Sound Deconstruction - The Ring

For my sound deconstruction, I wanted to look at the opening sequence of a film within our genre, so I chose to look at Samara's Song - the opening song in The Ring. I firstly looked at the lyrics of the song:

Round we go

The world is spinning

When it stops

It's just beginning

Sun comes up

We live and we cry

Sun goes down

And then we all die

Clearly, the lyrics highlight the genre of the film, as they have dark connotations such as 'die' and 'cry', which juxtapose with 'sun' and 'live'. This enables the audience to form an immediate presentation of what the film is going to be like, and sets the tone for the remainder of the film. There are also very few words in the lyrics, and are very simple to follow. This is effective as it means that the audience can  focus on what is being sung, without losing focus on the visuals. The verses of the song are also sung repeatedly, which could suggest repetition within the narrative.
The format of the song is in the style of a nursery rhyme, with a young girl singing. The use of a young girl enables a contrast between innocence and purity with the themes of the film being death. The juxtaposition of the singer and the lyrics is effective, as it makes it sound eerier. The pace also adds to the effectiveness of the soundtrack, as it is sung slowly, enabling the audience to understand the lyrics. This also emphasises the nursery rhyme style of the song, which are traditionally slow paced. The pitch of the song varies throughout, the instrument used being an metal xylophone, which enables a variety of pitches and crisp sounds to be produced.

Although the creepy and eerie soundtrack works effectively for The Ring, it wouldn't suit our opening sequence, and therefore isn't what we are planning to use.
As our opening has two elements to it, the initial castle scene and also the kidnapping scene in the forest, we wanted two separate soundtracks, but wanted to ensure that they worked together and flowed. To add suspense, we decided that we didn't want any lyrics for the castle scene, as this could potentially take the focus away from the visuals. For the second section, we wanted a juxtaposition of sound, using a more upbeat pop song rather than a dark song and lyrics. This would be effective as the contrast would aid the visuals as the girl is unexpectedly kidnapped. Over the song, we would layer an eerie soundtrack to add suspense.

Editing Evaluation- Sound Effects

As mentioned before, sound was a main focus in making this film opening effective. Therefore adding even small sound effects that maybe aren't even that noticeable or too significant actually give a lot to making the opening more realistic. When the girl is running up to the camera (before she is captured) I found a heavy breathing or panting sound effect that added to the scene because it shows her tiredness and also then makes it make sense when she stops to regain her breath. We were going to put in a fast-beating heart-beat but we decided that a heavy breathing would be less cliché and more realistic as well. I then bladed the heavy breathing as soon as the killer puts his hand over her mouth because this symbolises the fact that he's almost taken away her breath or life by this point.



Another sound effect that I thought needed to be put in for it to make sense was a car boot slam. We did have the original sound on the camera of the car boot but we didn't think it sounded crisp enough or enough like a boot slam because this was the last sound of the sequence and we wanted the slam to be quite prominent so I found a free sound effect from YouTube and made sure that it went in at the right time. Having this rather than just a silent slam creates better continuity and also almost is a bit of a 'jump' moment which the horror genre normally contains.

Editing Evaluation- Flashback

For a practical task, I did an editing practice which was a flashback experiment. To do this effectively so that the audience knows what they're looking at, ideally you need two contrasting scenes. For my experiment I did a girl flashbacking about a car crash she was in which killed her boyfriend (the driver of the car) and I managed to merge two completely separate scenes and make it look like the girl was remembering this traumatic experience.

This worked well because the 'present' scene was a still scene of the girl just looking dramatically at the camera, whereas the 'past' scene  was from her POV in the passenger seat of a car on the motorway. This was good because it didn't create any confusion as to what was happening because the 'present' scene wasn't moving, she was just recalling what happened.

I managed to transfer some of the skills I used in the experiment to this flashback of the killer remembering previous deaths leading up to the one he was about to commit. However this one was more difficult because the two contrasting scenes were in the same location which could have been quite confusing. Therefore the first thing I did was find an effect which would create a visual differentiation when initially comparing the two scenes. 'Burnt Sunrise' gave the image an old, tea-stained look, aging the clip and not making the image as bright or vivid as the present time one as well. The flashback images also needed to be quicker than the present time to show that these are just quick brief thoughts going in and out of his mind so blading it at the right moments was also important.
Additionally, I added in flashing transitions in between each change between present and past time to further emphasise the flashback and on these flashes of white light I put 'boom' sound effects, almost like a cannon, to again add to the flashback and memory side of the part of the scene. It's also important to keep in mind that these are memories of the killer and so overlapping the sounds for both present and past brings and groups them together which shows a connection between the two events.

Day 4- Recording- Evaluation

After school on Wednesday the 6th of January, myself, Tia, Charley and Dave all went back to Charley's house to re-record the song that we had started recording. Prior to this date, Charley and Dave had both been working on practising their individual parts to the song as well as Dave practising and going over his solo on the guitar so that they were both well prepped for the evening and we could get the lyrics and melody down as quickly as possible.

