As part of the post production process we had to consider our use of sound to build tension and suspense, which are key conventions within the slasher genre, in order to engage the audience.
We decided to mute all audio on the film clips; therefore we have no pre-produced diegetic sound as the lack of dialogue creates a darker tone and mystery, which we found effective in our study of the opening of Friday the 13th. Consequently we needed to build up our non-diegetic sound to intensify the tension and establish the dark tone; but slightly subverting the convention of a horror film opening where there is a sense of normality- with a non diegetic piece that would create an atmosphere of foreboding for the audience.
Initially we wanted to use Shirley Bassey's cover of "Big Spender"- originally from the musical 'Sweet Charity'- as the main soundtrack as the lyrics fitted with the concept of the victim being a business man like figure who is "good looking" and "refined". Also the lyrics have implications of the singer, and therefore our protagonist's, use of their sexuality almost as a weapon to lure men; as well as creating a sinister idea of "Do you wanna have fun? How's about a few laughs? I can show you a good time." with our female killer's interpretation of these lyrics being her enjoyment in killing her victims. We initially used the instrumental version of "Big Spender" and manipulated the track to slow down and become 0.75 speed- to establish a darker tone and further emphasise the minor key making it more suitable for a slasher film. We planned to have someone sing over the track and edit their vocals; however we realised that we were restricted on time- so we would rather focus on visual editing- and limited on software.
The track we decided to use instead was a cover of "Sweet Dreams", originally sung by Eurythmics. We found that this song was very well suited to our narrative, due the tempo of the song which is accordingly parallel to the visuals. The song is hauntingly beautiful and has a dark tone, which reflects the character of our female killer who is attractive and alluring.
We layered the audio as pictured above with one quieter with a 5 millisecond delay- not too long so that it would seem like there was an audio lag but rather to create a slight echo, adding to the eery tone and a sense of depth of audio. We also re-cut the end of the song, which eventually progresses to a more upbeat, rock tone and reinserted the initial slower introduction of the song to the end of the film opening to establish a resolution- leaving the audience interested in the rest of the plot- and signify the ending of the opening. We decided to end our film opening with the lyrics: "Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused" as this reflects the shock revelation of the man's death and revealing the true darkness of the 'Temptress'.
However by cutting the song we had to create a sound bridge in order to smooth out the disjointed nature of the two audio clips; therefore we experimented by adding in pre existing Final Cut Pro sound effects. We experimented with adding in "Crash" and "Air Blast" sounds; however we found that they were too harsh and sudden and did not create the smoother continuity between audio clips that we wanted. We eventually decided on using "Breath Female 1" but cut the sound effect to only the exhalation sound as this was a more gradual transition than the full breath. We also added the breath sound to align with the candle blowing out, at the end of the opening, and the shot of the smoke rising- adding to the realism of a blowing out a candle and creating a finality within the film opening.
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