Audio in our Thriller

Audio and sound is an essential part of a thriller in order to set the mood for the film and create tension for the audience. Non-diegetic and diegetic sound helps emphasise the genre of the thriller by adding a sense of mystery within it.  In order to use sound in our thriller we adjusted the audio in the clips and downloaded non copy right sounds from the internet. For some parts we feel suspense is made from no music and creates a more natural sounding environment and so therefore is more effective for our audience. Additionally, we tried to attempt creating our own sound effects using a knife and a watermelon to give off the effect of a stabbing noise.

Adjusting Audio from our filmed clips:
For most of our clips we filmed, the sound was good and we did not need to change anything but for some this was not the case. To increase suspense we increased the decibels of a clip where you can hear our actor Lucy breathing heavily as this is also a POV shot is worked well as it made the viewer more aware the shot is from her point of view if they can hear her breathing. This would also help the audience emphasise with the character as they can understand how scared she is within the scene. Also in this scene our protagonist is scraping a knife against the wall, because there is no music in this scene, adjusting the sound of knife scrapping and by making it louder this put an emphasis on our actors actions. When our victim gets stabbed in the film she screams loudly, however we wanted the scream to be longer so that it connects the audio of that scene and the next scene smoothly, therefore I got our actor so scream again but for longer, this audio was now correct. We also held auditions for an 'evil laugh', Mr Woods laugh seemed most realistic so we manipulated it make the pitch higher and more scary, this manipulation worked well as it seemed very realistic.

Music:
One of the conventions for the thriller genre is suspenseful music that engages the audiences and creates a sense of tension and mystery within the film. Because of this, we decided we needed to add some slow pace and low pitch music in order to emphasise the suspense within our film. On Youtube we found some music which we think fitted well with the opening pan of the film because the pan on the polaroids is not fast, creating suspense and mystery, to add even more suspense to the audience we wanted slow music which works with the slow pace of the visuals. The music below is the one we chose, we checked the comments to see if we were allowed to download it without it being copyright to the composer, and it is okay to download.

We used 13 seconds of it, however our clip was longer so we had to copy and paste the audio multiple times, this worked because the sound it self repeats notes over and over agai


Additionally, we included more music into our film via youtube as we needed to insert music when our final title is revealed on screen. Because our final title had a dramatic sense to it, we wanted to add music that suited this. Fortunately we found music that fits perfectly with this. 



More music we used was for the credits at the beginning of our film, we felt as though in our first draft that the credits without sound would make it more suspenseful and create a build up until the credits ended and the narrative began. However after receiving audience feedback we soon learned that the audience were finding the credits not very suspenseful and too long. We found some music which is the right suspenseful beat we were looking for and put it into our film, we manipulated the sound to a pace of 85% so this created even more suspense.

Sound effects:
For our thriller we wanted to involve some sound affects to again create suspense and a sense of realness. we also didn't want our sounds to sound too fake and unrealistic so we decided to try and create some sounds ourself.

Our thriller involves a stabbing sound and we did some research online and found out that watermelon was commonly used as a realistic sound for stabbing flesh. I set up a camera and brought a watermelon, I then started stabbing it with a knife.

However after doing this we quickly decided it didn't work with our film as we only needed a single stab, and there was single stabbing sound when I stabbed the watermelon also it sounded very plastic like and artificial. Fortunately we went onto YouTube and discovered a perfect sound affect that works well with out film. We entered the sound into our film and edited it so it would be long enough for our scene.

Another sound affect used was a door slam. Unfortunately during filming a scene we were filming was cut into 2 scenes therefore the door slamming in the last scene does not sound right, so we needed to search for some free non copyright audio sound of a door slamming shut. We found a side called 'Freesound.org'. This sound worked perfectly for our film, we cut our the part we didn't need.



 Furthermore, we used a heart beat, emphasis the fear upon our victim. We found this audio on YouTube and edited it into our film is works very well and does increase suspense and develops the characters understanding of our victims fear.



The final sound affect we used was the one we used throughout most of our film. We decided not to have silence throughout our film and also we didn't feel like music would be a s suspenseful either. So ewe decided to use some sound affects that would emphasise the horrifying position our victim is in whilst also complying to the conventions of a thriller or scary lighting and stormy weather in the background sound. This helped to create a sense of realism and to emphasise the idea of a isolated location. We increased some of sound of lightening at parts where it needed to be more dramatic, e.g. when the protagonist eye-line match is shown. However we made sure not to put this sound in to the flashback scene as that would be an inaccurate representation of time. We copy and pasted the audio file a few times throughout the film as background sound, we are very happy with this sound. Also we do not have to give credit to the composer as they wrote "You don't have to worry about crediting this sound if you are using it for non-commercial projects unless you want to (e.g. educational or non-profit activities), but if you use the sound for a commercial project you must credit the sound." This is good because our film is non-commercial and non-profit, therefore we were allowed to download the sound.