Foley Sound

We used a variety of original foley sounds in our trailer.

Foley Sound in Act 1

In act 1 we deliberately removed almost all of the diegetic sound, to create a smoother montage as the sound wasn't of consistent tone or quality. As such, there was no need for any foley sound, as the feeling of verisimilitude usually created using foley sound and continuity editing isn't needed during a trailer montage.

Foley Sound in Act 2

Act 2 starts with the breakfast scene, which required lots of post-recorded diegetic sound. The tapping on the bowl, the ticking of the clock (which is barely audible, but helps to build intensity and tension in the scene) and the spoon falling onto the table were all recorded separately to the camera shots - hence why some of it doesn't synchronise up that well.

The next scene in Act 2 is Eve using her phone and scribbling in her diary - I recorded sounds of me typing on a phone and scribbling on some paper to add in later. I did this in an environment with soft surfaces to allow me the greatest freedom to use reverb to give an idea of the size of the space in post production. You can here this in the trailer.

Unfortunately we had a sound recording error in the next scene - you can hear that the sound of the footsteps is far too loud in comparison to the voices. Unfortunately, this was very difficult to remove as the footstep sound is a similar frequency to the voice, and we didn't have time to reshoot this scene, so I did my best and moved on. Next time, I would have re-recorded the dialogue in post production (as we did last year) but as mentioned, we didn't have time this year.

The plate smash sound effect is the next example of foley sound - since the plates were made of plaster, they didn't sound like plates smashing using the recorded sound, so I had to source a plate smashing sound effect from a royalty-free website. Next time I would record the plate smashing sound myself, but unfortunately our budget didn't allow for that this year.

Foley Sound in Act 3

Again, in Act 3 the sound of her removing the knife from the rack didn't build tension in the way I'd hoped so the sound was cut from the piece. The sound of her tying her shoelaces remains, although it is quiet and backgrounded by the singing and music, which means it often goes unnoticed by audiences. I found this out by asking them after showing them rough cuts of the film. 

Next Time

Next time I will think more about other foley sound we might need - splitting into the 3 categories of foley sound:

Feet

In my opinion, we didn't have enough 'stepper' sounds in our film - for example, when Eve walks up the stairs, we hear nothing, when in fact we should hear her on each step and perhaps a creak or two in the final scene. Hearing the father's boots as he comes in would also make a huge difference to the impact his entrance creates.

Movement

Again, our film doesn't have enough movement sound - swishing of clothes, or the sound of hand holding in the first act would have helped heighten the tension in an otherwise 'nice' scene.

Specifics

This is where I feel our film excels (when considering foley sound). We used lots of specific sounds, discussed above, to create a feel of verisimilitude and to heighten the effect of certain scenes. In particular, we wanted the breakfast scene to feel uncomfortable with all the heightened sound. I think this could have been executed much better than we did, with more sound (e.g. tea/milk being poured) and more of a build-up to the climax of the scene. We were unable to do this because of time limits on the length of the trailer, but next time I would definitely make more of an effort on this front. The final scene also would benefit from some more foley sound, such as the knife and steps discussed earlier.

Act I Sound Testing

Here you can see the musical test composition for our first act - This is made of three tracks, the bass piano, piano melody, and flute. Originally this was just the two piano lines but the piece sounded empty inside. I added the flute to give it some character without detracting from what I'd already made.

Script Third Draft

Here is the third draft of our script, we changed the first scene to add in dialogue between EVE and NOAH hinting at the sinister to come with her seemingly innocently asking hi if he'll always love her.
We have also added an extra line of dialogue into scene two as we realised we have too many shots in our shot list to fit in with only the two previous lines. To make time for this we shortened some of the later dialogue in the film in scene 11, we hope now apart from very minor changes that are script is complete.

Sound and Music

For the first act in our trailer we have decided that we want light and piano-heavy (perhaps some strings also) music to create a relaxed atmosphere. It should have a summer feel, as well as being as minimalistic as possible.

In the second act we want the music to be more dramatic, have more instruments, and be much less relaxed.
The third act has three parts:

• The first part of the third act will be similar to the second act, but yet more dramatic and very rapid. The music should build to a climax.
• The second part of the third act will be much slower, but still share motifs with the first two to link it all together. We will add some violin (or similar) at this point to increase the creepiness.
• The third part of the third act will consist purely of the girl singing, with perhaps one instrument (A xylophone or glockenspiel if I can find one) to increase the creepiness levels.

Throughout the piece we want to have a few motifs that knit the whole trailer together.




In terms of sound, we want a range of diegetic sound to build verisimilitude throughout the piece, as well as some dialogue-as-voiceover to act as a sound bridge between scenes. We will do this because it is a convention of the trailer form.