Our film, ‘The ’Sympathetic’ Gesture’ is a crime thriller, many influenced by films like Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992) and Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001). The sound, which I was responsible for was inspired by many crime thrillers that use up beat music to create emotion. Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007) and Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994) are another two films that are like this.
The original plan was to have no soundtrack, and to use diagetic sound (footsteps, heavy breathing, sirens) only. After the first lot of filming, it was clear that this would not be possible. The footsteps were not clear enough, and heavy breathing wasn’t recorded or caught on camera. This lead to us making a music track to go on in scene. This also meant that the sound on all the footage could be removed, and on a second shooting day, the sound did not matter. There is also no dialogue in the scene, so the narrative isn’t developed by the sound.
Because of the fast pace of the running section, the non-diagetic soundtrack, is basically a drum solo, with some guitar bits near the end. The drum beat itself was recorded separately Louis' friend. Also recorded, but not used was a piano track. This wasn’t used because it didn’t fit with the walking scene at the end of the clip. Once I’d heard the drum solo, it was clear that was slower paced at the start than we needed. However the main part of it was the right speed. I tried to increase the speed of the first part, but I couldn’t get it to the same speed, so it was left in it’s original form. Also, it needed something else, to stop it from sounding to repetitive. So it was put it into GarageBand to see if anything can be added to it to improve it. A guitar riff, which we believed fitted perfectly with the second, faster drumming. The music helps add to the atmosphere, and compliments the fast-paced style of the editing. This music was synced up to match the running, with the help of the editor.
For the second part, the walking scene, we needed a contrasting piece of music. It was suggested by Tom, the director, that a piece of music from The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999), called ‘Clubbed to Death’ by Rob Dougan. The bit used is the start was suggested mainly because we did not have enough time to compose a new piece of music, due to the fact that the second part was filmed towards the end of production, and because it seemed to fit the scene rather well.
From the feedback we received, it become clear that the music didn’t fit as well as we first thought. The music was complimented for being original, very nice and also that the pace was perfect for the sequence. However, others said that the music was good but it wasn’t fitted to the pace that well. It was also said that there was too much contrast between first (drum solo) and second (Matrix music) pieces of music.Labels: Adam Taylor-Creek |
