Finished Films

Baby Soundtrack - In Detail

That is the entirety of the musical part to Baby's soundtrack. It may not look like much, but each of the sounds being used there has been fine tuned to work to my liking and fit with the film. Then the music itself has been composed and all the automation precisely done by myself with the image down to the second.

The Theme

The film opens with a melody being played on what could be a music box or a baby's mobile. The idea is for it to evoke the image of a baby while also sounding melancholic and slightly unsettling to represent the woman in the film. The melody itself is a simple minor chord sequence with a pattern (one note, then a chord) that is quite common on music boxes etc. This minor key and slow, sad melody is to set the tone of unhappiness. The sound itself is also quite frail. I added a subtle low pass filter to the sound in order to make it just a little muffled as if it can't quite be heard. This sadness and frailty represents the main character in the film and later the theme returns at a particularly sad moment.

I tried to make this theme slightly unsettling and I think the way it opens the film is a little unsettling. Any melody which has connotations of infancy will always be slightly creepy, especially when there is no baby to be seen. I also carefully chose and altered the sound of the chimes to be just a little "off" so that it doesn't sound quite right.

During the bedroom scene where the theme plays for a long time I allowed the low pass filter to bring in the high end on the chimes gradually. This makes them become more jingly and therefore more innocent which I thought was appropriate for this scene.

The "Happy" Music

This was definitely a hard sound to get. I wasn't sure how large a part of the mix any music in the pregnancy test scene should be. But you can see pure happiness on her face and without music it just feels a little empty and lifeless.

The synthesizer I use for this part of the music is almost "over the top" in its sound. It has a simultaneously quite thin sound (again, representing her frailty) while the reverb fills it out and makes it quite large. It is slightly ethereal and airy, but without too much of that. I wanted this sound to be very clear and happy as that is very obviously the look on her face. However I also wanted it to be slightly unsettling like the rest of the music in this film. The tones the synthesizer is generating oscillate slightly around their note and at slightly different times. The effect is extremely subtle, but it makes the sound almost "wobble" ever so slightly. Another way to make the sound slightly "off". It sounds happy, but there is something not quite right about it.

I used very simple chords. They only consist of major thirds with an eight over the top. Meaning that there are only two different notes in the chords. This makes the chords sound bigger than they are. A third is a fairly weak chord on its own which is another way of representing her frailty.

They are clearly major thirds, but without that fifth on top it is hard to confirm if they truly are in a major key. This is another way I can make the music seem a little strange. It's happy, but not as far as it could be. Also the long, slow held notes are quite melancholic which doesn't suit the happiness of the chords and scene.

Ominous Tones

The first truly openly unsettling part of the music creeps in as the "happy" music fades out and she realizes the pregnancy test has failed. The tone here is supposed to represent all her negative emotions rising up, before the split second where the peak and she throws the test at the bin.

For this sound I chose quite a complex synthesized sound that shifts and phases around as it plays. On its own it is a very menacing sound that sort of creeps around your ears and gets into your brain. However, with no other effects the sound was a little too much just to insert into the soundtrack.

The synth patch itself consists of a multitude of oscillators all doing different things, but the main audible sounds can be split into two: There is the heavily reverberated, panning low airy tone and the more distorted, piercing high pitched tone. The more distorted sound only appears when the "Briteness" knob is turned up quite high. It was this part of the tone that was making the overall sound too much so I used this "Briteness" knob to my advantage.

Slowly increasing the Briteness brings in all the dimensions of the sound gradually starting the the lower, airier sounds. It works similarly to a low pass filter. So to increase the sound of her going insane I gradually increased the volume and Briteness together subtly. When there needed to be a more piercing sound (such as just before she throws the test or the reveal of the husband's corpse) I could push the Briteness up into the highest region which would bring in the eery distorted sounds. I think the way this tone gradually creeps in and overrides the "happy" music at the end of the film works perfectly.

Other Sounds

The high pitched string sound that plays in the bedroom scene over the theme is there to make the moment even sadder, while also more unsettling. The sound is a highly reverberated high pitched synthesized string sound that, at times, almost sounds like a voice singing. This reverberation is similar to the techniques used by directors such as David Lynch though he generally uses it on much lower sounds. My main "ominous tone" partly uses this as well. The notes themselves are just the root notes of the chords being played by the chimes and so are tonally neutral. The sound itself is sad, but since it is neutral it is slightly unsettling as well.

I tried to bring in each extra sound at key moments so that they would feel natural entering the soundtrack. For example the ethereal strings come in just as she picks up the box to start looking at it. A very subtle low unsettling tone comes in once she starts looking at the ultrasound pictures as I think that image is, while very sad, also slightly creepy. It also serves to bring in the creeping madness slightly before she goes back to the kitchen for the finale.

I also added a repeating rhythmic sound to mimic the sound of the egg timer and work as a slightly twisted audio link to the next scene. It's almost supposed to be like an echo of the timer in her head, but warped as she's gone mad. Perhaps it is a bit much though.



Overall I'm very happy with how the soundtrack turned out. Considering I had an extremely limited amount of time to find all the sounds, write the music and automation and make it appropriate for the film I'm quite happy with myself.

