Monday 13th November
Just before the end of the project, I wanted to look at the media I was working with/inspired by and the people behind it.
I found this video on YouTube where the Feature Composer Roque Baños and the Director Fede Alvarez discussed the sound design of the movie. Baños said “When I first read the script I thought it was a good idea to think of the music as if it was coming from environment”. While I didn’t do this exactly, I made it more so where the sounds are associated with the characters on screen, for example the train for the blind man or the swell brass for Rocky and Alex. Alvarez said “We found this guy in Tucson that basically creates his own instruments … he creates these scary sounds and more unsettling percussions” I feel like utilising the train was a good move for an unconventional sound that really sits well with the scene and the character.
The other day, we discussed themes in class while looking at music from other movies. Django: Unchained’s shootout scene came up. How the music thematically goes along with the character and is almost an internal dialogue.
The second video about was an interview with Barry De Vorzon, who made the sound of The Warriors.
“Right off the bat I love the wonder wheel and the subway and the Gangs. I mean that was a pretty exciting main title pictorially, and so yknow, as a composer you look at that and say, oh yeah this is something I can work with” I decided I wanted to work on Don’t Breathe before I had even watched it, which could’ve been detrimental to my project because it could’ve been a bad pick as I had no context other than the title and the trailer. The reason I quoted De Vorzon’s statement is because when I had finally watched it, I had that ‘oh yeah’ moment.
“That’s why I used synths over the rock to bring in that surreal element” I am heavily inspired by The Warriors sound design, using synths in for my scene as they did. However, it is somewhat new to me so I kept my usage fairly regulated but it had greater effect in the context of my work in conjunction with my train samples, also influenced by The Warriors.
“Normally underscore plays a really distant second fiddle to what happening on the screen, but for the Warriors, I think it was a very important element because of the story was happening on the screen and you point out running and always in danger and the music accentuated that and not with the normal underscore. It accentuated with that kind of raw energy, That you might associate with young gangs“. While they aren’t directly the same, Don’t Breathe and The Warriors do share some similar elements: A group of delinquents getting up to no good and being perused due to their way of life. not getting too deep into it but the ‘underscoring’ within my score is most definitely the brass ‘heartbeat’ ive got running throughout. It conveys the pressure the pair feel while witnessing this seemingly harmless blind man become a ruthless killing machine. Its got a raw energy of someone who is scared.