Sound Evaluation

There are four main aspects of sound that I will be discussing in this post, and I will evaluate how successful we were at making each part as effective and professional-sounding as possible.

Soundtrack:
The music that we used in our opening two minutes was effective as it built up suspense as the story progressed. This was because the music was specially composed for the film, with an amateur composer working for us who had the film in front of him. We provided him with inspiration to help guide him to what we wanted, but the majority of the track came from his own personal genius. As he went through the composing process, he constantly kept us updated so that we made changes as appropriate.
I think that the music worked extremely well in the final product as it added a new dimension to the drama onscreen. It made the action much more thrilling and I felt as if the action really took off through the way that the music's layers gradually built up, getting faster and and more intense. I am very proud of the way that the music turned out. There are some moments in particular when the music is fitted perfectly to the action. One of these moments is when the camera cuts to Horse Guards Parade and the music moves up and grows in intensity; an extra layer is added as an extra character is introduced. A similar technique is used when the camera cuts to Yung at Trafalgar Square and the music projects a long bass note, which again establishes a new character and new location.
I particularly like the change in the tone of music that occurs when Agent Davidson starts running away from his pursuer. It turns into a sweeping piano piece, that reflects how the mission has gone wrong through its melancholy feel. After defeating his adversary the music slows down to a sad, reminiscent theme, and the dilemma is established.

Ambience:
Unfortunately, the sound that was recorded on the day wasn't useful as the voices were not very clear, due to all the background noise that there was in London. Seeming as we didn't have any tracks that separated the background noise from the dialogue, this meant that we had to redo all the sound in the film. The ambience was the easiest part, as we listened through the original track and noted down all the different sounds that we could hear, such as traffic, fountains, crowds etc. In the final piece we added a couple of extras such as the sound of children playing, in order to make the situation seem more threatening and the sound of the station announcements in order to add to the realism. The ambience replacement was very successful, as it sounded incredibly close to the original track and we were very proud at how well it turned out. What would have made it easier and more realistic would be if we had set the camera down in different places around Trafalgar Square and recorded the ambience, so that we wouldn't have to create it in post and it would add the extra bit of realism.

Dialogue:
The dialogue, like the ambience, was almost completely unusable, as the background noise was too prominent and it was hard to hear what the characters were actually saying. After some deliberation we decided to replace the dialogue through the process of Additional Dialogue Replacement (ADR) which involved re-recording all of the actors' lines and putting them into the film instead. We recorded all the lines outside, as it was closer to the conditions on the day and we systematically went through each line and said it a few times, trying to perfectly replicate the way the lines were said onscreen. I think that this was very successful, as it is not noticeable that we have replaced the dialogue, and I think that it even made it better, as we were able to slightly lower the pitch of the actors' voices, so that they sounded older.

Sound Effects:
There weren't a great deal of additional sound effects used in our opening, as most of it was just the obvious, but we obviously had to add some into the fight sequence. To do this, we downloaded a royalty free package of sound effects from the internet that had a variety of punch, kick, fall and swiping sound effects. They were very realistic and they definitely added to the fight. The fight wouldn't have worked without them, as the audience wouldn't have been able to work out if the punch had hit, or how hard it had hit. Another sound effect that was used was when Yung is shot. It was hard to work out how to establish that he had been shot without a gunshot sound effect, that would obviously raise the attention of everyone in the Square. Instead we decided to use one of the punch sound effects, which helped the audience to realise that he had been hit. During the ADR process we also added in a line from Agent Davidson that helped the audience to realise that he had been shot.

Overall I think that the sound in our opening was very successful, and we effectively worked around the issues in the original raw sound. Just about all of the sound was replaced, and it still worked very well. Better still, all the different aspects of sound worked together so when there was an issue in one of the tracks, it was covered up by the other track. I am very proud of the way that the sound turned out, but if I were to do it again, then I would make sure to record better sound on the day.