The Sound in the Shadows

Given that the title of my film is Sound Shadows and a World Revealed, sound is very important.

As for the sound of the movie, I tried to include multiple elements when doing the sound design portion of preproduction. I've done music projects before, so the challenge of designing music for a film was not completely new. In fact, my Music Video classes last semester have helped me to be uniquely prepared for this challenge.

Music

One thing I was certain about when I began this project was that I wanted to do my own music. While I might have been able to find music that fit the mood of the film, few music that I had heard captured the elements that wanted to shine forth from the songs.

One element that I wanted the music to communicate was the impact of the Sound Ships (spaceships that use sound to defy gravity) on the society. The way I envisioned this was in listening to harmonic music that accentuates droning and repetition. An early influence for this was when I heard polyphonic music from when I lived in the Republic of Georgia.



As you can hear, polyphonic music is a very beautiful vocal expression with its own unique style. Unlike traditional Western music systems of melody and harmony, polyphony consists of multiple melodies.

In the Film

While I did not write polyphonic music for the score of my film, I tried to include some of the feel of Georgian Polyphony. Because I created the music digitally, the score fro my film reflects the influence of a digital society on music. I felt that this combination of an unusual musical style and a contemporary expression of music was particularly fitting for my story.

While editing, the score influenced the ultimate cut of the film - helping the music and visuals closely match. This integration of music and visuals was very important to me in telling the story... since the movie is about a man who uses sound to see, having music and visuals tied together was an important part of the storytelling.