Pace the Film
Sound Engineering
Special thanks to these students from Berklee College of Music:
Composer
Hanbo Hong
洪瀚博
Drummer
Yifan(Patrick) Sui
眭逸凡
Sound Engineer
Yuxin(Heidi) Wang
王雨欣
I talk to composer Hanbo Hong（洪瀚博）when I finished my research and started working on storyboard. We started to talk about what kind of music may fit this piece of dance film.
We both agreed to use a complicated Jazz (not really disordered) drum to express the sense of 'Pace'. The changing level of drum parts (bass drum, gong, etc) will hopefully lead the emotion-change of audiences, since these drum parts are at different pitches, which push audiences' different emotion parts.
Hanbo then contacted drummer Patrick Sui(眭逸凡) to record the demo.
Recording Demo
Hanbo Composed the first version with this drum demo, which is a beautiful piece that I can listen over and over again without getting bored.
However, the inconspicuous variations may not touch audiences' mood as most audiences will only have chance to watch this film once. I talked to Hanbo and we started to figure out the solution.
We decided to exaggerate the volume variation during scene changes, with additional 'noise' and remix, sacrificing some fluency.
Notes taking:
Translation:
Music over complicated. Audiences that listen to this piece multiples times may enjoy the complicity of the music; however audiences who are listening to this first time may feel it is too flat.
To make layers-like-feeling:
1. Before the title scene, there is only the high-pitch cymbals. (or when every character enters scene, use the sound of different part of the drum to dispart them; e.g, tenor drum when character one enters, senate drum when character two enters, bass drum when character three enters, etc.)
2. When the title appears, drums fade in.(or when the four folks are walking toward each other)
3. Add special noise(s) overtime when enters the B&W scenes.
4. During the 360 rotating scene, there may be disordered noises, to show the chaos feeling of the character.
Tip:
During scene transfers, sounds change first, leading the frames change. This may make audience more comfortable during scene changing.
OPTION 2:
The use of piano sounds:
Single piano sound with different pitches appears during B&W scenes, to separate reality and surreality.
Aggressive piano noises fade in during 360 rotating scenes.
*timeline:
1. No music, only water pouring sounds and footsteps;
2. simply drums;
3. Adding piano sounds;
4. Roar piano;
5. Cymbals are enhanced, drums fade out.
OPTION 3:
When B&W scenes appear, fade in piano/string music?
when 360 rotating, massive piano sounds appea, but fading out, transferring to drums.
--------------- drum
- - - - - - piano/string
Background music is what leading the emotions of audiences
scene logical part
+ +
music emotional part
= =
story logical and touchy story
With some further adjustment and the help from sound engineer , we made the final version of sounds, .
