Post-production: Soundtrack of the thriller production - Miss Begum

Introduction

Why are soundtracks important in thrillers?

- Soundtracks are important in thrillers because it sets the whole mood and atmosphere of the film as well as creating a lot of tension and different connotations to the audience and also gives an impact by pushing them to the edge of their seats and cover their ears or feel sympathetic if someone has died. Especially in the thriller genre, sounds tend to deliver the chill-excitement, fear and nervous towards the audience and without the use of sound, non of these effects/emotions would be created and would not attract it's target audiences. Sound is extremely important in the media industry depending on the genre. For example, the thriller genre would focus on the tempo and have eerie sound when it comes to disturbing scene and sound effects whilst the antagonist is attacking the victim. This will make the scene look more believable which will create terror and non-anticipation towards the audience.

- The conventional soundtracks used in thriller are typically non-diegetic sound such as voice-overs. This can be used as an explanation for an event/action that wasn't being shown to the audience but at the same time help them to still have an idea of what is happening in the scene as well as allowing them to anticipates what will happen next in the scene for example someone will get murdered etc.

Another conventional sound used in thriller are diegetic sound which is the natural sound that's coming from the scene such as traffic, radio and bad weather conditions. This can be used to make the scene look realistic and more believable and at the same time not confusing the audience.

Furthermore, there are off-screen sounds such as heavy breathing, footsteps and creeping door. This can be used intentionally to create a suspenseful atmosphere and build up tension which will raises the level of fear and push the audience to the edge of their seats. These are some of the example of the conventional sounds used in the thriller genre.

- In order to create the soundtrack for my thriller, me and my group used GarageBand and Logic Pro to create the most effective and most conventional sound to match our production and to the genre. We have chosen to used these two programs because they were equipped with many different instruments and provided all the sounds we needed for our thriller.

*image of garageband/logic pro*

*image of where sound is used effectively*

- The type of soundtrack that our group created was a soundtrack that's being created with string and has a very low tempo at first but slowly rising up to the climax to create a tense atmosphere then suddenly stop to make the viewers think that the disturbing scene is over but then surprisingly hit a loud explosion/eerie noise to shock the audience as they were not expecting that to happen. 

- Our inspiration comes from the soundtracks displayed from 'Release The Hounds - Read Me A Story' and 'Insidious'. The soundtracks in these film/program has a given me so much ideas of how I would like to create my own soundtrack and some of the sound match up perfectly to some of our scene that's why we decided to create similar sound for our thriller.

- We thought that our soundtrack was most effective when it comes to shock/surprise the audience and to create a real dark/suspenseful atmosphere. This was due to the way we created our narrative. At the beginning of the disturbing scene, we used a low tempo eerie string instrument throughout until the scene reaches it climax then stop for a split second then suddenly burst into a loud explosion noise. This was done because we knew that from the low tempo eerie noise would build up a lot of tension as well as creating a lot of different connotations for our audience until the sound suddenly stop to caught the viewer's off guard to come right back at them. This was the most effective thing about our soundtrack.

Conclusion

- Overall, I believed that the soundtrack has added so much elements to our production and improved the narrative a lot clearer to the audience to not get confused. More importantly, our group ensured that we created and used sound to its best. The impact from our soundtrack has been shocking, uncomfortable, unexpected and heart-pounding which is what we expected to get from our soundtrack. I believed our thriller is now more conventional due to the effects it has made and how it was created.