sound is one of the most pinnacle and prevalent aspects of mise en scene in films, as it enables a mood, emotion or tone to be created and additionally accompanies the visuals to give the movie more depth. Soundtracks, music, exaggerated heartbeats, Foley sounds and general ambiance dont actually accompany real life actions and situations, and hence arguably sound can reduce a films realistic-ness and subvert hyper reality ideas. however, when used correctly as we aimed to do- sound can create interest and a professional cinematic feel and environment.
particularly applicable to horror movies, sound creates a harrowing and feared atmosphere. isolated instruments are conventionally used just before key events and equilibrium disruption to reinforce a sense of vulnerability to the audience. applying to this horror movie sound convention we used a piano solo playing the Everly brothers 'dream' without any other orchestral accompaniment. this piano melody was inspired by movies of the likes of HALOWEEN. John carpenter, sound director for this horror used a bone chilling piano motif and some synths to accompany his slasher movie...ensuring that an atmospheric not to over powering sound was created. although our up and coming contemporary horror dose not fit the sub genre of a slasher, its famous piano score is recognized by massive expansive audiences and hence our piano score may be recognized too, and our film given a sense of prestige. we subverted against a synthetic soundtrack or effects for our film trailer much like Mike oldfields 'tubular bells' soundtrack used in the exorcist- IMDBs scariest movie of all time, as we thought it was too cliched to create a soundtrack inspired by such a well known and familiar melody. In addition, we felt that the synth, percussion and choir accompaniments did not effectively fit our film as we wanted a more solemn, individual instrument type sound to exert vulnerability.
in our trailer eerie non diegetic sound effects play a pinnacle role, to build to the tension where the equilibrium is disrupted when our young protagonist sees the antagonistic old woman behind her in the bathroom mirror. the volume and pitch inclines up to this point and then the music dramatically changes to a warped and slowed down version of the Everly brothers 'dream' at a -0.60 pace. This almost sounded like a broken record effect, or that time had been warped or slowed down, juxtaposing with the contrasting fast pace of the visuals on screen in a montage. Aswell as non diegetic sound tracks and accompaniments we also used diegetic sound effects, sounding similar to Foley sound effects such as screams, breathing and door creaks- particularly the two door creaks we used being conventional of horrors, but also reinforcing the old internal grandmas house feel we wanted to present with an archaic old and deteriorating setting for a horror.
The glitching sound effects were a particular unique selling point and original feature to draw in audiences because historical and dramatized recent horrors do not use the glitching technological-synth style sound we used. The glitching effects occurred at the beginning of our trailer in sync with out title sequence aswell as at the end of our trailer when a fuzzy white noise played alongside television grains and a blurring screen. occurring at the end and the beginning this sound effect gave our trailer a cyclical Ronda structure so it seemed stylized professional. it also broke the equilibrium of using the Everly brothers 'dream' throughout the trailer.
The first shot in our film is of the young girl and at this point, we immediately incorporated some non-diegetic dialogue saying "the lights went out, I'm scared". This immediately sets the scene as the way in which this dialogue was said sounded quite worrying and as if the young girl was fearing something, this sound also creates an immediate enigma as audiences would want to find out what she is fearing. similarly eerie simplistic utterances of dialogue- particularly child's dialogue is used in horror movies such as nightmare on elm street to convey a childish vulnerability and harrowing setting. In nightmare on elm street childish songs such as ring a roses are spoken in singular verses and lines by childish voices giving an eerie tone. this approach is minimalist and effective.
a study by professor Daniel Blumstein in Los Angeles studied the soundtracks of 102 of the worlds most popular movies across varying genres. In his study he involved composer Peter Kaye and they together analysed that horror movies had the most noisy female screams and childish repetitiveness and eerie dialogue whereas contrastingly action movies and adventure films had more male screams. Horror movies in the study also had a higher number of abrupt shifts up and down in pitch, whereas drama movies contrastingly had lower pitched sounds than other genres. The conclusion of the study was that usage of these non linear sounds was not random but 'used to enhance the emotional impact of scenes' also in reference to horrors in particular Blumstein analysed 'non linearities are commonly produced when animals are under duress, such as the fear screams produced when animals are attacked by predators and are a signal of fear' when taking this into account, we in our own trailer aswell as many other sound composers for films and sound directors realize how to use these types of fear signaling sounds.
Throughout our trailer, we used a few sound effects when presenting our titles; for example when the title saying "this Halloween" appears, we incorporated a loud thud. This is an effective area in film to use sound and significantly to use an effect like a thud as it kind-of jumps out at the audience and they are essentially more likely to remember it. In comparison with its faint, silent appearance without sound which they would be made less aware of; the sound partially emphasizes it.
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