SOUND

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Inspiration


We looked at sound and music used in film openings for Psychological thriller such as "Panic Room" (2002), "The Shining" (1980) and "The Silence of The Lambs" (1991). The music in The Silence of the lambs uses low pitch horns to play the melody which releases a diminished sound that creates a feeling of unease. Similarly, The Shining uses brass instruments as well as unsettling chimes and other percussion instruments to create a disturbing atmosphere. Panic Room also uses horns playing at a low pitch, creating an ominous build up to the start of the movie. However, Clementine and I decided to go for a completely different approach. Inspired by movies such as "Reservoir Dogs" and "A Clockwork Orange", which use upbeat songs that contrast the dark themes of the film. This adds a sinister tone to the film and the music does not match the imagery at all. 

Experimentation

We originally considered using Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in our composition, however it was still under copyright. I sent an email to a licensing agency, but we didn't receive a reply.



We found some other options, and then I edited all three potential sounds over the ending and put it all into one video (replaying the ending each time with each sound playing over each sequence), so I could compare and make a decision. Currently my favourite option is "Run Rabbit Run" by Flanagan and Allen, as it is slightly creepy and contributes to the unsettling undertones of the film opening. It also inspired the idea of adding a low opacity overlay of the female antagonist shooting a gun as the lyrics "Bang, bang, bang, bang goes the farmer's gun".


Final Choice

In the end I chose the song "Run Rabbit Run" performed by Flanagan and Allen. I made this choice because I felt it changed the tone of the film, portraying the couple more as predators and making the mood more sinister. Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on the copyright of this song, as it wasn't mentioned on Wikipedia and copyright websites seemed to mistake the song for "Rabbit Run" by Scott Lewis Mc Caughey. The author of the song, Noel Gay, died in 1951 meaning the 70 years of copyright should have expired. The song also has a dark background (which you can see below), with the meaning of lyrics being changed during WW2. This gives extra depth to my film, as the song is now commonly associated with death.


"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (2016) also used this song due to its associations with wartime.


Foley

During the first day of filming, when we were preparing food, Clementine and I failed to turn the microphone on properly for the first half of shooting. This meant we had to re-record some our sounds. I made a checklist of sounds we had to recreate, then used that to keep track of what I had recorded. In the videos below you can see me using a sound recorder to recreate some of the sounds. In some instances I created a similar sound rather than preparing the food all over again, for example I recorded the scratching sound of the knife dragging across the cutting board rather that recording myself spreading jam across a piece of toast. I used the sound of peeling a mandarin to recreate tearing open the pomegranate, and I used a combination of two sounds - pouring pine nuts into a bowl of lettuce and pouring some water into the same bowl - to recreate pouring pomegranate seeds (and juices) into a salad as I had run out of pomegranate. You can also see me running some water which I will add over the footage of water swirling in the sink and washing away “blood”.




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