Sound

I conducted some research into 'Sound' I wanted to find out how important sound is in trailers. I basically watch two totally contrasting trailers that I had never seen before and watched them without sound to guess what sort of sound would be used, I then watched them with sound to see if my predictions were correct.

Trailer 1 -



Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

I had decided that I would watch the trailer 3 times; the first time I watched the film in silent in order to get a gist of what the trailer is about and the genre of film that I was watching, the second time I would watch it again in silent in order to pick out ideas of sound that I thought was being used I made notes about the sounds that I expected to hear so that I would be able to compare this with the actual outcome. The final time that I watched the trailer I listened out for the sounds that I predicted but also sounds that I didn't expect so that I could learn about the sounds that link with certain genres or the on-screen action.

I noticed that I had  correctly guessed a lot of the different sounds in the trailer.This is mainly due to the fact that I had correctly guessed the genre of the film, this meant that I could write down the words that I would usually link in with Rom/Com films, I also looked at the on-screen action in order to pick out actions that may produce diagetic sound  or dialogue moments.Rom/com films generally contain diagetic sound such as laughing and having fun which is why I added this to my list. I also noticed that most film trailers contain a soundtrack of some sort, In this case the soundtrack was played throughout the trailer and as the soundtrack was a happy, soft song it fit in with the idea of romance and comedy.

Trailer 2 - Mothers Day

Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

I found out that I was quite close to the actual sounds, I noticed at the start that there was a party scene this lead me to the idea that a soundtrack was being used that the characters were dancing to. I noticed a lot of on-screen actions that lead to presumptions of sounds such as 'gunshots' and 'screaming' these assumptions also turned out to be correct. I also thought about other horror trailers that I had seen and thought about the sounds used in them; I thought about the effect of silence to create an eerie moment.

Trailer 3 - Trust
Next I decided to see what sort of effect the sound has to create a feeling or mood, I used the trailer 'Trust' in order to research this



Film Trailers by Filmtrailer.com

The purpose of doing this final task was to see if the on-screen action and the sound actually linked with one another and also to see what sort of effect the sounds has on the actual trailer.

In the first part of the trailer there is a party scene happening which is jolly and everyone seems to be having a good time, However the music doesn't match as the music has a sinister aspect to it as if something is about to go wrong. So the narrative was making us think one thing whilst the soundtrack was making us think another.

I also noticed that silence was also used for an effect in this trailer. This made the scene seem tense and eerie, which added the effect that something was about to go wrong.

I also noticed that there was crying in the film however the sound effect of the crying was dimmed. And the sad/tense music was playing instead. This created a very good effect as the on-screen and sound were both suggesting sadness even though they weren't linked.

Conclusion

This research has shown that we need to think about...

• How important it is to link the sound with the genre of film
• How the sound links with our target audience
• How we can use the sound to create tension
• How we can use sound to relate to certain emotions
• How sound can go against the on-screen action with an effective outcome
• How the setting of the film effects the sounds heard e.g. desert - western music