The music adds a lot of tone to the film and I've attempted to enhance the emotions that was already there. It was a real relief once the soundtrack started shaping up as before then nothing was sounding good enough. Once the tone is there, the film will eventually work.

Baby - Coming Together

While I'm not sure if I can finish it due to the amount there is left, the pieces are finally starting to fall into place. Doing hours of extra work at home and honing the soundtrack has finally given the film the tone that it needed. Unfortunately due to the amount of time I have had for this project the soundtrack is the only area where I have been able to really experiment. The sound design for everything else is a case of just-get-it-in right now as I think I only have enough time to get all the sounds I need into the film and make them sound right. Experimentation and interesting sound design will probably not be possible. Plus, visually the film is a fairly straight drama with no dialogue. There isn't all that much room for experimentation anyway.

Fortunately the soundtrack is where I can get my experimentation in. So far I have quite an interesting mix of baby-mobile sounding chimes, loud happy/unsettling synthesized chords and reverberated phasing tones (David Lynch influence).

What I have so far really adds a lot. I'll just have to refine it all down and make it fit with the image perfectly.

Learning Pro Tools

All the crazy work I've been doing on Baby has definitely been an effective kickstart course for learning to use Pro Tools. My efficiency and effectiveness with the software has increased massively the last few days as I've had to work fast and pick up things as I go.

Overall I'm very happy with the software. It's easy to navigate and use, seems very stable and suits the high standard of precise editing that I need in a piece sound editing software. Marking the whole video up with each sound (something I always try to do, saves so much time later) was easy which is important.

The transition is a little strange. In some ways I preferred the mechanics of how Soundtrack Pro merged two sound clips together and things like that, but I think overall Pro Tools is more usable. Plus it never crashed on me and the autosaves are more reliable. I've lost a lot of work due to crashes with Soundtrack Pro.

The major issue, though, is plug-ins. Unfortunately Pro Tools doesn't have everything you might want (or sometimes need) installed by default. It is also very inconsistent from Mac to Mac at the university. Soundtrack Pro was much more reliable and had all the plug-ins I would want. They were also all very good and I was good at using them. I am still getting the hang of some of Pro Tools effects and utilities.

Still, I am happy to be using something that seems to be more widespread in the industry. Knowing both Pro Tools and Soundtrack Pro fairly well will hopefully be very useful when working in the future.

David Lynch - Soundtracks

While I have only seen one of his films all the way through (Inland Empire) what I see of David Lynch's work always interests me. I am definitely a sucker for the surreal and dark, and his works all have that in high quantities.

Since the film I'm working on (Baby) is slightly surreal and menacing and so I thought looking at some of Lynch's work could give me some ideas for the soundtrack as I want to write it myself. I have been struggling with which direction to go with the soundtrack, but Ron suggested I should maybe try going all out and be more experimental. My problem was that I was trying to make something too conventional and it just didn't fit with the picture. It looks like a normal drama, but there's a sinister unease throughout and the end is extremely surreal and so the soundtrack has to reflect this. Looking at Lynch's work has given me some definite ideas on what to try next.

This piece is from the soundtrack to Inland Empire and is composed by Lynch himself. He is a huge fan of using extreme reverberation to create ethereal tones and I intend to use something similar to this in parts of Baby.

Baby

Initially I had offered to help Emma Tackney and be the other half of the work for Stephen Maclean's film. I originally offered because I like working with Emma and it looked like she might have a nightmare working on Stephen's and Lucy's projects. This turned out to be true as Lucy's project has been ridiculously hard for Emma to work on and since she won't be finished any time soon she has begged me to take the brunt of the work on "Baby".

The work has barely started and there is not much time to do it. As much as I am dreading the work I will have to do I am also excited. Stephen's idea is fairly interesting and the edit is looking quite nice. Rushed and desperate at the last minute tends to be when I'm at my best anyway.

Continuing Work on Soundtrack

At the rough cut showing tutors remarked on liking the soundtrack, but that I should remove the sort of piano-stabs that are on top of the music and focus on the simplicity of the bass and drums. This is more like an actual soundtrack for a film. I'm inclined to agree and so have removed them.

I have done a lot of work on perfecting the automation for the opening soundtrack:

The ideas are still simple, but now as I edit with the image I can tune to automation to perfectly reflect what is on screen. (I neglected to add a note for the little bump in the low pass filter's automation in between the beginning and the climax. This is for where the title will appear and I want the sound to pick up slightly for this to add tension and weight to the title.)

The sound effect for the hammer appearing on the passenger seat has also been added. There is automation to increase the volume as the light moves over the hammer.

After the opening there is a long held bass note which is inaudible at first. The low pass filter gradually lets all the sound through and my hope is to have this sound increase subtly, increasing the tension and dread until the main character slams his hand on the desk.

Initial Soundtrack Idea

After a good long while I came across the appropriate distorted bass sound that I could add a low pass filter to. I then had to find a good rhythm for the bass notes and it turned out that just repeated notes in a very simple pattern worked the best. After that the song kind of just fell into place quite easily.

