Sound Exercise and Evaluation

For our sound exercise we were ordered to do a short film to practise different types of sound we have been learning recently. In our film we added various types of sound: diegetic, non-diegetic, parallel, dialogue and music.

First of all we put non-diegetic music in the background (Maroon 5 - Sunday Morning) of our play to set the mood of a peaceful and calm environment while Ellie and I were reciting our dialogue. We added about 3 flashbacks in our play referring to a "party" that happened the weekend before. For each of these flashbacks we added non-diegetic and parallel flashback music so it would be clear to the audience that we are going back in time, this minimises confusion for the audience. When the flashbacks of the party took place we added diegetic sound that Denis was dancing to on a table and when a "fight" was taking place. We added some more diegetic sound of sirens for when the police arrived at the party.

Evaluation

Diegetic sound is sound that occurs in film that is natural. These sounds include doors opening and closing, footsteps, dialogue (the voices of the actors if they are talking on screen), any music that comes from radios in the film or played on musical instruments, thunderstorms, tyres screeching and explosions. Any sound that is caused by actions or actually happens in the course of the film is diegetic sound. It makes the situation seem surreal as the sounds you would expect to hear in that place would not be occurring. 

Non-Diegetic sound is sound that is added to the film during editing. These sounds included music e.g. the Maroon 5 song that were added to the piece, the music sets the mood for our project, making it peaceful. We made the atmosphere peaceful at the beginning so it can contrast with the chaos towards the end and make the film piece exciting to watch. The music signals what the audience should be feeling or what a particular character is feeling and without it could become slightly confusing and uninteresting.

Overall, I think the sound exercise went well as we used different types of sound effectively and it was coherent with what was going on at each moment, the only thing that went wrong was the fact you could see the microphone in the film. The visual microphone made the piece seem less professional because it reminds the audience that it was unreal and the whole point of the exercise was to make everything as realistic as possible.When I make my thriller I will not make those mistakes.