An Introduction to My Blog

Music and Sound within Our Production

The soundtrack to our Final Production, without dubbing from other sound clips later incorporated. This is the standard song which plays during the backing of our film, lasting 2:01 minutes, and created using Audacity, with contributions and samples from www.freesoundproject.com. The keyboard is extracted from Garageband and the high notes are from a keyboard which I possess at home and recorded. Everything was remixed on Audacity, the two tracks (piano and ghostly ambience) joined together and turned into our backing track. The track took just over an hour for me to make, and I personally feel that it does a good job at expressing the mysterious and sinister nature of our piece, as well as emphasising the idea that our lead character is 'Not alone'. Here is the track:



The White Noise used within our Final Production. Though we only used individual samples on a short time listing of the track during the actual finished piece, I originally recorded the track as 40+ seconds long, mainly as we were unsure as to how long the credits (where the White Noise generally plays) would last. The White Noise was created from a sample found on www.freesoundproject.com, with an over-dub of me making noises with me breathing out through my teeth over the top. Cue much time spend on Audacity editting the sound into something good, which you will hopefully be able to see here:

Final Production Storyboards and Response

We showed our storyboards to several people, and generally feedback was positive. We spent a long period of time choosing names for our production, asking people to rate which name they thought worked best in the context of the piece. Whilst we initially chose 'Revenant' as the name for our thriller, we decided that the name, though possibly reflective of later scenes within the film, did not reflect the intentions of the opening. We renamed the production 'Not alone', playing on the idea that the detective is not alone in the house, and that the murderer is nearby. Other possible names for the production were 'The Glass Prison', 'The True Mirror' and 'Vacant', but we settled upon 'Not alone', as we feel it best expresses what our thriller entails. The feedback generated was useful in defining specific aspects of our shooting schedule; we will work on the feedback to create our final production.

People stated that the story idea was good, and that they would be interested in watching (eight out of eight people surveyed admitted to being interested), yet they also said that we may struggle to fit everything that we have planned into a two minute piece. We plan on filming more than two minutes of footage, and then editing and cutting it down until it fits the brief, though we will have to be aware of time passage, and how much work we are going to be able to keep from the filming. We do not wish to leave out any of the important scenes, for example the flashbacks and the finalising scene in the shower, and so time will be something we must consider.

People credited our choice of musical highlights too. We told those involved that we intend to use slow, quiet non-diegetic sound, with emphasis on specific points of the filming, such as sudden bursts and booms when critical events occur. We plan on finishing with white noise, which people said was a good idea, though they also said that it has been seen before, and if we are to incorporate white noise, we will have to try and use it to the best of our capabilities. Generally however, people were pleased with our initial idea, and the only criticism that we received was that our film may over-run, and that we might have to spend some time during editing working on the implementing credits and cutting down shots to fit the brief. However, the over conclusion was that people were glad with what we have achieved, and they seemed very enthusiastic about our production, even saying that some of our ideas they should have used themselves. Our differentiating camera angles and shots were credited, as was the general narrative of our storyline, and now we are just, as usual, looking forward to making our final production.