Sounds of Magic

Due to the cancellations in shooting we were only left with a few days to edit and put sound on the film. I got a rough picture cut on sunday and from there had to sync the audio I had recorded with the camera sounds Jordan used whilst cutting the picture. These really should have been synced before any cutting began and the fact that most of the shoot hadn't been slated properly meant for an extremely laborious process of listening through different takes, as Jordan had labeled his based on the shot type and I in chronological order of recording and most prominent line. This also meant one or two shots used in the cut had lines running into one another that wasn't detectable with just the camera audio.

It wasn't until around 18:30 on tuesday night i received a final picture lock to work with. I had already made two basic scores/songs with which to work from and elaborate but everything else was improvised on the night.

This was the main theme from which most of my motifs and ideas were derived, and is itself featured after the car is vanished. I think it captures the essence of the trip-hop we were hoping to emulate whilst  adding its own mysterious elements. I started with a drum loop on Logic and then wrote in the bassline, which would come to represent the salesman. The atmosphere Fx instrument was very useful, with a multitude of different textures and tones all featuring delays and reverbs, that changed depending on how long you sustained the note. I used this throughout the track to create atmosphere and once sustained applied alterations with the modulation and pitch wheels on the midi-keyboard.

I also used a staccato jab on the keyboard to accentuate most of the effects with an echoing resonance. 

The motif of the magician is played on a harp and glockenspiel and utilises an exotic scale, the name of which I have long since forgotten. (I'm fairly sure its an augmented scale but I was just playing around with the most mysterious sounding note progression at the time.) I'm satisfied with the result as it is both playful and strange, as befitting of the character, and all subsequent themes and ideas would revolve around this scale.

The placing of this theme after the car disappears was supposed to represent the characters unification as it is the turning point when the salesman finally believes beyond a doubt that the magician is the real deal, and their respective motifs combine. 

The second idea is much more ominous, yet it retains a laid-back beat. It is not dissimilar to my score for the two minute exercise, in that it primarily uses a piano and cello in it instrumentation and creates a sense of dread through letting the bass notes ring out. The cello notes are equal parts homage/ripoff from Gustav Holst's opening to Mars from The Planets Suite.

This was somewhat unintentional and occurred whilst I was tinkering with keyboard and thought a mild remixing wouldn't bring about many copyrighting issues. I think this is perhaps a little too dark for the tone of our film, and would only really work in the tunnel scene when the magician appears to lose it. I also imagined it kicking in when the credits roll but the cello is perhaps just too much.

The harp returns with an arpeggio using the augmented scale reminding that everything is magic and somewhat lightening the tone.

Once I was handed the finished picture I began to elaborate on these initial ideas, using the bassline on its own to accompany the salesman's walk home, and again as a transition to the next day when he begins sparking matches. The magician's chime can also be heard as he walks away as a sort of call and response. 

A staccato harp chord taken from the score is used to introduce the Magician quite effectively, and is repeated when the salesman teleports to imply his involvement.

The card trick sequence felt a little jarring in silence as it was all that was left in of a longer exposition scene which was rife with continuity errors. The plodding bass really brings it to life, creating a sense of  puzzlement and making the whole trick feel quite surreal whilst complimenting the movements on screen. My method at this point was to watch a sequence through on Soundtrack Pro whilst Recording on Logic as I played/experimented with an idea on the keyboard. I would then export these individually and layer them in STP where necessary. 

The sitar was the positive result of an inconvenient situation. As we had to relocate from the edit rooms at midnight to the library I was aware that the computers there would not have access to the full Logic sound-banks and that some of the instruments I had used may not work there. The harp was one such instrument and I found the sitar searching for a replacement. It has a mystical quality that evokes the wisdom of the far east in a slightly cliched way but works well enough for the magician. 

I continued to accentuate occasional lines with a musical tone to maintain a comedic edge with the dialogue. The biggest departure in style comes from the Hybrid morph synth used when the salesman teleports to a new location. I gently altered the pitch wheel to create a sense of unease and the new instrumentation helps bolster the sense of unfamiliarity. The comedy is restored when the tone drops out and he slaps his head, and the silence continues in the drawn out wide shot as he cycles across screen.

During the steps scene the sitar returns with increased modulation as the Magician reveals detailed information about the salesman before it is replaced by the glockenspiel and harp combination playing a variant of the piano melody from the second score as he then reveals more about himself.

The same melody is continued once they have teleported before the second score is used. I opted not to include the cello part and I think it works better without it. There are a number of ambient synths used here to create tension and I underscored his russian roulette with a glockenspiel melody to turn it into a sort of deranged nursery rhyme. The plodding bass returns adding to the surreal nature of the magicians re-entrance after being shot.

