Sound 19-04-13

So today I Received some audience feedback from so other media students about the music in the opening sequence, and they said that it wasn't tense enough towards the end and the sound didn't build up enough. So to improve it what I did was, I firstly tried writing in some new sounds but that didn't sound very good, so I started changing the EQ in certain places like at the end, so I raised the bass, mid., and treble frequencies and it sounded a lot better and more dominant.  then also I moved the bass drop to right after we hear the drop sound which then sounded a lot more in time

Analysing opening sequences

1) Halloween 1963 
The opening sequence is generally spooky and shifty. We instantly know that the camera is representing the view of the character who we soon find out is the killer. It is set in a suburban area in a large house at night time this adds to the atmosphere as we usually associate large houses as creepy as they are usually empty. The camera movement is generally handheld and shaky this shows that

2) Juno 
The movie is aimed at teenagers as the main characters are teenagers and they instantly deal with 'teenage issues’ that are relationships. It starts off outside her house in the afternoon with an establishing shot then to a master shot then a close up of her facial expression and her reminiscing about the past and we see a flash back then her again outside her house then the sequence goes into a cartoon which is more appealing to teens then any other audience as she walks through the streets in we get a small sense of her personality and what she likes because we see different shops and certain places that she passes through. The music in the background is acoustic and uses a harmonica, which could suggest that it may be a little bit country; the lyrics also could be seen to be associated with her situation. 

3) The Fast And The Furious 

Firstly we see the universal logo then we see a reflection of a crate in the logo, which looks metallic, and a brownish goldish colour which could symbolise rust of the cars or it being expensive and co- ordinates with the current background of the scene against the blue and the colour of the crate, which is a similar colour.

We then see the crate being attached to the truck, we are then shown the inside of the truck with all the expensive Panasonic equipment this is an important scene for the audience because we are given an insight into what is going on and it is important information for later. 

Then we follow a character on the phone as he confirms that the truck has been sealed and where it is going, we then cut to the night and see the same truck and 3 of the same car drive by with green lights underneath and we hear the enhanced zoom sound to make them sound faster. 

The characters are all dressed in black suits with motorcycle helmets on the costume can symbolise that the characters are shifty and it is clear to the sudience of there intentions because there heads are covered an this usually means that they are trying to hide something 

Later We see an establishing shot of the city. We mainly see men and vehicles which makes it more appealing to men therefore making the move generally aimed at men £

Sound in Opening sequences

The sound in an opening sequence has to grab your attention, weather the music is interesting and the genre appeals to the listener, or it is loud and grabs your attention, or the dialogue is meaningful and a part of the actual story of the movie.

Panic Room 
There are ambient sounds of the city, like cars, people, the wind ect... to set the scene .

Then there are strings and the panning matches the sounds and it becomes quite dark because the notes are quite low in pitch and it sounds fairly minor.

The sound of the cymbal signifies change, this could be significant further on in the movie.

The music then speeds up and there is a sort of ticking sound in the background which could indicate how time is moving the background.

Finally there is a sound bridge right at the end of the title sequence going into the main dialogue at the end of the movie.
Reservoir Dogs

It starts with an overdubbed monologue.

Then it goes into a well known song with a funky bass line, the sound, sounds fairly happy and in a major key. it also sounds lively and has a nice vibe to match the facial expressions of the characters as they are smiling and laughing.

The music could be seen to be fairly 'cool' this could be what they are trying to represent in the character to the audience of how cool they are and they are wearing black sunglasses. 

We can clearly see that the scene has been slowed down to match with the music.
some of the lyrics in the song could co-ordinate with the actions in the scene like there is a lyric 'take a drag' as they are smoking.

Again at the end of the sequence there is a sound-bridge going into the first bit of the movie.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

In this sequence the music is very important because it is used to emphasises the visuals and the effect of them, because they are dark images.

There are drums at the beginning then the Synths arrive and it all sounds dark, but lively at the same time as the pace of the visuals is quite fast and the cutting pace is fast to.

