Sound editing

Sound editing


For our film opening, the main idea was to have a non-diegetic piece which did not accurately reflect what is being shown on screen; A light-hearted piece of music against a horrific and gory visual would make the opening, disturbing and shocking to a target audience, and more likely to be confused and/or intrigued as to why everything appears to be "normal" Our intention was to make the whole scene uncomfortable and unsettling for the target audience, so presenting an aspect which subverts stereotypical features of a horror film, would be most likely to provoke a reaction.  Horror movies generally need to have the right music at the right time, and in some horror movies, songs can be heavily juxtaposed with violent/gory imagery as an ironic aspect, or twisted in a certain way to make the scene foreboding. Some examples of this are:


 'Lord of Illusions' is filled with the kind of bodily horror and dances with the dark side that one can expect in a Clive Barker film. To balance this out with a dose of happiness, the director taped Erasure to make a cheerful classic even more sugary sweet by covering this track originally made famous by Perry Como. The song plays as Harry D’Amour enters the Magic Castle, providing a jarringly pleasant break from the horror surrounding it.



This classic received new, creepy life in the Michael Myers franchise. Trick ‘r Treaters are woefully unaware of the terror that awaits them on Halloween night. The juxtaposition between such an uplifting song and the graphic murders within the movie becomes evident,  making the entire scene more disturbing.


This song is already strange sounding  to begin with, but that’s part of its charm. It’s the record of choice for a demonic entity lurking in The Further, the astral projection no-man’s land where Dalton is trapped. The cheeriness in Tiny Tim’s warbly, high-pitched vocals is a stark contrast to the evil that haunts the film’s family. “Come tiptoe through the tulips with me” now sounds like an invitation no one should answer. The lyrics themselves sound like a typical love song, but with the addition of a demonic scene, it becomes a strange/discordant/ creepy presentation.
I researched through the Classical music genre for music pieces which could be "light hearted" and able to build tension as easily as a stereotypical  horror genre soundtrack.Based on my research, I narrowed it down to three pieces:
Beethoven- Symphony No.7 in A Major, Opus 92
Mozart- Requiem
Overture Coriolan in C Minor, Opus 62
Eventually, I settled for  Beethoven's Symphony No.7 in A Major, Opus 92, Second movement (allegretto) as I felt this was the most dramatic and best at building tension.



The piece itself is almost 9 minutes long, so in Garageband, I edited and cut the most dramatic parts of the piece together, using a cutting tool and several other techniques such as phasing, to get the timings and fades exactly right.I had cut it down to just over 2 minutes and exported to iTunes, which will help us make our entire film opening parallel and synchronous.


> I added a pitch bending layer, which will diminish and bend certain notes to sound out of tune, hinting that not everything appears to be "normal" as the piece is trying to portray.



> Here, after cutting other extra arts out, I had to adjust the timings and place of all the parts of the piece, making sure they kept within 4/4 time.

> From the original piece, I had cut:
from(in order); 0:00-0:06, 7:51-8:24, 4:42-5:24, 6:23-6:51, 6:48-6:51, 8:24-8:28, 8:30-8:46. 

>With a precision tool on Garageband, I removed all noise from the background, isolating only the parts which were necessary.

> In the master track, I added some more effects, this is known as EQ (Equalisation)
With this, I was able to increase the volume of certain points of the new piece, and accentuate the peaks of where the music reaches a high point. 


 > In Audacity, another sound editing program, I edited the finished piece using a Time-scale, which changes the pitch in certain areas which are highlighted in the picture below. Between the markers 1-7, there is a 3% pitch change ( Marker 7 has a change of 21%) allowing the key of the piece to change from A Major to A# Major then down to G minor. This  makes those particular places warble subtly, creating an uncomfortable sound, as I intended for the piece to sound joyous as well as ominous. Within markers 8 to 9, I zoomed in and changed the sound wave itself using the pencil tool, which is used to edit samples. This was the build up to the climax of the edited piece, so with the pencil tool, I created new peaks and recesses so that by the time marker 10 was reached, there would be sufficient contrasts.






> I also boosted the bass and treble by a total of 8dB, which decreases any indefinite sounds found in the piece, which disguises where I've cut more effectively than just fading in and fading out.






> In Final Cut Pro, I tested out different panning presets. Panning is a technique which musicians use to change how you would hear the music. A good example of panning is Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody; when the words "Easy come, Easy go, Little high, Little Low" are sung, "Easy come" and "Little High" are panned towards the left speaker, so that you would only be able to hear it on the left side, the right is completely omitted. The reverse is true with "Easy go" and "Little low". With our edited piece, I decided to choose a circle pan, which, when heard , should reach around the listener's ears and eclipse them. This is to make sure that the piece is all they can hear.

VASQ Media

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