Although I'm happy with the majority of the final score I think I could have improved the dramatic pacing of the piece if I had more time with it. There are one or two sections where the placement of music feels a little forced and unfinished as by that stage I was rushing to fill in gaps and a little delirious from the library's lack of coffee. Overall though I think it does a good job of establishing both the comedic and mysterious tones conveyed by the film and characters whilst underscoring them with their own unique musical cues.

There are a number of sound effects I used to deconstruct the films supposed realism. Chief among them was the 'whooshing' sound to accompany the whip pans and crash zooms. Inspired by the godfather of the whip-pan, Edgar Wright, and his work on Spaced (1999), and his later feature films I found that adding the sound effect truly animates the camera-movements and breaths life into them. Its actually the same recycled effect from the fighting FX sound bank, I just made alterations in logic, shifting the pitch at least one octave lower using the Apple Audio Unit Pitch to make a much deeper 'whoosh'

 I also ran the effect through the EXS24 Sample Editor, so i could alter each rendition with further control and variation to the pitch and timbre giving me a range of sounds.

A combination of a reversed and a forward playing whip sound served as the basis for the teleportation effects. I then layered them with a fiery whoosh after we discovered the puff of smoke effect and incorporated that late in the edit, which elevates the impact above simple split-screen trickery. I wanted each (dis)appearance of an object to have its own distinct signature so included instantly recognisable, exaggerated noises; the bottle clink, the bicycle bell and a deep bass rumble for the car. The pitch of each combined effect also differs depending on the size of the object in question.

The majority of effects would be the result of several layers which were then exported into a single noise. I acquired the effects through a combination of my own foley recordings using a Marantz PMD661 and Sennheiser 416 Microphone, and the University's sound FX bank and freesound.org for more unattainable noises like the gunshot.

 The painfully drawn out bicycle shot is largely exaggerated, with the rusty squeaks and whirring of the bike being the only sound left in for greater comical effect.

The gunshot was made from a combination of a revolver shot, and a shotgun blast which provided a much lower frequency. I also added in a pulped melon sound used in the previous exercise. Compression was used to maximise the blast impact without spiking the decibels and I then created a high-pitched frequency to emulate ringing in the ears, as the gun had been fired in a relatively confined space.

I used the waveform generator and adjusted the frequency of the sine wave to an unbearable range of 10,000 Hz, and drastically lowered the volume so as not to completely deafen the audience, which was merciful on my part as it really was an ear-splitting experience. I also applied a delay on one of the gunshots to simulate the echo reverberating around the tunnel.
A cuckoo clock can also be heard underscoring the pistol-whip, which was again supposed to be an exaggeration of reality.

I reversed several sound effects for the instances when the magician rewinds time, such as a the card trick effect, and later when the entire tunnel scene is reset. I chose the core sounds (gunshot, hammer cock, several whooshes and a piece of dialogue) to illustrate the essence of what had just transpired

I was very conscious of character movements when adding the foley, using keyframes to make sure every footfall was in place and paying close attention to how the matchbox was shaken with each hand jerk, as well as any obvious fabric movements. Platinumverb was also applied to the footsteps in the tunnel for greater resonance, with adjustments made to the room size and shape, and the amount of wet signal and reverb time.

A great deal of automation was necessary with both the effects, and the dialogue, to make sure levels stayed consistent throughout and so the effects would be noticeable when they were required to be.
The dialogue waveforms could differ drastically in the amount they spiked depending on the actors performance and whether or not they shouted lines, and how close i was able to get the boom in without disrupting the shot (the tunnel for instance was difficult to get in close enough).

As well as compensating for the audio spikes I also made sure to pan accordingly depending on the character/object's position on screen.

Finally the atoms tracks were recorded separately at the same locations each scene was shot using a Rode NT4 stereo mic. I was concerned about some of the tunnel dialogue being ruined by the tweeting of birds and passing cars as some takes were rushed in our eagerness to wrap. Most of the takes used however were relatively unimpeded by this and didn't detract from the tension of the scene in the way i suspected they might.

Again i'm pleased with the effects created and that I got to experiment with a different approach than the two minute exercise. This films genre offered unlimited potential when creating sounds for magical effects and allowed me to use my imagination rather than sticking to arbitrary foley to maintain realism. In hindsight there is a noticeable absence of a sound for the appearance of the gun in the magicians hand (the swap is masked with a close-up cut of salesman), this is simply something I missed in my rush to get everything finished on time for the presentation.