Sounds

Our first piece of sound we focused on was the ambient park sounds at the start of the opening. We thought by making it the first sounds that the audience hears, they would gain an atmospheric sense for the scene they are about to see. It also acts as a sound motif for themes of childhood and families, which would be play a big part our film. When the opening does then reveal the footage of Samantha sitting on the bench rolling a cigarette, the innocent ambient sounds act as a contrast to what we suddenly see on screen. The way we recorded this sound was primarily by recording on a microphone and on one of our phones the natural sounds heard while in Tonbridge Park. However, after listening back to these sounds we found that the wind was an issue as it muffled the quality of our sound. We also went on the internet again to find some copyright free sounds of ambient park noises and we came across this track- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5lppTUUj-I. We decided it was quite unrealistic though and did not provide the right atmosphere we wanted so continued to test other sounds. In the end, we decided to use the sounds that were recorded on the original footage on the camera while filming the bench scene, as it was more realistic and high quality. 

Then we explored the Internet for our main non-diegetic music, which would feature throughout the opening, expect from when the voiceover is played. We understood that all the sound we put into our film opening had to be copyright free in order to comply with the law so we went on websites such as bensounds.com and epidemicsonds.com. We wanted it to be non-diegetic to reflect the feelings that Samantha has at this particular moment in the film to the audience, rather than using it as a demonstration of the kind of music the character likes to listen to. It also had to be contrapuntal sound as we wanted to include some typical conventions of the comedy genre and use upbeat music while our audience view footage of a sad, hung over teenage. This allows the audience to mock what they see on the screen and recognise this story of her life as a "bit of a joke". 

The transition from the park to the brick wall scene with the wipe screen also makes a sound bridge occur because we wanted the shout to continue on. As a result, this compliments the idea of Samantha being disorientated by the consumption of drugs and the fact that she feels so zoned out from society that the same sounds are still occurring in her head even though she is in a different place.

Dialogue was not necessary for the opening of this film, as we wanted to demonstrate how lonely and alienated our character feels from the rest of society. The character also has quite introverted behaviour so using dialogue to introduce her would not demonstrate her true state of mind. 

By our second edit of our film opening we decided to include a voice over as the introduction to our piece. This is common to have in many dark comedy films as it almost break down the fourth wall and the character lets them into their world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ab8BOu4LE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5lppTUUj-I

For the improved storyboard, the only bit of sound, which we wanted to include to add more comedy to our piece were the toilet sounds and Samantha shouting "Fuck!" as she slams the toilet door. We did a lot of Foley work for this, as we wanted to create the right sound, which we could not find on any copyright free websites.