do some rough tests to see which soundscape worked well.

In this test I used some footage without dialogue and included the test I did with a microphone facing a fan.

Dialogue was used in this test because I wanted to see if the atmos sounds worked with separate layers of audio.

It was probably a wrong music clip choice, or maybe even the reading of the line, but I felt this was really awkward. I think if it was a more emotional moment it would have more impact.