Music, Sound and Effects

Music is one of the hardest things to get right in our movie. Our film, doesn't really have a tone that is present throughout so it is proving difficult to find a piece of music. We need music pieces in the following parts of the film;

• As Lewis is walking down the side of the house, at the very start of the film.
• As Lewis is crying at the photo, near the very end of the scene.
• For the end credits.

This may not seem that much, yet I would like to find a piece of music that can cover all 3 different parts of the film, where we require music. The criteria that we are looking for music is something that is slow and possibly acoustic, although something played on the piano could also work. After, looking through the free music that are teacher provided with on discs, we found one piece of music that could work but we were not completely satisfied with the tone of it, so decided to use this if we could not find anything else. From the recommendation of a friend, I have been searching www.Jamendo.com for a suitable piece of music, yet due to the amount of music that is actually on the website, it is proving to be quite difficult. On top of the site frequently going down for maintenance, however, I will keep searching for a suitable piece of music which I believe IS out there, it's just going to take some finding.

When it comes to sound effects, our film needs one important one, which is the disappearance of Ryan. We found a suitable effect on our editing software (Final Cut Express) called "Too Much Too Soon" which caused a flash to appear on screen. Without a video it is hard to explain, however this is used 3 times in our film so we thought it would be better if we found a suitable sound effect which could be added to the Video transition. This is where the discs came in handy, after searching through a few discs we found one with the right sort of sound that we wanted (which was a sort of mysterious sound, but also loud with a deep tone). After placing this into the final film, we decided that we all liked it and that it was exactly what we were looking for.

There are 3 points in the film, where the Video transition of "Too Much Too Soon" is used. These are;

• When Ryan initially disappears after touching the pocket-watch.
• When Ryan appears in the mirror, as Lewis is reading the note from Jayne.
• When Ryan eventually returns, after Lewis shows his emotion.

After adding the sound effect to all 3 points during the film, we decided at the point where Ryan appears in the mirror didn't really fit the sound effect. Hence, the reasoning for leaving it silent. The shot was meant to be a spooky part of the film where Ryan appears for just a split second, so it was best not to use the sound effect. However, we still did use the video transition as Ryan disappears when Lewis catches him out of the corner of his eye.