Soundtrack Development

During our editing process we have had to find some suitable music and/or sound effects that could be used in our final product to add to the effect of the film and also to apply more genre conventions to it. We decided to use a backing track and three different sound effects during editing, each of which is royalty free, meaning that we will not face any copyright problems when publishing and distributing the product. We downloaded the sound effects off of Youtube. We also used a voice-over in order to better explain the story of the film, as it was not very clear. This was recorded ourselves, meaning that obviously it is copyright free and could perfectly suit what we needed.

For the majority of our product we will have a backing soundtrack that adds to the suspense of the scenes shown. For this soundtrack we researched into ‘suspense backing-tracks’, which produced the result of The Hidden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxXE4LhmFmg). This is a royalty free backing track used for horror or thriller films. We decided to use this backing track as it features changes in pace and volume/pitch, which could be manipulated alongside our clips (so that it gets faster during a more suspenseful scene and slower during the credits). It also has Bass bumps, where the base is increased a lot in and for a very short amount of time, that could be used to support a transition or scene change, or to be shown alongside an important clip to the plot. This idea is one that we actually focused on at the end of our two-minute opening.

For the main title of the film, we decided to use a static effect over the flickering/glitching of the text. The one we chose was this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-z4UJCEIXs), named Slender Jump-Scare static effect. This is from a video game, so we checked that it was royalty free, which it was. The reason we chose to use this is because it has an initial rise, before the static kicks in, that builds up suspense and tension. Also, when the static does kick in it is quite eerie and painful to hear, which would increase how uncomfortable the audience would feel hearing it, immediately assigning a sub-conscious bad feeling to the title of the film.

When the title fades away we needed to have a sound effect that would accompany the transition between the fire exploding and the reintroduction of the soundtrack. For this we chose a funeral bell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTIe6piDOI), as it holds the connotations of death, sadness and pain. It is also a very stereotypical sound used in many different horror movies to accompany an important scene, which in the case of the scene with the fire exploding is needed.

For the final portion of our opening 2 minutes we decided to turn down the backing-track (The Hidden) and instead add some ambient forest sounds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV6W6morRm4), in order to juxtapose the scene and the relaxing backing track. The aim here was to make the audience feel more relaxed and calm before the major reveal of the kidnapped sixth character, which was added after feedback from our focus groups). By having the quiet forest sounds, the audience can immerse themselves more in the setting, an immersion that is broken in a shocking fashion by the reveal and the accompanied sound effect.

The final sound effect, as just mentioned, is called Bass Impact (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-H0RlBc46U) and was used to accompany the fast and sharp transitions of the final couple of shots, that reveal the sixth character in the story. The reason we chose this is because it is loud and booming, which would shock the audience, but is also similar and recognisable as it is a staple of most TV shows and horror movies. It helps to improve the effect of each shot, as there is a loud and jarring sound played over their transitions.