Requiem for a Dream - Sound Design

Throughout Requiem for a Dream , there is very rarely any silence, more often or not you can hear electronic sounds bubbling away. This is a very effective as a tension builder and carries the story along nicely and reflects the dark tone of the film. The sound design also reflects the almost surreal side of the film, for example when Sara Goldfarb is opening the lids on her pill bottles, the noise heard is a very over exaggerated pop, it is almost comedy like. This works wonders in showing the film to be in almost an alternative reality, showing the effects the the drugs are having on the characters. 

I’ve seen Aronofsky mention placing the sound of an airplane passing overhead in the background of those sequences. He got the idea after being inspired by jumbo jets flying over New York from JFK. How often do you use sounds that “don’t belong?” In other words, how devoted to realism were you in the project? It’s a movie with lots of surreal and absurdist overtones, so how do you deal with that as a sound designer?

I’ll go on a limb and say that it’s common for good sound designers to do. Which lends itself to what I was saying before: intelligent choices of sound don’t necessarily fit, but they always have some sort of impact. The sound of say, a jet, the rising tension of it, is maybe exactly what’s required to make that impact—to say here’s the heroin, here it goes into the body’s system. The sound itself is so dynamic; it has that push, that rush of moving air to it. We routinely do stuff like that, where you’re juxtaposing things. Sometimes trying to jam a square peg in the round hole is exactly what you need. 

This is a short section from an article that I found on the sound design of the film, I found this to be massively interesting in way that the sound of a jet taking off is compared to someone shooting up heroin, although it does sound absurd it does make a lot of sense. I found that this could be a great way for me to get across the pain and thrill that the main protagonist in Edgeplay will feel. I want to try and create parallels between an everyday occurrence or machine that could draw similarities to the dark tone of my film.    

Requiem for a Dream - Lux Aeterna

After watching Requiem for a Dream recently I found that I could take a lot away from it, especially in terms of how music can work in a film. Throughout the course of Requiem for a Dream, a song can be heard; Lux Aeterna, the song was produced by Clint Mansell. I feel that the tone of the song fits in perfectly with the film and is used in two different ways. At times in the film it is seen as quite an uplifting song. I find it very interesting that a song can create two completely separate moods based on what is shown visually. This is something that I would like to concentrate on when it comes to the sound design for Edgeplay; I believe that due to the nature of our film; being that the main protagonist is actually paying to be tortured, but isn't revealed till the end, the sound design could play a massive part in building the suspense and creating tension for when all is revealed. 

Electronic Sound in Film

Sound of Cinema - New Frontiers; is a BBC documentary that follows the way that scores have been created over the last 60 years. A large part of it is to do with how electronic sounds replaced the traditional orchestra. An early use of this was the Theremin; an early electronic instrument that was controlled without an physical touch of the performer. In Alfred Hitchcock's film spellbound, it was used to create tension and to reflect the protagonists distress. I found this interesting as the theremin is a very minimalist piece of equipment, but has such a massive effect on the score of this film. This has given my a few ideas as to how I could use electronic devices in our film and perhaps distort them to create uncomfortable sounds and to reflect the distress of our very own protagonist.  

Alfred Hitchcock is someone that liked to use sound in his films as a way to make the audience uncomfortable, he is somebody that I can take a lot of inspiration from as we want to make our film very uncomfortable through the sound design. In The Birds the sound of the birds is horrific and creates a sense of terror, I want to create a sense of terror in our opening scenes so that the audience has an idea of what is to come. 
I want the sense of terror to be created through electronic and industrial sounds, I want to do this by distorting the sounds and using techniques such as playing sounds backwards.