Having shown Rhys and some other people it seems I'm on the right track with this sound. Having seen some of the rough edit I can see how similar to Drive parts of the film are and so feel quite confident in this being the right idea.

Public Enemies Sound Design Article

I read an article on MixOnline (http://mixonline.com/post/features/audio_public_enemies//index.html) about all the different aspects of the sound for Micheal Mann's film Public Enemies. I found it a pretty interesting insight into a director that takes sound very seriously.

The article interviewed different people involved in the creation of the sound for the film who described how they recorded specific sounds as well as working with Mann himself. Jeremy Peirson, co-supervising sound editor, describes how Mann's "got a mixer in front of him and he'll audition things and try things himself, so you'll get very specific notes about where he wants to go". I find it interesting to read about a director who is so ingrained with the sound design process. I haven't heard of it too much.

Re-recording mixer Beaus Borders describes how Mann will get as granular as syllables in the dialogue mixing. “If the line is, ‘Let's go!’ he might say, ‘Raise the attack of the “g” on “go,” but leave the “o” exactly where it is, and on “Let's,” I want you to do a rise on the “s.”’ It's not so much for intelligibility reasons; it's because Johnny Depp is supposed to be very forceful in the scene so he wants the attack on the ‘g’: ‘Let's go!’ He alters performances in minute but important ways"

There some detail on how the sound designers and recordists visited the actual places where the real events from the film took places in order to get an idea of the ambience etc. There is also a good part on recording the guns for the film, but what I found most interesting was the description of how they use those gun sounds. Beaux Borders describes:

" There's one scene where Michael is trying to show how the bad guys have the better technology, the faster cars, they're more organized and they're much more aggressive than the cops. In this particular scene, we relied on the original recordings that Laurent and Jeremy provided, and that's where you hear the machine guns being aggressive and scary and startling. They're in the subwoofers, they're coming out of the surround speakers. You cut to a cop and he's got a little .38 gun that sounds like a peashooter compared to these Tommy guns.

“Now, fast-forward to later in the film — there's a scene where there's a bank heist that goes wrong. It's another quick scene, but this time it's all about disorganization, about the plan falling through — chaos and disorder. And when you hear the sound in this particular scene, you're not going to hear giant, lush recordings; you're going to hear an amalgamation of production recordings and sound effects, you're going to hear things chopping off on cuts, you're going to hear breathing and the re-loading of a gun louder than a gunshot. You're going to hear things out of balance from the way you would normally perceive a machine gun battle, and it makes it feel disorganized."

I definitely find this the most interesting part. Hearing sound designers talk about the specifics of their craft is very interesting to me. I like how much thought has gone into how to use the recorded sounds. It's not good enough just to have good recordings. You have to use them appropriately and interestingly.

Heat - Soundtrack and General Sound Design

This famous scene from Heat directed by Micheal Mann uses a similar tactic to Drive in that it has a tense, repeating synthesized/percussive pattern quietly layered under the action to give the scene tension. It does increase and decrease in prominence in the mix, but it does not use a low pass filter like Drive. It simply repeats over and over again, occasionally getting louder when there is not much else in the mix. It really adds a sense of pace to the scene which could otherwise be quite tension-less.

Heat is famous for its sound design, namely the sounds of the weapons used. The gun sounds are raw and realistic and this creates an impact you don't feel in most Hollywood films. The gunfire can even hurt to listen to at times.

Micheal Mann is well known for using actual sound recorded on set and for being heavily involved with the sound design. He is incredibly precise altering sounds a tenth of a decibel and making sure that certain syllables are more prominent when characters speak.

Drive - Opening Sequence

Obviously a very popular and, perhaps, overdone favourite of modern students, Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive is a fantastic film. Since the film Rhys' group is going to be making has many similar elements Drive is one of the first places I went for inspiration on the soundtrack.

Perhaps the most iconic scene is this opening robbery and getaway. It is immaculately shot and paced, but the main reason (in my opinion) that this scene is so effective struck so many people is the driving synth soundtrack. It subtly moves in and out of prominence in the mix perfectly suiting and enhancing the tension.

Nicolas Winding Refn said in an interview that he wanted the music to be like a clock ticking. Much like the watch Ryan Gosling's character places on the steering wheel. It's supposed to represent the mechanical way that the character can drive and the near lack of emotion of the character himself.

The effect is achieved through using a low pass filter and increasing and decreasing the frequencies being cut off in order to let more or less sound through. When there is very little happening the low pass filter allows just the bass to come through which keeps the tension high. When the action picks the low pass filter is increased to allow more of the treble through and so the sound becomes more full and alive, suiting the image on screen.

Since the film being made appears to have a lot of Drive influence (including similar tense shots of someone driving) it makes sense to attempt something similar in the soundtrack. However Drive is so well known and distinctive that imitating it would be stupid and obvious. I have to come up with a way to achieve similar tension without ripping it off.

My initial idea is to use the same convention as the soundtrack from the opening of Drive, but use much more distorted and "heavy" synthesizers and sounds. These represent the character from Rhys' film better as he appears more openly violent and aggressive and so this fits with the film thematically as well as sounding different to Drive.