BW: Final Music Decisions and Edit

After reviewing Chris's music (see previous post), we took a group decision that not all of the music best fitted with the conventions of a horror film that we were looking to fulfil.

Our initial inspiration for music was a track by Murray Gold from the BBC's Doctor Who Soundtrack, which was called 'Midnight'. Our original plans were to write a new piece of music inspired by this track, but after problems with the music we decided to rethink.

We then decided that the Murray Gold track fitted our piece so well, we would edit the music, adding in new layers to the music and changing existing ones to make it feel like our own, but still inspired by the original track.

Using a music editing programme called 'Cubase', we imported 'Midnight'and began changing it. The changes we made to our soundtrack were as follows:

• The first six seconds are small clips of music which are on repeat and on loop, to slowly build tension but without having the music quiet. The opening of the music track in now different.
• We tried to maintain the volume level where there is a drop in music 10 seconds in. There is still a noticeable change in volume, but it is not the same.
• Between 25-30 seconds, there was a big build up and drop in the original music track. We edited this down and removed the big build up of music, so it feels more consistent with our piece.
• In the same time period, we edited in a series of drum beats to the same rhythm of the original track.
• 38-48 seconds, we added another layer of a knife being sharpened. This was another sound Chris has pre-recorded. We felt that knives were a key part of iconography of horror films, and that the sound of knives added to the horror feel of the track.
• We changed the volume levels over the track to make it fit our opening more accurately.
• We have added a third layer of sound in, with whispers which Chris recorded with his original sound recording. Whispers include 'I don't understand', 'Cross the line', and 'Where are you?'
• The trombone section at the end of the track has been shortened, and faded into a solid violin instrumental, which slowly fades out. This is also an original sound.

We were happy with the final music piece we added to our opening, and feel we have changed it a fair amount to make it more suited and appropriate to the ideas that we were trying to convey in our opening.