Portfolio Work Day 2: Sound Statement

SOUND STATMENT

The sound statement relies on the genre statement heavily, as the sound of a movie usually is influenced by the genre and narrative of the film. This means that the genre statement, story, and sound are intricately linked.


For the sound aesthetic of my movie I could have done a couple different things, as psychological thriller is a genre that has a lot of different sound that people link to. I knew I wanted to do some things like movies. I liked their sound design yet also put my own spin to follow the identity of the movie.


One of the most recognizable sound aesthetics of a psychological thriller is Joker,2018. The soundtrack has long notes that are low and held for an uncomfortable amount of time. The main instrument, the cello, adds a sense of bitterness and melancholy to the music. The sound of the environment is also as dark but aggressive. As overlapping sounds of the city, like police, ambulance and people screaming tell the story of Gotham being taken over by crime. This sound aesthetic is one that is slow and personal to the film.


Compared to black swan,2010

In this scene the plucking of the feathers sound is exaggerated to add more pain to the action, while this is happening screaming from both character add even more to the panic and intensive finally music from swan lake  plays which  add even more tension but also tells the audience this is a hallucination.

which uses classical music that is not original for the movie. Yet classical music characterizes the main character Nina through her hallucination as music of the ballet plays even though it makes no sense to the audience. In a way classical music is used to separate the main character from reality. It sounds cheerful and often is upbeat, but it does not take away from the sinister feeling, more like adds to it as causes a disconnect from what is happening in the screen. The sound effects of normal life are often exaggerated to emphasize big moments like when Nina hurts her ankle, and the sound is not close to life. But the exaggeration of the sound makes the audience feel like it is as big of a deal as Nina feels it too.


These two movies' sound design stuck in my mind, and they were my point of reference. I ended with a combination of both like Black Swan using classical music to connect the character but instead of disconnecting the character from the real world, classical music will bring the character back to the real world. From the joker I liked the clashing sounds overlaying each other which depict the turmoil of the city. So, I decided that something similar would be used for the intrusive thoughts that come to life.


The intrusive thoughts are a big part of the film, so I wanted to distinguish them more than just the clashing sounds, but also by their dialogue being whisper that have a scratching sound to them. This is how the character herself hears them as no matter how much she shushes them the whisper comes back.

The Joker,2019 ending scene where a dichotomy of the calm melancholic main theme plays, while the sound of the riots clash against each other.

Deciding how I wanted the sound design for my film was hard, as someone who is very interested in the subject, my mind goes a hundred miles a minute about the possibilities' different Things I could do, unique sound effects, having so much control about the sound as I'm doing this film solo is both a blessing and a curse. As I can get carried away, but once I started watching the films I liked the sound design of in the genre, I started brainstorming so I could use the things the other films did in my film. Inspiration is necessary to be able to do something, being completely original does not mean much in the grand scheme of things. The importance is to change it to fit the vision of the film.