Sound for Screen Week 4 – We need to talk about Kevin 3
This week’s lesson was Foley for this clip and we had two new partners, Joanna and Monika. Because of the equipment, we couldn’t use Composition Studio. But that didn’t stop us from recording. We borrowed a Zoom H5 recorder and hooked up the Foley Studio microphone to it. The recording started straight away. I operated the recorder and the three of them were in charge of Foley. We spent the last ten minutes before the end of class recording key sounds, such as Eva’s footsteps and the sound of a medicine bottle being dropped.
(Some of the sounds recorded in the Foley Studio)
This week I borrowed a recorder (Zoom H5) from the Kit Room to take home as I hadn’t finished recording the sounds needed for part 3. At home I finished recording Eva’s breathing, the scraping sound of sofa, and the door opening part. Then it was on to the production stage.
The bow and arrow is actually a very important prop for the film, it’s Kevin’s killing tool. The sound of the bow and arrows is a constant in the house from the first time Franklin gives it to Kevin. It is clear that Kevin loves the bow and arrow and that he practices it regularly. He is a very good archer. But the fact that Kevin was practising archery always made Eva feel vaguely uneasy. So I put the sound of the bow and arrow in the place of the title.
For the first space, in addition to the previous idea, I added the sound of cicadas at the end. Because in that summer Eva walks through the floating curtains to the courtyard and sees Franklin and his daughter Celia, who were killed by Kevin.
The second space begins with a crowd gathered in the street because of the festival. I chose to remove the sound of the crowd as we enter the main theme of the music. Because this is the dream world, which is sometimes silent and sometimes chaotic. After the crowd lifts Eva up, I notice that Eva has an eye opening movement. So I added the sound of an alarm, which was a cue and a vague unease. Then in the next shot Eva opens her eyes again and here I added the sound of a baby crying. As mentioned before, Kevin’s birth is a very important point. After that Eva is put on the ground, the music ends. With the sound of bow and arrow after bow and arrow, some confusing memories emerge. The camera flashes that brought her disrepute, the abuse from the victims’ families, and the gymnasium she had to face. The corresponding images here are Eva being pelted with water by the crowd, her face covered, and the thick red tomato juice on the floor. Here I have made some sound collages.
The third space is the main part of Foley. In this section I really like the sound of Eva waking up with a hangover and looking blankly out of the window, created by Joanna blowing on an empty bottle. Here I also added the sound of the fan in the hallway that I used in the first part.
After adding ambient sounds and a door closing sound effect to the fourth part, the clip was complete. Finally a big thank you to Jiachen for creating the music and Joanna and Monika for creating the sounds. Please enjoy the final work next.
