Sound Design is a crucial element to building an atmosphere in a piece of media, whether it is a film, radio, video game, etc. It can completely change the way a scene is interpreted. For example, if you took a scene from Eraserhead, took out the industrial sound design and replaced it with silly clown music. It would completely change the atmosphere of the piece. Hense in my piece, I made the sound design a key element to provide the tension that the writing is trying to give. The style of writing was made to leave room for the sound design to greaten the tension of the piece.
A great example of sound design is used to help create and change the atmosphere would be Gaspar Noe’s film Climax. As with my last blog, you can see Gaspar has a way with sound design. The plot of the climax is in short, a dance group in France are preparing to tour the united states with their dance troop. The rehearsal space is an abandoned school and as they celebrate their rehearsal, someone spikes the sangria with LSD. And the bad trip starts from there.
The soundtrack is a list of back to back disco and electronic classics. Starting from Cerreons ‘Supernature’ to Aphex Twins ‘Windowlicker’. The reason this is important is that during the movie as the camera flies through the school, you can hear this thumping constantly in the background, like being in a nightclub toilet. And it creates this horrifically uncomfortable atmosphere. Here is a clip. I like the way this movie uses music that you wouldn’t normally associate with a bad time. I used this idea by using familiar sounds like Swing chains (which I personally associate with being a child) and using them in a different context to create a sense of familiarity and uncomfortableness.
For the sound design, I made use of dark, low, brooding drones. Coated in reverb layered over other drones to create a dense and uncomfortable atmosphere. I used the sounds we created in our foley session to help create the sounds of this industrial hell hole. I took the sounds of my classmates speaking and moving their mouths to create the sounds of tounges for the Columbian Necktie line.