Black Nightmare: Soundtrack

To make the soundtrack for Black Nightmare we used a software called 'Garage Band'

Selecting software instruments for soundtrack

When making the soundtrack for Black Nightmare we used a ambient soundtrack of rain falling to emphasise the setting and also to add diagetic sound to the opening scene.

Using different types of soundtracks over one another

We also used different types of instruments such as stringed and drums. This enabled us to use long drawn out notes and also use fast tempo beat to build suspense and tension. By mixing the two various types of tempos and beats this added exaggeration to the scene and helped build the tension. 

When the killer walks down the stairs we used Leitmotif music which links to the killer when he is visual on screen or when he is about to make a appearance.

Leitmotif music for when killer is visual

Soundtracks used in film industry

In the filming industry different companies use various techniques to create the perfect soundtrack for their movie they are creating. All soundtracks are different dependant on the genre of the movie and who the movie audience is, for example in the film Bride of Chucky (Ronny Yu, 1998) (BOC) he started off by using a audio bridge over the idents using long drawn out notes with a faster tempo included to start building tension right from the beginning of the film. He also included digetic music of thunder and rain and exaggerated this by making it loud so that it helped build the tension and get the audiences heart beats to start to beat quicker. Also in BOC they used soundtracks from previous movies such as 'Psycho' and 'Jaws'. The movie was full of intertextuality from other movies.

Here is a list of certain things that would be included in soundtrack mixes in the film industry:

• Small subtle notes which are there to help build up suspense. 
• Long drawn out notes to slowly build up tension.
• Mixing both types of notes together to build tension and suspense and too also help exaggerate the scene.
• Fast and loud tempo to build suspense and get the audiences heart beats racing.
• Leitmotif which links certain things together by using a type of tempo or soundtrack (recurrent signifier).
• Ambient sound (a continuous sound which is playing during a scene).

DW - Black Nightmare: Re-shooted scenes

Rough cut killer's wall

We planned to re-shoot our scene where we reveal the killer's obsession and how he stalks his victims and their houses, because when we first did it we didn't think about the mise-en-scene in much detail so when it came to filming the scene with just 4 photo's with them being neatly placed on a cork board it didn't portray the obsession that the killer has, whereas instead it just made him look like a tidy freak instead of an obsessive stalker who's been watching his victims.

Final cut killer's wall

So we went back and re-shooted the scene with more photo's to make it look like the killer has more of an obsession and that he's had more than just 4 victims, and also instead of pinning them up neatly on a cork board we just used nails and pinned them up randomly to look more scruffy. Also we included pictures of the victims instead of just their houses so it looks more targeted at the final girl and the scream queen in the film.

Final cut killer's feet

Rough cut killer's feet

This is a shot of the killer's feet and we were trying to provide narrative enigma for the character, however trainers don't give a good description towards a killer instead it seems more like a teenage boy, so when we next shot this scene we used old black boots instead to give a more realistic description for the killer to him being older.

In this next scene scene we were trying to reveal the final girl and the scream queen however we didn't do it well enough for the audience to distinguish who was who as we didn't plan it as we should of, we should of had the scream queen being blonde and the final girl a brunette , however here we have both scream queen and final girl brunette so we need to re-shoot this and findnew casting for the scream queen. Also for the scream queen we needed to show her being sexually active and the final girl being the opposite and instead being more academic, so we intend to show this with the scream queen having a boyfriend and the final girl carrying books in our re-shoot. 

DW - The Slasher Audience and Narrative structure

The Audience:
Different genres attract different audiences, different films will attract different ages, races and cultures, and each genre's audience will hold expectations for their genre.
Slasher movies are a sub-genre of horror. The audiences will expect generally high levels of violence involving a lot of blood, and most genres have the binary opposites with the protagonists being a group of teenagers and the antagonists the killer. Friday the 13th (Danny Steinmann, 1985) is a good example of this and in showing the narrative structure of the contemporary slasher film, with the killer with a mysterious identity who attacks the group of young teenagers.
The first box office success was John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). The film cost only three-hundred-thousand dollars to create and made roughly fifty-million dollars, and films like this persuaded Hollywood to continue creating them which is where the slasher genre was made.

Narrative Structure:
Slasher films rarely stray from Tordov’s structure of narrative, and a classic film that demonstrates this is John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). For example this structure starts with a state of equilibrium, where the couple of teenagers are being as a normal teenage couple. There is then a disruption to the equilibrium, where a killer begins to stalk them. The disruption is then noticed when the girl is murdered. The attempt to get things back to normal is when the killer is sent to a mental asylum, but then breaks out. Equilibrium is then reinstated when either the ‘killer’ is killed or the final teenager is killed.