Soundtrack Possibilites

For our film, the sound is very important, and will create a very tense atmosphere. We have been looking around and brainstormed some ideas for a soundtrack. By having a soundtrack scored by someone we know, and sitting in on the process, we can get a real ear for what we want to get.


There were two main points we wanted to make with this potential score before we made it. Firstly we were going to look at what type of instruments we wanted to create the music, after discussion, we decided that a guitar would be the best option. We then wanted to determine the pace of the song, so looked at several different options, like whether we wanted it fast or slow.


The Guitar: We wanted to achieve a heavy, distorted sound from the guitar, so we looked round for inspiration. One track we picked out to try and replicate was 'Just' by Radiohead, we only really looked at trying to replicate a similar sound from the opening riff (0.18-0.30). We liked the squeal like noise from the guitar and the heavy distortion over the top. We then looked at another model which could of suited our film perfectly, 'In a House, In a Heartbeat' by John Murphy was used in the film '28 Days Later'. We found this track to be very eerie and create a good atmosphere for the start of our film. The heavy guitars towards the end and the general build of pace during the whole song really impressed us. We have decided to try and replicate these two guitar tracks in our score.

We also looked at Radiohead again, but only really wanted to look at one particular bit. At the beginning of 'Fake Plastic Trees' an A chord is played, with an alternating strum patters. We believe this type of chord with an electric guitar and some effects, could make a really intimidating sound after we altered the pitch, level and speed.

The Pace: The pace of the song by John Murphy above has the kind of build up into the main chorus which creates tension, which culminates in a big ending, like in a chase scene. So from looking at this video, ourselves and the artists can determine the speed of our piece.

This idea was only a potential idea, so even if we do compose it, it may very well turn out that it may not be used, if it didn't match the shots we had taken.

Tom Smith

Film Trailers

We will be watching a number of different trailers that are already currently in the market. As we will be creating an opening to a thriller, we will only be watching trailers related to this genre. In this post we will show a few different trailers, and then give a brief description of each one analysing what makes them good for the audience and how they successfully promote their films.


Inception                                                                                                                                                                                              
Throughout this trailer, a number of different words appear on screen to try to explain to the audience what is occurring. Vital information is shown such as the actors name, "LEONARDO DICAPRIO". A number of words appear that tell the audience what to expect, such as "Your Mind" and " Is the scene of the crime". This is very common in trailers as it introduces to the audience what the film will consist of.

The soundtrack begins with a loud, slow beat to create a gradual tension. As the intros appear, the music becomes faster paced, still accompanied by the loud beat, which over the course of the trailer changes. A sting happens as a key line is stated "I will have to steal it!" After which the soundtrack continues to play. Towards the end of the trailer, the soundtrack becomes louder and faster. Three consecutive, loud and slow beats end the trailer, at which point the films title is shown "INCEPTION"


The Strangers
Cinematic's are shown at the beginning of the trailer, displaying a forest with a river flowing through it. Then the house is shown where most of the action will be filmed in the movie. A calm and romantic scene starts the trailer to give the audience a relaxed feeling. A loud crashing noise from outside of the house disturbs the tranquillity, which suggests to the audience the bad happening start from here onwards. Words appear on screen saying "Inspired by true events" which will make the audience believe it really did happen, which always creates more fear. Throughout the trailer, it cuts from clips from the film to the words added in, this is to give a suspenseful feel to the movie. When the first villain is revealed, it is completely silent, with just the sound of soft breathing. Following on from this, a numerous amount of shots of different villains are displayed where one minute they are there and the next nowhere to be seen. This will make the audience ask themselves where have they gone? Again the mayhem calms down for a while, this is then interrupted by an axe coming through the door and nearly killing the male victim. Almost immediately a close-up of the woman victims face is shown, to show the fear this is giving her. The trailer is ended with a long shot of one of the villains, where only her face is seen, with everything else is blacked out, this is closely followed by the ending credits.

