Week 6 - Chosen Film Scene

Don't Breathe (Alvarez, 2016)

Lights out scene

Click here to watch the scene

After already studying a specific scene from this film I decided to choose this clip for my final soundscape. There are many reasons as to why I chose this one but I will only list the main ones. Having already watched the film, I am briefly aware of what the score sounds like. As well as this, I understand the general tone and atmosphere of the film, therefore, when it comes to creating the sounds I already have an idea of what to record.

I mentioned previously that the antagonist is blind so he uses the power of sound to get around his house, especially in this scene, there are many moments when you see him touching specific objects that make unique sounds. I believe that story behind the protagonist gives me a head start because he is blind and requires sound to help him, this gives me the opportunity to work in many different ways to recreate those sounds.

As well as this, the feedback I received from the other students supported my belief as to why I think this would be the best film clip for me to work with. They all agreed with the fact that the scene is solely based around different sounds. The only issue is, because there is such a variety of different sounds in just a three minute clip, will I struggle to record that many?

Fortunately, we are allowed to use sounds from the BBC Sound Archive if we are struggling to record something. Personally, I think that some of the sounds I recorded in week 3 with the contact microphone could potentially work quite well with the tone of Don't Breathe. We attached the contact microphone to metal drawers and metal fences which produced some loud and eerie sounds. I think this would work with the scene I chose because you can see all of the metal shelving units fall down as the protagonists are running in fear and fall into them.

I made a list of all the things I thought would be important to consider when creating sounds for this clip.

There are some parts in this clip where there is complete silence, however, my teacher explained that the sounds of silence are just as important as ambient sound. I know that the location is an underground basement, I can see in the clip that there are a lot of walls and metal shelving units that separate the basement, making it quite enclosed. This would reduce the likeliness of an echo. The fact that it is a basement suggests that it is bleak, grimy and old  which instantly gives me an idea of what it would smell like down there.

Smell, sight and touch are all important factors when it comes to sound, in my opinion. If it is an old basement, there is probably a leak somewhere and small details like this are important to consider if you want to make a successful tone for the movie. As I learnt in the first lesson, you need to put yourself into the shoes of the characters to really understand how they are feeling before you recreate any of the sounds they make, otherwise it will not be accurate.

When producing the sounds, I will be using the Sennheiser microphone and perhaps the contact microphone if there is anything else I'd like to add to my collection. On the other hand, I can manipulate the already existing recordings with the contact microphone to use them on more than one occasion. I will need use various objects to recreate sound effects such as gun shots or glass smashing to recreate some sounds.

YouTube Tutorial - how to make a gunshot sound effect

I've watched a few YouTube tutorials as a guide to understand how to make certain sound effects, there is an example above. 

I've realised that for the scene that I have chosen, there is going to be a lot of trial and error. I will try and create sounds and compare them to already existing sound effects to make them as accurate as possible.