P: Draft Radio Trailer

P: Audience Feedback 2 for Radio Trailer

P: Hanna

I researched about the film Hanna, a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the skills of a soldier; these come from being raised by her father, an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.

 I solely looked at sound. which consisted of an innocent dream-pop genre of music, oriental and a heavy, thumping electronic style of music. This mix creates the effect of a fairy tale with a darker side. Additionally the music is applied only at particular scenes and for the most part is used sparingly throughout with character themed tracks. The mix of such a hard electronic soundtrack with a visually pleasing film creates a film that is universally enjoyable to experience.

 

Hanna Soundtrack by Chemical Brothers was highly influential to our soundtrack for our film Sakkaku. At first we had sounds such as darker synthesisers which set the atmosphere. The layered beats and ominous sounds created a haunting feeling although it was simple and mostly electronica but the sound kept going down making the audience think silence is coming but then is interrupted by an eerie electronic beat. There is also an involvement of whispers that wavers into the sound, connoting the mind games played out in our film. 

We got a group of people that sat down and watched our film and asked us to give us feedback on what they think about the sound. The first set was that one of our audience actually said themselves that after watching our film they thought of the Hanna OST by Chemical Brothers which also had influence by Japanese Music. In our radio trailer there is like a small second of a oriental bell sounds which was similar to the soundtrack Hanna's theme song. which is an calm yet oriental sound giving off a strong Japanese vibe. It includes many overlapped chimes, humming, bells, synthesisers which is similar to our film soundtrack also. The music overall is gentle.

Another sound that influenced our soundtrack and trailer is Bahnof Rumble, which starts off with a ticking electronica beat that builds up with an eerie sound. The sound mid way paces up this influenced our radio trailer of having a normal pace sound until theres silence and the sound then goes daunting and booming with face pace beats.

Other feedback was that the music complimented the scenes as when we had the running and flashback scenes, the sounds suitably faded in and out in place and the daunting eerie sound gave more of a narration to the development of the film as we have no dialogue

final script

SAKKAKU SCRIPT

Doctor pov:

Doctor humming a tune  

Sound of tap turning, hands washing and drain gurgle

Sound of the victim struggling but is faint and muffled

Footsteps towards the sound of the victim

             “Shhh”

Heart beat sound bridges to the sound of headphones with music playing

Ambient sound of streets night and footsteps

Protagonist pov: headphones in music playing and then it plugged up ambient sound increases

            “Who’s there?”

Headphones back in with music playing interrupted by muffled sounds and screams along with a glitch static effect.

Ambient sound of a police station office

Policeman:

            “There’s a rumor about a woman, a mad scientist that’s been trying to get her drugs tested legally”

Policewoman:

              “What do you mean legally?”

Policeman:

                “She tested her drug on a volunteer but luckily the victim lived to tell the

                 story. Its effect of the drugs that makes it illegal, unknown substances”

Policewoman:

                 “What happened to her?”

Policeman:

                  “She was drugged and when she woke up she said she could see herself.  

                    Weird thing was, when we interviewed her, she kept on saying “there

                    Is no end to an illusion… except you””

Policewoman:

                   “No end to an illusion except you…”

Silence

Overlay of both Policies voices but at the end only the females voice is a whisper.

Footsteps running in the woods and heavy breathing and ambient sound

Faint whispering sound and plug in sound effect

Knife slash heard with a female grunt and unstable breathing

Last breath is drawn out for 3 seconds as a female whispering voice

                   “ Sakkaku”

Plug in glitch effect as the female whispers “Coming Soon’

P: Sound

 As I continued my research on Sound associating with horror i came across an interesting question which i thought was worth sharing.

 The video you can see above... did we implement these instruments in horror/thriller movies because we find the noise unnerving. Or do we find the sounds unnerving because we associate these sounds with the horror genre? 
This made me think as these certain sounds alone would may not have such an scary impact on us if it wasn't for the association with the scary moving image. However, these sounds are strange which really can't be related to anything realistic so It may be the issue that the enigma comes from the unknown of the sounds which highlights the enigma in the scenes.
 Relating to Sakkaku, we have no dialogue and the flashback scenes are silent. So sound has a huge impact on our production as this will allow us to use sound to our fullest ability as the enigma will not only come from the scenes but the sound. Sounds like synthesisers keys and bells may give off an eerie and unsettling feeling as when we hear these sounds it rings our ears which can make use more terrified when seeing a scene build along with the sound. Furthermore, discussing the issue of these sounds being associated with horror, it is very conventional to have these sounds so when the audience hears these certain sounds they would already figured that it is a horror and something in the scene will happen.

R: Alfred Hitchcock Theories of Film Editing

Alfred Hitchcock's 3 theories of film editing shows us the ways in which we can manipulate a simple scene into a completely different interpretation. for example, the cutting or as he says the assembly method taking an image to another scene. This gives me ideas of how I can be creative with my editing as I can manipulate the scenes especially when producing a Psychological Thriller/Horror as I can play around with the characters thoughts and state of reality just by simply cutting scenes and suddenly placing a jump cut to another scene.

P: studio

In the studio working on sound with my group and Niraj

P: Poster Twitter Feedback

So I decided to use social media to my advantage to and ask my mutuals and others on their feedback of my poster (draft). I used twitter polls which lets them vote. I will be keeping the users anonymous.

P: Props

Fake Blood
Blade/ Knife

P: Actor and location contract