SOUND RESEARCH & IDEAS

A close friend of mine - Cameron Jacobs is an incredible classical pianist but can improvise easily to certain moods or atmospheres. For our film soundtrack, we don't want to set anything in stone until we have filmed and produced our rough edit. It's important to us that the non-diegetic sound enhances the diegetic and aids the film in its purpose.

With recording Cameron - we plan to tell him nothing about the film and then when we are ready to record, link a keyboard to recording equipment which is available in our school music department and show him the film raw, simply allowing him to play what he feels appropriate.

We will then tell Cameron specifics that he needs to play and look out for, moments lasting a certain amount of time that we have pre-decided to fit with the film. He can then adhere to our requirements, neither of us are able to write music for him to play but I have experience in music and can clearly show Cameron our intentions, after the initial viewing and recording we will also show him example pieces and short film examples for him to take inspiration from.

We will repeat this process seven times, obviously during the repetition of the process he will create something that he feels suits the mood and by the last times should be able to pre-empt what happens on screen and show this in his playing.

We realise this is a lot to ask a pianist in only an hour or two but Cameron is incredibly accomplished and has been playing most of his life. He also plays violin and guitar to a high standard and has experience in computer generated sound.

Once we have recorded material we feel is sufficient we plan to mix together parts of the seven tracks and create a master track that will accompany the film. There will be moments of silence within the film such as the blackout in-between the acts but apart from this we want to leave ourselves open to Cameron's interpretation, it would be a shame to waste such musical talent and intuition. Obviously if we don't feel it's appropriate we will cut it finely to change things around.

Once we have the master track we will add foley sounds such as swipes using Logic Pro & Final Cut Pro. It's important that the non-diegetic sound accompanies the film well. The reason we plan to film in the next two weeks is so that we have plenty of time to edit and add effects we feel appropriate to the sound.

With our film we feel it's important that the non-diegetic sound doesn't add all the emotion to the film but that it's an aid. You should be able to watch the film and understand it the same way you would with non-diegetic sound.

Good examples of non-diegetic sound being used and natural sound being enhanced are in my studied short films such as White & Apricot, the sound is very much an aid rather than leading the film where as in Future Proof for example the sound is leading, more like a music video.

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