Throughout the trailer, different soundtracks are used to emphasise different scenes. To begin, slow soft piano music is played to set a relaxing, romantic feel. This is abruptly disturbed by a loud crashing noise from outside the house. The soundtrack stops and all that can be heard are the voices of the victims and a squeaky swing eerily swing back and forth. Another soundtrack slowly begins to start playing to build suspense. When the first villain is scene the soundtrack stops, and all that can be heard is the gentle breathing of the victim. As the clips start proceeding again, loud beats and different sound effects are used to scare the audience. The soundtrack cuts to that of a record player playing soft music. The scene becomes relaxing again. A large sting is then used to make the audience jump. The record player seems to go out of control and becomes louder and starts to repeat the same thing over and over. Another loud noise is played and the trailer starts to come to an end. The victims and Villain have a quiet conversation and the trailer is ended with an almost ghostly breath.


James Kinsella-Brown

Final Poster Design

Potential Poster

We created a poster for our Facebook page in which we will use to help our demographic recognise our thriller. A poster will allow us to promote our thriller and may lead to further views. In the real industry promoting the thriller is really important as money will be made by doing this.

This is one of the potential posters we wil be using. We decided to put a 5* rating at the top of the poster as we feel that the audience will feel like it is a really must see film. This could boost our viewing count.

It displays three different images of male silhouette figures. The villain is a different colour outline than the other characters and this is too really emphasise his authority over the film. We decided to use a silhouette because it will hide the identities of the figures untill the film is released, this may create tension to our audience and may want them want to find out who the characters really are.

The title is really bold and stands out from all the other parts of the poster. This is to catch the demographics eye and hope that they look out for our film in the future. A choice of faded text in the background was used to enhance the overall effect of the title.


We feel it was important to exclaim to the audience when the thriller will be available to watch because that way they can look out for it in the future. We used blood dripping text to potray some of the horrors that may appear in our film.


James Kinsella-Brown

Editing Software - Sony Vegas

Sony Vegas editing software allows clips to be edited and ordered in a simple way. The timeline enables clips to be viewed before they have even been rendered. The thriller will be put together on this program before it is transferred into Adobe After Effects to add all the extra effects.

The sounds will be done on Vegas as its quite complicated to do on After Effects. We will use a soundtrack throughout the thriller to build up tension and suspense, extra sound effects such as door slams and other sounds associated with horror may also be used.

Before the colour grading is done in After Effects a simple brightness/contrast colour correction will be applied to all the clips just to improve the quality and the overall look of the clips.

The final thriller will be rendered out in 720p at 15fps as that is what the camera films in. This will assure that we get the best quality possible out of the camera and will make our thriller look a lot sharper. The size of the finished thriller will be 1280x720 and will uploaded to both youtube and vimeo.

Alex Cirino

Editing Software - Adobe After Effects

I am going to use Adobe After Effects CS5 when editing our thriller. The software enables me to create ground breaking motion graphics and blockbuster visual effects which will improve the overall look of our thriller. 

I will use After Effects for the colour grading/colour correction as we want a scary vintage style look to the thriller, the colours used will make our thriller stand out from the rest and become more original.

After Effects will also be used for the opening title scene as lots of motion tracking is going to be used on the text so that it stays in the right place. The text is going to be masked and will come out from behind different trees. 

For one of the slow motion close up shots which we are going to use I am going to use a plugin called Twixtor. The plugin enables super smooth slow motion which will make the edit more clean looking. 

Another plugin which we may use is Knoll Light Factory. This plugin is used for fake lighting such as sunsets/moons etc. This may be able to enhance the overall look of our thriller and make it more creepy looking. 

Alex Cirino

Marketing Our Thriller

To help make our film as good as possible we have created several social network pages on sites to help promote our film. By doing this we open ourselves up to a wider audience, and helps create buzz around the film. This twitter page will be giving a daily update on the film's progress, offering a personal character people can approach about the film. Here we will upload pictures, videos and create a diary to help document our film's progress.

This is a screen shot of our page.

Tom Smith