The video starts with the score straight away sounding ominous and setting the tone as the title of the film appears. As everything fades to black, we hear a sound effect of a match striking and then a candle being lit. The score is being played in the background with the match striking sound overlayed on top to give it more authenticity. What we get next is a short burst of clips distorted in colours of red and blue which appears to be the main colour palette of this film. As the clips appear, there is a sound that cuts in time with it also distorted. This really heightens the visuals that appear and makes it more effective. From black, we then see a girl appear, presumably the one who was in the distortion before. As she appears we hear a light switch sound. This is a nice effect as it is in sync allowing us to feel like she appears at the flick of a switch. At this time the score is still eerily played in the background. We hear more sound effects of her breathing but quite echo like as if it's distant and not there. There are 3 cuts when we hear the breaths but the sound doesn't jump creating a smooth transition between the shots. The score gets louder as the camera gets closer to her face creating intensity. At the end of this scene, we see her disappear and the visuals cut to black whilst hearing once again a light switch.
I feel like the sound design for this scene has really been thought about and really makes use of allowing the film to be a lot more effective. It not only heightens visuals but makes the film seem more fluid and professional. This is something I want to make sure we do with our film. I want the visuals to be clear on screen with a good appropriate score to what's happening and how I want the audience to feel. I then want to make sure sound effects are overlayed in order to compliment what we are seeing and making the film more professional and real.
The next piece I looked at was a short film by Julias Damenz who has a lot more of a complex sound design. Its called Infinite and has won many awards. You can watch the film below:
The film starts off silent as it introduces the director. From black in a matter of seconds, we start to hear a whirring, rumbling sound just before the start of a voice over and then the first shot appears on the screen. I love how there are 3 layers to this all in a matter of seconds that when overlapped really create a seamless transition and build anticipation at the same time. I want to use this with our project preferably the intro as well as I feel this is really professional and effective. As the first shot appears on screen it quickly cuts to a different shot of a silver ball rolling. We hear a sound effect or some foley recorded of a ball rolling along the floor sped up. We then go back to the first shot and then back to the ball again before going to black. As the scene fades to black we still hear voiceover but all the other sounds have disappeared. I like the way this is done as it heightens the tone and mood of the film.
The film then fades in with a different shot of a man lying under a sheet. A different piece of music comes in almost sounding angelic and soft. This gives a completely different feeling to what was happening in the first scene. Also, the man is moving around and placing a chair down but can't we hear him which works really well in letting us really feel the soundtrack that's being heard as well as paying attention to the voiceover. When the scene starts to intensify, a loud rumbling can be heard getting louder and louder. The man is holding the silver ball which we could hear from before. As he drops it we get a wooshing sound effect and a bang as it drops to the floor. The scene then turns white and before we can see anything but the man squinting, we hear the sound of the waves appearing as though he is by the sea. This is really clever as we are able to hear and sense things but we are not necessarily seeing them. I feel I could use this in our film creating noises associated with the scene but not necessarily seeing them.
Overall this films complex sound design really creates the final piece to its professional level. I have understood how important it is to include sound design in our film to make sure we are hitting that standard of work.
I decided I wanted to use a mixture of royalty free sound effects and music to make sure I am abiding by copyright laws but after listening to an array of music I really want to include some tracks that are owned by professional record labels. I have never done this before so I wanted to do some research to see if it would be possible and in our budget allowance. I had a look at a website called No Film School which had an article called "How to get a big budget song in your low budget indie film". The article explained that it is very possible to use a big budget song with hardly any money but there is a really important list of rules to follow. The first it explains is getting the artists permission. It's really important that you clear all copyright before using a song as this can create a lot of issues in the future. The next was then clearing the master rights which means going through the record label and making sure they allow permission to use the song. The third rights that you have to clear are publishing rights which is usually done on your behalf by the record label. Once all this is done the final step is negotiating payments. This can be tricky and the author of the article explained that he felt all of the rights would cost him thousands of pounds. When he contacted and explained his project and the film he was going to make as well as explaining he has hardly any money, they let him use the track for ten's of pounds let alone hundreds.
I found a track called Movie by an artist called Habstrakt that I feel would really fit one of the scenes im planning to shoot when I visualised it in my head. I decided to find the record label and send them an email explaining I wanted to use the track. This is the email I sent:
I got a phone call from them the following day as they wanted me to explain more information about what I was doing and the film. They told me that I was able to use the track in the film for free and they would like to review the final film before I put it into a festival to ensure it works well with their song. I'm so glad I did this and I have contacted other record labels for various different songs in a list that I compiled of all the tracks and sound effects I wish to use. You can see that list below:
I created a colomn that said music followed by sound effects, website link and the label that its from. I feel that creating this list helps me to keep everything organised and find the sounds and music that I am looking to use really easily. I feel like I really understand sound design and realise its importance when it comes to using it in our film.
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