When we arrived we set up the recording room again and Dave played the guitar track into the mic; it took a couple of takes but it was a big improvement on the last day. Charley then sang her part of the song; again we used the duvet behind the mic so that the sound was a better quality. Trying to find the right key proved to be quite difficult because we had all been singing it in different keys so it did get quite confusing however once Charley found the key that suited her voice well she managed to sing her part really well. Then it was Dave's turn to sing his parts and also the harmonies. To begin with he just sang the harmonies from memory listening to the backing track but once we put both Charley's and Dave's vocals together the harmonies weren't quite smooth enough and so Dave re-sang his part but this time we played Charley's part through his headphones so he could harmonise straight from hearing her part. This worked a lot better, even though some of the harmonies were still slightly off (but this was fixed just by turning Dave's harmonies down a little bit)

After the guitar and vocals were down, we were then able to add in other instruments like an electric guitar, strings, drums etc. which turned the ballad into a more upbeat song, ideal for running to. We were really pleased with the end result:

Sound Editing- Sound Effects- Scream

 

Sound Editing- Sound Effects- Scream

 

The scream- to make this realistic and dramatic, we wanted a piercing scream as the picture faded to black. We were going to record Tia screaming in the castle but the quality on the camera for the sound wasn't good enough so I looked on YouTube for a scream sound effect and then went through a video which had several sound effects on and then chose a scream that sounded like it came from a relatively young girl. After I put it into Final Cut, I needed to make sure that it came in and ended at the right time so the sound looked like it actually came from the clip and wasn't just layered over it afterwards. After playing it a couple of times, I decided that it didn't sound echoey enough for it to firstly appear like it was in an enclosed castle and secondly to make it seem creepier. Therefore I went onto the sound effects on Final Cut and added a 'large room' effect so it echoed more. Originally we were going to leave it silent to get a deaf POV shot from the killer, but we felt that this wasn't obvious enough or scary and so actually having a scream would have a greater impact, especially because it then fades to black, implying she is killed and this is the last sound we hear from her- it's also a scream that holds quite a lot of pain which shows the traumatic way in which she was murdered. For our film opening, sound is so important because the main theme to the film is deafness and the fact that having a deaf killer subverts common conventions. Therefore we have spent the longest amount of time working on effectively layering up different sounds to create the right ambiance for our film opening.

Filming Evaluation - Day Three - The Song

On Tuesday 29th December, Amy, Tia and David came to my house to record the song. They arrived at around 10:30 and we began straight away. Before this day, we prepared the lyrics of the song (written by Amy) and I worked out the chord progressions of the song with the help of my dad.
The song is as follows: 

Living A Lie

I used to stay awake with you

Talking till two

I was in love with you

But you were blocking my view

And every single time you spoke

I couldn't cope

Never wanted to let go

But now I struggle with hello

Just open your eyes 

And you will see

Now I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day to day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye 

Cos we were living a lie

Do you remember the time

You lay by my side

I couldn't call it then

Never thought that it would end

And every time you smiled at me

I could never believe

This was never meant to be

The end of you and me

Please just open up your eyes

And look at me 

Because I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day 

I want to find you now 

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

I wish that I had known

How much we had to grow

But it's okay

I was better alone anyway

Now I'm flying 

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I am flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

We decided David could play the guitar on the track as well as singing, so he was given the task to practise and perfect playing the song on the guitar, as well as learning what to sing with it. 
However, when it came to the day, David had not properly learnt the song and we had been unable to practise and perform it together due to time constraints and so we spent longer than we should have done on simply recording a reference track on which to base the rest of the composition of the song. This left us with quite a large problem, as we did not use our time efficiently and as a result we did not record enough audio to be able to create the song. 
All four of us underestimated just how long it would take to record and mix the song, and so we spent quite some time dawdling and not making efficient use of our time. 
In the day, we were able to record my vocals, the guitar and David's vocals as well as creating a drum track to go alongside it. However, David's vocals are unusable as we have decided to instead use harmonies in the duet parts of the song. This means that we will need to schedule another date to record the extra parts of the song, and this will give us time to properly rehearse the song before we record the final audio. 
Tia did most of the mixing of the song on the day and my dad instructed her on how to use the software (Sonar X3). 

Filming Evaluation - Day Two - The Forest

On Wednesday 23rd December we arranged to meet at Tia's house at 10:30. We planned to meet to film the shots of Tia running in the forest listening to music. We planned to film in the forest beside Tia's house. The weather was good, but the ground was very muddy from the day before, so Tia struggled to run through the mud without sliding or looking like she was running weirdly. We did however manage to get some footage that was usable of Tia running, however they were mostly the same shot and were not particularly creative.

We also had a problem with what we could film as David did not arrive until around 12:30 due to his ill planning so we were unable to film any shots that included the killer. 
When David eventually arrived, we were able to get some decent shots of him dressed as the killer. We filmed what we thought was a wide range of shots, however when we looked over the footage when we returned to Tia's house we saw that we did not actually have a lot of usable footage. As a result, we had to plan for Tia to film some more shots at a later date. 
We managed to get several establishing shots of the forest, such as shots of the sky and trees, however these clips were only about 15 seconds long each, and so there isn't a lot we can do with them. There is also not enough different shots to be able to use them to flesh out the footage of Tia running, so we will need to film some more shots of both Tia running and the mise-en-scene of the forest in order to produce enough footage to create a realistic film opening without having to repeat shots.
We were careful of most continuity errors that may have occurred within filming these shots as the footage in the forest is set right before the castle scene so everything needed to be the same, but not dirty and dishevelled. We even made sure that Tia had her nails painted neatly and in the same pattern as they had been for the castle scenes.