Sound research

Sound research

I am going to look into sound that we can put over our video as we are not going to have any dialogue.

Traffic sounds

These sounds will play over a black screen before we see the homeless girl waking up so that people understand she is in a busy place before even seeing where she is. The first choice has more sounds of cars driving past but the second one has more car horns and variation of sound. We could use both videos and overlap them to make the place where she is sleeping sound even more busy.

Music

One song choice could be ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash as it is slow paced and simple like the life of the homeless girl. The song builds and then slows down again which could be timed so that it builds with the montage and then go quiet again when you see the girl at the gravestone. The first words say “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel.” Which could show how she has lost all her emotion from living on the street so she wants to get it back. It then says “I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.” This could also link to how her life is unimportant and people don’t care and she doesn’t want to be there.

Another song choice is ‘Nobody Sees Me’ by Tom Byrne. This song is similar to the Johnny Cash song but is explicitly about homelessness. The lyrics explain the life of a homeless person. One problem is that 1:17 into the song it says “Oh Mum how I wish, you would come to the phone. And talk to your daughter cause I’m feeling so low. I’m scared and confused and I’m missing you so.” This could be interpreted as her Mum walking out on her, which is not what we want as we are basing our piece on the storyline that her parents died which is why she is alone. People probably will not listen too closely to the words and they could mean the mother has only just died and she misses her phone calls to her mum while she was alive.

We could also use ‘Hometown Glory’ by Adele. This is about someone walking around their hometown and looking back on different memories so it fits with the context of our storyline. It is also a very well-known song so there is a risk of the film opening appearing as more of a music video, in addition in relation to the storyline the song is quite upbeat and a big rather than quiet and simple as the life of a homeless person would be.

We could also use music without words so it would be just piano. (‘More Beautiful/Sad Piano Songs By Brian Crain’ or ‘Sad Piano Music (THIS WILL MAKE YOU CRY / Saddest Piano & Violin Ever!) These tracks are longer and easy to edit together so it would be easy to choose which bits of each song we would want to use in relation to what is happening on the screen then we do not need to worry about the words.

Conclusion

In conclusion there are many songs out there that would be appropriate for our coursework but if we decide they do not work with the video when we are editing then we could use music without words and use it to set the mood.