Soundtrack of thriller production

A soundtrack plays a major role in both modern day media (such as the common soap operas) and the movie industry.

The main purpose behind a soundtrack is to add atmosphere to a scene that may orginally in raw footage format have none at all. An example is a in-door built set that has been built to replicate a forest, a soundtrack will be required to add specific ambiances to replicate the orginal feeling behind it. (off-screen sounds such as birds chirping in the distance, etc)

However, Thriller films heavily rely on soundtrack to add the chilling, high tension environments they require where the suspence is always high and the audience feel on edge with moments when the killer is nearby the victim or a chase scene between the two takes place. (Usually at this point of the film there is non-digetic sound in the form of a soundtrack that has a fast paced, dark beat to it)

For my thriller production, there was a large selection and variety of sounds to pick from thanks to an application that was selected to be used in editing the soundtrack of the final thriller production which is called Soundtrack Pro from Apple.

This application allows the function of playing your movie along the timeline of a modifiable soundtrack timeline. Any sound that is on a specific time such as one minute in, the sound that is there will play when the movie reaches the one minute mark. The application also contains a huge quantity of pre-made, free to use and ready to use sounds in a large and neatly catagorized library, such as Dark, Sound FX, Vocals/Voices, and more.

For the thriller production, a good amount and variety of different sounds within the soundtrack were inserted and included, this includes the use of a main soundtrack, a non-digetic sound in the form of a soundtrack in the background that is played for majorty of the production, as well as many small, off-screen, digetic and non-digetic sounds were added within the production. All of the above are aimed to give the production a certain atmosphere towards the audience, for the production I was trying to create a stable but yet unsafe, eerie, misleading environment to the audience. Dispite the footage being within what appears to be a tidy house and the character is wearing mostly white, the later narrative and the soundtrack being more and more noticable and giving off a larger effect. The soundtrack and narrative are both misleading and turn one concept of the narrative on its head, that being that what the audience belived was a stable and normal character and home is actually a very unstable and dangerous area. and with use of the soundtrack, we add even more feeling towards that atmosphere.

I believe the atmosphere of dangerous and unstable has been created by the use of eerie, distance howls and one specific screech that was used during a certain scene where the main character appears to have a flashback of him rocking back and forth with the screen flashing dramatically fast.

The reasons behind using these "eerie distant howls" was to give hints to the audience within a few seconds in of the opening scene of our production, that what they are seeing currently in the clip, (character performing a standard day to day routine of watching tv, house is tidy, nothing out of the oridinary at the moment) does not match to what they are hearing, where the non-digetic sound of the eerie howls are heard; giving the impression that the area may be haunted or is frighting if such noises are heard within what appears to be just a normal home.

The main highlight of the soundtrack however, where a "screech" is heard, was used to awaken the audience to the very frighting truth that has been unfolding infront of them. (at this point of the narrative, many flashbacks of the character have been shown, showing his unstable other self, during the screeh, the "main" flashback which consists of just a longer flashback of him rocking back and forth with a flashing white filter)

Reflection:
I believe that the soundtrack is parallel to the final production of our thriller, as well as seeing it fit with the generic thriller conventions of sound too.
This is because I have added, inserted, and used sound at specific points and parts of the soundtrack for the production, when combined as a final production piece. I believe that the soundtrack goes very well with the film, which in turn, adds a dark and sinister atmosphere as distant eerie roars are heard and the dark and slow paced soundtrack is played throughout the scene. This will in turn surprise, confuse, and disorientate the audience as the narrative goes further as they watch more of the opening scene as it changes their expectations on what they belived was going to happen during the next following scenes.