Sound - Alex Lloyd

When researching and analysing short films such as Lou-Lou lives here, Eight and Joy Ride. I found many smiliarities in the way they used sound, with most of them being social realism I hope to take up on these conventions and use the same techniques for our short film.

Diegetic and non diegetic sound will both be used.

Diegetic

• We will have a lot of shouting and use many foleys and SFX such as glass smashing to connote our parents having a rough argument.
• Other foleys such as doors banging will make it clear to the audience that there is some violence and anger with the parents. It should also create tension and shock.
• Ambient sounds such as wind will be kept within the scenes of our character strolling around in the woods, this will create realism.
• Dialogue will be used, but not a lot. Most of the diegetic sound coming from someones mouth will be the arguing and shouting of our parents.
• Shouting and arguing will be both off-screen and on-screen sound, most of our shots will be focusing on our main character Milo, with the shouting still being heard off-screen, we can sympathise for our character knowing that it never stops.

Non Diegetic Sound

• We will have a voice over throughout the whole film. This will tell the audience a lot about Milo hearing his thoughts and feelings towards the situation he is in, sympathy and empathy will be caused.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4P2Y8qx-bk = The short film 'Eight' is a good example of how we hope to use our voice over.

• We will have music in our short film also, a soundtrack using a dominant instrument.
• It will be an orchestral instrument, either from the strings family or the piano.

The advantages of using those instruments is that they can be very powerful in a minor key. A good example of the type of minor sound we may want to achieve if we were to have a Piano as our dominant instrument is the Piano being played within the song, 'Videotape' by Radiohead.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0MI3gtaqfY

Bearing in mind our music will be quite quiet with our main source of sound coming from the voice over, it would purely be background music to add sympathetic effect when seeing Milo on screen. The piano chords within this song are very minor scale making it seem quite upsetting but yet powerful.

Another soundtrack I have found that could also be quite effective with our short film is the song 'Power to Believe' by The Dream Academy. The instrumental version uses many wind instruments to produce a powerful piece that slowly becomes more up beat towards the end. The scene including Milo running to the woods will need a more up beat sound to it fitting in with his rush to get to his 'hiding place'.

The link to 'Power to Believe' is www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk70z-fNcAA

If we could produce a soundtrack similar to these songs with a dominant instrument heard throughout, I feel it could be very effective and parallel with what is seen on screen matching with Milo's feelings and emotions perfectly.