Category: Y1 CREATIVE PROJECT: DIEGETIC SCORING

I have isolated the different elements of the sound design in the scene, and using the BBC sound effects library I have recreated the soundscape.

Air-conditioning unit-

I began building the score with the air conditioning, i used a vocoder to create a bass synth out of the audio. I put this sound quite low in the mix with the original aircon sound, the intention of this was that the synth would be unnoticeable as an instrument. Im trying to use a technique I discussed in the tinnitus retraining therapy section of my essay, desensitising an audience to a constant sound by surrounding it with other sounds. With this technique I have established a melody from the offset of the scene without the knowledge of the audience. I kept the note constant so as not to draw attention to it, until the emotionally substantive part of the scene. My hope is that the audience’s emotional involvement with the scene coupled with the subtlety of the change will maintain the musical suspension of disbelief.

Plates/Chatter-

I found a sound effect of plates and chatter that seemed to fit the diner scene, although it doesn’t sound exactly the same as the original audio. I used this audio to create a mid frequency synth, this carries the most of the melodic information. I found it especially difficult to create a synthesiser that felt connected to this audio, although I know the synth is inputed by the audio it could just be any synth to my ears. I think this might be because there is a lot of information in the audio, or it could be that I don’t know how to vocoded this type of audio, either way I think this is didn’t work how I wanted it to.

Breathing-

I recorded myself breathing to match the characters movements. I then recorded 4 vocal harmonies to add to the higher end of the mix, I contained all of these tracks in a stack/bus. I then noise gated the bus, and side-chained the input to be the breathing audio, this anchors the vocals to the breath. I also added a few plugins to the stack such as chorus and a vocal doubler, and as the scene draws closer to the climax I automated a decreasing bit resolution.

I need to find a film scene suitable to my project, I will first outline the necessary qualities of the scene:

-No score (this will get in the way of my score defeating the object of the project)

-A lot of diegetic sound (this will give me a lot to work with in terms of side-chaining)

– Ample emotional context ( I need to have something to express through the score)

I have decided on the ending diner scene from Lynne Ramsay’s ‘You were never really here’, it fits all of the criteria. Something I realise I need to do is to isolate the different elements of the sound scape so I can manipulate them melodically. The elements that make up the scene are dialogue, chatter, plates clinking and air conditioning.

‘You were never really here’ is renowned for its sound design, it won a British Independent Film Award for Best sound and a best Score award from the Boston Online Film Critics Association. There are particular moments in the sound design where the diegetic sound blends with the score, this is the exact thing I am trying to achieve. This ending scene is devoid of a score, it only has the radio playing in the background and extenuated diegetic sound. Im going to try and use this to my advantage, vocoding the diegetic sound to create a score.

Diegesis is defined as the narrative construct a story takes place in, a world or universe with its own set of rules. Diegetic sound is sound that happens inside of this world, the characters are able to perceive it and it follows the rules of the world, ex. talking, footsteps, radio. Non-diegetic sound refers to sounds that happen outside of this world, ex. narrating or scores.

If the characters of a story can only hear diegetic sound and we want the audience to relate to the characters, it could be argued that we as sound designers should strive to use diegetic sound as much as possible. Using diegetic sound immerses the audience into the characters position. We face a problem if we want to do this in traditional cinema, a score is non-diegetic. How do we bring this non-diegetic emotional expression into the diegetic world?

This scene from Bird-man achieves this feat excellently. The drums start as non-diegetic, it’s a musical accompaniment outside of the story’s world. However by bringing the drummer into the world, the film maker has brought the audience and the characters together, we hear what they hear and so we understand to a deeper extent their perception of the scene, placing us in the story.

I think it would be very difficult to create a score that is completely diegetic, and so instead I’m going to create one that is shaped and informed by the diegetic world. It remains as non-diegetic but it has the quality of the diegetic sound.

MUSICAL THEATRE’S INFLUENCE ON SOUND DESIGN AND MUSIC IN FILM:

Keeping the musical framing of the story in synchronisation with the character/subject organically. 

Howard Ashman was an American playwright, artistic director and lyricist with a firm rooting in musical theatre. He wrote and directed such works as ‘God bless you’, ‘Smile’, and ‘Little shop of Horrors’. In 1986 (at the age of 36) Ashman began a collaboration with the Disney Company, turning his creative efforts to film. Disney gave him the option of three projects to work on, two live action projects and an animated musical. Ashman leapt at animation and began work on ‘the little mermaid.’ 

Ashman put a great emphasis on telling stories through music, he believed it was “central to what Disney is”. He presented a case to the staff at Disney that animation and musical storytelling were made for each other, he saw “a very very strong connection between these two media”. Howard understood that wherever you’re creating something, where the songs are in a context bigger than themselves, you’re creating musical theatre. They started taking the keynotes/high points of their story, where the characters can’t help but let their emotions run out, turning these points into pieces of musical theatre. “these songs aren’t just bolstered on, they’re the tentpoles that hold the movie up” 

The animators at Disney commended Ashman’s ability to seamlessly transition from spoken word to song, he did this by backing the musical vamp up under the dialogue preceding the song. Using this technique they could go from a contextual scene, to a musical emotional scene smoothly, keeping the audience’s suspension of disbelief afloat and keeping them invested in the story. This gradual transition of emotional intensity is intended to organically express how a characters emotional intensity will change overtime, keeping the musical framing of the story in synchronisation with the character/subject. 

Usage:

This brings me to how I could apply Ashman’s principals of seamless transition to song, and musical theatre influence to sound design for film. I would like to explore the effectiveness of creating smooth transitions from diegetic sound in contextual scenes, to more musical sound design for the emotional high points of a film. How do I create seamless transitions? One idea I would like to experiment with is using locational/contextual elements to build the score (or at least the beginning). As an example, vocoding diegetic sound to begin a score, or using the rhythm of someone’s speech or movement to build a drum score, even using diegetic sound as the samples for the beat. I want to try to tie the musical scoring of a scene as tightly as I can to the visual context. 

Sources:

Waking Sleeping Beauty Bonus Features – Howard Ashman : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PggMaREbs0

The problem with Tarzan :

The life and work of Howard Ashman:

Disney Collaboration, 1986-1991: