I am taking inspiration from a scene in Under The Skin where Scarlett Johansson's character lours a man into her house where everything is black. The sound design mirrors the minimalism of the set. During this scene, no diegetic sound can be heard except for her footsteps. This gives the scene a surreal feel which is added to with the high-pitched strings and slow 'bass'y' beat.
I plan to use this removal of main diegetic sounds for my re-design of the scene in Only God Forgives, I will use this towards the end of the scene where Ryan Gosling comes back to reality, walks over to the two men and beats them up. This will hopefully create tension and suspense as well as making the scene more interesting and the climax more climactic.
Cliff Martinez is a musician who writes film scores, he is known for films such as Solaris (2002), Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013).
I found this interview interesting as Martinez talks about using actual instruments, such as a wind chime to create ambient textures. He also goes on to talk briefly about the effects that he uses on synthesisers, like EQ, compressions, distortion and reverb.
In my sound project I plan to use some of Martinez's techniques in creating ambience and mood. As Martinez scored the scene that I am re-designing I don't intend to copy Martinez's style completely, I would just like to create a ambient sound similar to his. I plan to use a lot of realist sounds in the scene, which is not evident in the original scene.
For my main project I have chosen to re-design the sound for a scene from the film Only God Forgives - Nicolas Winding-Refn (2013). I have chosen this scene because the sound in the scene lacks any reality, it is mainly made up of dreamy midi tones with little to no 'real' sounds.
In this scene I have noticed that there are three main sections; Gosling's reality, Gosling's fantasy and Gosling's mother's reality. These clear sections are lost in the scene because the sound is consistent throughout giving it a consistently dreamy or fantastical feel. I feel like these sections can be addressed in a more bold and obvious way using a combination of different sound techniques.
For each of these sections I aim to create different sounds that fit with the section, for example during the fantasy section the main sound will be made up of dreamy midi tones, much like Cliff Martinez's score, however in the other sections, these tones will become diegetic sounds adding to the reality of those sections. In the reality sections I plan to boost the atmospheric and realist sounds to highlight the difference between the fantasy and reality.
In a sound workshop we were shown how to EQ sound recordings to make them sound as if they're coming from a radio/tv. Using the inserts we were told to open the equaliser. With the equaliser we had to bring down the high and low frequencies to match the quality of a small radio/tv speaker, and we had to boost the middle frequencies as poor quality speakers mainly display the middle sound frequencies.
After EQing the recording, I added some reverb on the sound to make it sound as if it was being played in an open space. EQing is useful in other situations too. For example if I wanted to make a slap sound more realistic, I might boost the low frequencies of the sound to give it more body.
In our sound workshop, we worked alongside the cinematography group. The exercise of the session was to record sync sound for a scene with a 2 way dialogue. To get the best dialogue sound we had to use a Wendt X3 sound-mixer.
The Wendt X3 mixer allows you to record from up to 3 different microphones at a time into the same recording device, controlling the levels of each microphone separately. This is particularly useful for recording conversations. This piece of equipment will not be particularly useful when it comes to sound-design as you won't usually be recording with more than one microphone at a time, however it is a valuable skill to have as I will be recording sync sound scenes in the future.
