Maxim Thompson - Sound

For our As coursework piece, we decided to do a neo noir piece, as it was the most stylised style of film and one of the most enjoyable, neo noir being inspired by the film noir movement but dealing with current affairs and can be combined with other styles of film such as high school drama (Brick), superhero movies (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) or even science fiction (Blade Runner).

We did a simple plot scheme for our extract, which drew from the same concept for the opening of 'Sin City', but changing it slightly, writing our own script to go by. The sound to the piece was just as important as the picture as the mood of the piece can be drastically changed by the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds you used. The music I chose for the piece was Miles Davis' 'So What' which is a quite mellow yet upbeat piece with dominant trumpets over a deep base line, this gives the extract a feel reminiscent of 60's and 70's neo noir in which the music is usually quite playful with serious undertones at the same, examples of this can be found in films such as 'Breathless', 'Chinatown', 'Get Carter' and 'Taxi Driver'.

The music also syncs very well with the dialogue, for example, when the woman says the line 'that's for me to know and you to find out', the music changes slightly, becomes slightly faster, which works so well as the wordplay becomes more forward yet still being faithful.

We did have a major problem with the sound at one point, because we filmed on the roof of the arts picturehouse, near a very loud generator, so we had to use all our footage without any sound, and dub over everything. That includes wild sound, dialogue, sound effects such as lighter and gun shots, everything

luckily, our actors (myself included) who filled the roles of the man and the woman were kind enough to read their lines, and it synced near-perfect with the footage, the wild sound was a concession of various clips of traffic, wind and sirens, and the sound of lighter was also redone. As you can tell, combined with the narration and music, that made for a lot of data.





I achieved the grainy sound of the narrators voice by recording it at 1 in the morning after going to a party, giving it the sort of weary worn out style of Walter Neff in 'Double Indemnity' or Josh Hartnett in 'Sin City'. It was crucial to get the sound right so it sounded like it was outside but at the same time, making sure you can hear what they are saying, aswell as the music, loud enough to hear it, but quiet enough that it is not over empowering so nothing else can be heard.

If I had more time to improve, I would have worked more on the how the it started and end, it just jumps in and jumps out again and I would have preferred to work on it so it seemed like an exposition scene rather than just a clip from somewhere in the middle. There was a shot we had for the beginning, but we couldn't use because it wasn't the right format. Aside from that. I think the extract works very well, and I like what I did with the sound.