Sound exercise

The sequence we filmed follows an ongoing affair that is about to be revealed to the partner on the receiving end. During the beginning of the extreme close-up of the phone, we wanted to create a moment of silence so the audience can identify with mobile phone because the phone-call about to occur will change everything. This silence represents the secrecy of the affair however it is soon to come to an end when the phone begins to ring. We chose to use an onscreen and diegetic sound here to emphasise the focus on the phone even further to demonstrate the true effect that the phone-call will have. When the phone is picked up, the silence is repeated but in this case, the silence represents the end of the affair. Despite this, everyone is unaware of how the affair will soon be exposed so the slow paced yet electric beginning of John Murphy’s song ‘In the House, In a Heartbeat’ suits a sad scene as opposed to the casual opening we chose to create. The song acted as our non-diegetic, contrapuntal and parallel sound.  During the phone-call  dialogue is introduced in two forms- on screen and off-screen. I spoke on-screen into the microphone while Sophie did a voice-over to create the off-screen effect of speaking on the other end of the phone. Billy, who acted as Sophie’s disloyal partner, also spoke (into the camera microphone) and remained off-screen to reinforce the idea of secrecy. We chose to keep Sophie’s voice off-screen for the majority of the sound exercise because later, an over the shoulder shot reveals her walking with Rebecca. This shot was vital in making the once contrapuntal sound of the non-diegetic song parallel with the tension that has been introduced after Sophie realises that Billy is in fact with me. Although we didn't include a sound bridge, we gradually increased the volume of the song as it increased in intensity alongside the build-up of tension. We decided we didn't need a sound bridge because the song already builds up in intensity so finding another sound was not essential and would have disrupted the fluidity of the film.

I think that the majority of the sound was effective; particularly the accurate timing of the voice over which was added on top of the audio track of the film during editing process. The poorest quality of sound was at the beginning while recording the vibration of the phone.This was initially resolved by muting the audio track and adding a sound clip of a vibrating phone from the internet. However we didn't know how to add another track at this point and so the entire film’s audio track was muted but when we found out, we had forgotten to mute the original audio track again. If I was to film the exercise again, I would improve clarity of the story-line by using some off-screen dialogue of Billy and I perhaps discussing the situation at the time. If it hadn't of rained on the day, I would have also shot sections of Sophie and Rebecca’s phone conversation outside and alternate who speaks on the voice over. Doing so would have made the difference between contrapuntal and parallel sounds clearer because the audience would have seen reactions such as facial expressions to match or contrast the tone of voice. An example of this is when Sophie sarcastically says, “your ‘brother’ has got a deep voice for a seven year old”- our intention was to make this slightly comedic with a false, dumbfounded reaction but with only a voice over we couldn't achieve this.