The music has some sort of scream in it this also goes with the visuals because you would be expecting someone to be screaming because some of the visual we can see trapped hands and this is quite gory.

Max Payne

Scene number and description	Effect and technique
1 20th century fox motif which is non diegetic	Introducing what company made the film
2 eerie sounds quite quiet and a voice over no visuals	This introduce the characters thoughts to the audience as there are no visuals this makes the audience concentrate on the thoughts of the character
3 sound of the character bursting out of the water, diegetic and on screen	Gives an enigma to the audience as they wonder why the character is there and where he is
4 water bubbling, the character trying to breathe	This makes the audience feel shocked as the character could be drowning and this could raise the tension. As the sounds of the character trying to breathe are harsh this could also sway the mood of the audience to make it more serious
5 splashing and coughing from the character, diegetic and on screen	This makes the audience wonder where he is trying to swim to or if he is trying to get away from something
6 the character is coughing and panting diegetic and on screen	This put the audience on the edge of there seat wondering what will happen next as the scene is serious and anything could happen as they have no background information
7 sound of a person sinking in the water, diegetic and on screen	This scene shows another enigma to the audience as they can see a person sinking under water but there is little sound to go with it on the voice over of the character
8 baby crying non diegetic with a sound bridge	The sound bridge could signify that the baby runs through several parts of his life
9 baby crying and a bass sound that is getting	This could show the audience that he is getting closer to something important also the visuals of a door which has a golden light being released from the room could signify something extremely important to the character or the light coming into the dark and happier place in the room
10 voice over of the characters thoughts and feelings
11 door creaking  which is diegetic	This could be opening up part of his life that is most important to him and the creaking may suggest that it has been opened in a long time
12 wind chimes	this could signify a mystery and that everything is not what it seems
13 wind chimes
14 wind chimes and a clock ticking, thunder and lightning	This could suggest that the character is running out of time to do something or it could be a count down to something else and the lightning could represent the mood of the opening in general or how the character is feeling, this scene is also parallel  to the visuals as it is quite dark with little lighting
15 silence	The scene is parallel to the silence as the screen is black and there is nothing there as silence usually represents emptiness
16 sirens and the ambient sounds of the city diegetic	This reassures the audience that everything is back to a more familiar place also the sound ties in well with the visuals

Harry Potter Sound Exercise

This is my Harry potter exercise 

The style of music we feel that we created was an oriental sound as the loops we used included pipes, small cymbals and a mandarin which is usually associated with a more oriental sound we used this to show the equilibrium at the start of the sequence and to show that it was calm and serene from when we looked at the sun down to the city then as they walked through the field. The loop we used for when the title came up was a reversed cymbal that was crescendo this matched with the title getting bigger and closer towards you. think that the overall effect that we have created right at the beginning was, firstly when we saw the title the reversed cymbal sound signified to the audience that something important was coming creating tension and secondly when the we saw Harry walking through the field we created the effect that we wanted to, which i mentioned earlier in the paragraph. 

We feel that we used a similar style of music to the first scene, but towards the end we want to create a humorous effect so we used cymbals when Harry went over to the boy and grabbed his shirt, also because the sounds were quite harsh it signified the strength in Harry. we made the tempo of the loop match with the scene. Right at the end of this scene we used an orchestral sound to convey vitality of the change in the weather.

We tried to create a mysterious effect, at the start of the transition we used a deep noise that sounded like wind the effect we wanted to create with that was that there was a storm coming and to show the intensity and power of it. Then we used a sci-fi sound for the rest of the transition to create a mystery as they were looking up at the sky.  Then a distorted electric guitar came in to show that something had changed the certain loop we used was also very dominant signifying the dementor

Overall I am pleased with the sequence but I think that we could have added more loops to the dementor scene to make the effect more dominant and to make the audience feel more about what the scene is about. Also in the transition between the change of weather and when it got darker i think we could of had a sound like a snare or bass drum to emphasis when harry and the boy were running as the tracking shot and the way that the camera was slightly jumpy showed the speed but the sound could emphasize that