Sound for Screen Week 3 – We need to talk about Kevin 2

This week’s lesson was a follow up to the exercises set out last week and this week I had a new partner, Jiachen. We had plenty of time to record ambient sounds this week. We first chose to go back to the stairwell we had chosen last week. To our surprise, the stairwell had an alarm sound that day. We were on the first floor and recorded an ambient sound. During this time two students came down and slammed the downstairs door hard. This was an unexpected bonus, and both Jiachen and I felt that this ambient sound was so appropriate for the first part. The loud slamming of the door served as a transitional sound between the first and second spaces, as the picture transition between these two spaces was a gradually brightening white light. Afterwards we went to the highest level of the stairwell and found two large fans where we also recorded an ambient track. This ambient sound I also placed at the point where the first and second parts meet. As the picture is pushing forward faster and faster, I change the speed of this ambient sound. The fans were spinning faster and faster until a loud slamming sound fell where the white light was bright to the extreme and then moved on to the next picture. We also found an empty classroom that day and recorded a very quiet ambient indoor sound. Eva lives alone, so the room is very quiet.

(Ambient sound footage recorded at school with Zoom H5)

Before the end of the class I talked to Jiachen about making music for this clip, because Jiachen is very good at making music and the right music gets the audience into the mood of the film faster.

As we are going into Foley stage next week, this week I marked the points in the session that needed to be Foley for part 3. And also added the recorded ambient and the music produced by Jiachen to the session.