TZONE: AS THE SOUND DESIGNER...

Foley Work

The microphone was not working for some reason in the scene where Good Charlotte runs towards the ocean, so we had to recreate the sound of her footsteps. I did so by simply recording Charlotte running in the corridor at school as I follow her with the camera. It was important that I was barefoot so that the sound of my footsteps would be minimised. When I edited the sound in, it did not sound realistic, but after I added in the ocean ambience, it blended in very well. I also had to recreate the slamming of the bathroom counter because when we filmed the scene, it didn't sound very realistic. We went to the school bathroom and recorded the sound of Tess slapping the marble counter, with the microphone placed quite closely. I tried recording the sound of an actual clock ticking to put in the opening / ending scene, but it was so soft that the microphone could not pick up any sound, so I decided to find audio on Audioblocks instead. During the shoots, I made sure that the sound did not exceed the 4 white bars on the DSLR.

Selecting Music

The theme of our story is quite depressing as we depict how teenagers struggle to cope with stress. I therefore selected two different pieces of piano music which both have a slow tempo for the beginning and the end of the film, which makes the atmosphere very sad and lonely. I left a few seconds of silence before the sad music in the end cues. There was also no music during the voiceovers. This is so that the audience wouldn't be distracted by the music and understand why Charlotte is so stressed, and also to have some time to process what just happened in the film in the end.

When Evil Charlotte appears, I used a piece of music that sounded very creepy as well as some drumming (the volume of the drumming goes from soft to loud) to enhance the suspense of the film. 

For the chase scene, I used a piece of music with a fast tempo to make the scene seem very frantic. I muted the ambience of the street scene because it was too noisy and it would be very distracting for the audience if there was music and noisy street ambience at the same time. 

Overall, I think the music matches the film very well. I had to use different parts from different pieces of music because some parts did not suit the film very well. I had to cut out the best parts from each track to create the final outcome. 

Putting in Ambience

Layering ambience in the ocean scenes was very important because between each cut you could clearly hear a difference in the ambience track (because of the sound of the waves):

Challenges

I had to edit in a voiceover in the ocean scene, which was difficult, because I had to make it sound like Evil Charlotte was yelling all the way from the ocean. I did some research on how I could make the yell sound more realistic and the websites told me to fiddle with the EQ. I experimented with the Graphic Equalizer, but in the end, I thought that it did not work very well and figured out another solution. I simply made the voiceover one pitch higher, since generally, when you yell, your voice would sound higher. 

              

Originally, Charlotte added in the sound effect of a punch (?) when Evil Charlotte got pushed off the cliff. I thought it was too unrealistic, so I muted the sound effect, and instead replaced it with a scream. Our actress was screaming for quite long (a few seconds), which does not really make sense if she screams for so long because realistically, if someone falls, they would only scream at the second they start falling and be too nervous to scream anymore. I couldn't trim the scream because it was continuous, so instead, I sped the scream up by 300%. I made sure that I placed the scream at the exact time when she starts falling. I also added a few seconds of black screen after the scream while the music fades out, so that the transition between the two scenes would not be so abrupt.