Sound

The Soundtrack

2/12/16

The soundtrack can only be concluded after the footage has being but together, however knowing the characters and how we wish the filming to go, the writing of the score can begin before hand. 

The score will be written on the program Sibelius. 

As outlined in the plot, each character will have a leitmotif (a phrase/ group of notes representing a character, that repeats and develops in the piece). These phrases will surface  as the character appears. 

Today I wrote the first draft of this motif. As the "Phex" this is a pixie like character the motif is meant to sound mischievous, but harmless. This phrase should compliment the jittery character that cautiously emerges from behind a rock. 

The piece will start in A minor, and end in D major.

2/3/17

The soundtrack should compliment the wild storm that blankets the first scene. To do this, I have opened the soundtrack with bold dynamics, and stark violin tremolo chords, this should create the tension required for the scene. 

5/4/17

It has being difficult to keep the soundtrack up to date with small last minute edits on the film, as changing just a few seconds of footage can mean several bars have to be rewritten. However I am happy with how it has turned out, however there are some timing issues due to last minute editing. 

Foley

Foley is every day sound added in post-production, in our case this will be necessary as ambience varies between shots (the sound of wind, birds etc). 

Some ambiance effects were readily provided on the software we were using (Final Cut Pro), theses include the sound of rain and lighting. However the sound of our characters footsteps crunching against bracken were not accessible, and so, having collecting a large amount of dried fern, we recorded these sounds ourselves. Below is a short video made by Sophie and myself, showing the recording of some of our foley. 

Voice over

For this role we wanted a voice like Brian Blessed's (powerful, domineering, mystical), so on the off chance he would reply I used Facebook to message him. In the meantime we have a backup actor who Sophie has previously worked with in a theatre performance. 

Below are our conversations with Brian. 

 

With no conformation to Brian we ave resorted to our back up Narrator, Scully. Whom Sophie has acted with in the past. 

4/4/17

Unfortunately we have being unable to contact Scully, and so another reserve, with experience in the industry, has had to step in. Despite this setback we are very pleased the result. 

To ensure our voice-over artist sounded authoritative and grounded we slightly edited the sound using a pitch shifter to create a deeper tone. Below is a screen shot from this process. 



Here is the voice over after editing: grizlek.aif