After a slightly overwhelming yet necessary run down of sound recording, we set out to do some filming in the Carlton Gardens to prepare for our upcoming shoot. Due to poor weather conditions however, we could not get as much footage as we originally intended.

Nevertheless, we practiced some handheld camera movements to follow a moving subject in between patches of rain. It’s impossible to get these types of tracking shots without camera shake, but due to the thriller/horror nature of our production, a controlled amount of camera shake contributes to the style and tone of the film. For example, when following a character from behind, camera shake suggests someone is following them. We just need to control the level of camera shake – if too much it will detract from the vision on screen, if too little it will not create the desired mood.

Despite minimal footage, I was still keen to make something out of it that would be relevant to our project. I decided to have a bit of fun and change the focus of my editing to ‘how music changes mood.’ Here’s what I came up with:

As you can probably tell, I began by finding dark and eerie royalty free music to accompany the shots in order to establish a mood of suspense and tension. This is likely the approach we will take when editing our final product, so logically it was something I wanted to explore by gauging an understanding of what sort of royalty music of this style is out there. Keen to experiment and create something fun, I was interested to see how other styles of music would change the shots at hand. I found some tracks on the other end of the spectrum (genre wise) to create a dramatic contrast and totally transform the mood from one extreme to the other. By making the comparison between the same shot but with different music, viewers are led to acknowledge how music changes mood.

From this task, it became clear just how much music can influence a scene and viewers’ perception of events. Everyone reads shots differently in terms of its stylistic and symbolic qualities, but music almost speaks a universal language. For example, every viewer has the potential to identify dark, suspenseful music and make the association between the sound and vision. In fact, this association process is very much subconscious. We don’t consciously think to ourselves “ooh scary music is playing now, that must mean something bad is going to happen.” Instead we consume the product as a whole, subconsciously take in the music and vision as one, and rely on our embedded familiarity with the musical style to have effect over our emotional understanding of the shot. I think when we consume media music and sounds in general often go over our heads and fly ‘unnoticed,’ but by doing exercises such as this, you come to realise just how important and influential they really are.