Category: Research

Music

Due to having a very low skill level when it comes to creating music or scores, I will be finding music or ambient backgrounds to accompany my piece online. However I wanted to know what makes a music in films scary and what some of the most common tricks are when it comes to creating a tense atmosphere in films.

I listened to some of the most popular movie’s soundtracks and something stood out immediately, quite a lot of the best soundtracks were fairly minimalistic and relied on only a few instruments. Films such as Psycho used more traditional instruments such as the violin to create sharp, high tones that cut through and shocked the listener, whereas films such as Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street used synthesisers, mixing both high notes and an underlying bass note to create a sense of easiness by leaving the mid range frequencies blank.

Sound Effects

I will be creating certain sound effects during this project as well as sourcing them online. My original idea was to make the pieces quite effect heavy, however on my first attempt at editing together one of the pieces with sound effects, it didn’t add a lot to the piece and at points came off as quite tacky and forced, really taking the listener out of the experience.

I think the best option for me when it comes to effects is stick more to background ambience and only use sound effects when I really want to make an event stand out and pair it with the story. However, in certain horror media, it can be more scary when you subvert the expectations of the listener and start adding effects that don’t fit within the scene, building up tension and confusing the listener and then scaring them at a later part of the piece.

After a lot of time trying to figure out the best option for the distribution of this piece of media, I have come to the decision that online distribution is the best method.

All of the sound files will be accessible via SoundCloud, as well as on cloud storage websites (Google Drive/Mega/DropBox) so that you can either stream or download the audio files for personal use.

The map will also be distributed online and will be labelled with each area. I will make it available on various websites so that it is accessible in multiple ways.

 

I find that online distribution is the best solution for media as it is then accessible for anyone with an internet connection. I will urge people to go to each of the places to experience the sounds in the area that influenced each of the stories, but even if you are not in the area, it will still be able to have an effect.

As narrating a story is a huge part of this project and given that I have never done anything like this before, I wanted to make sure that I don’t run into any of the common problems that can occur when recording narration.

• Initially, when recording my narration, I was not very comfortable doing it and this was made worse by the fact that I don’t like my own voice very much, so to combat this, I started to play music in my headphones, whilst recording, so that I couldn’t hear my own voice, which actually led me to be more comfortable doing the narration.
• Something that I originally thought would be a good idea was to change the way I said certain words or add inflection at the ends of words, however Emily said that it could come off as almost parodying the way that narration is done or could take away from the scary effect that I am trying to put across.
• I found that speaking clearly and not too fast, was one of the hardest things to do. I would often pronounce things incorrectly, either due to my accent or rushing over the words. It took me some time to get used to speaking slower and pronouncing words clearly.
• Something that became apparent when recording the voice over was that if I recorded each piece the same way, it could become boring for the listener. So I decided to experiment with the way I recorded certain pieces, to make them more interesting to listen to.

Part of this project is writing a few different short stories based on the events/ghosts of a place in Lincoln. My original idea was to just write a more factual based story that focussed on the telling of the actual story, however, this proved to be rather boring, for both the listener/reader and also for me to write. So instead I focussed on creating a more interesting story that took the events’ main points and either putting it in first or third person and also adding things to the original ghost story to add more depth and a backstory.

The first story I drafted was for the area around Brown’s Pie Shop:

 

I have been stuck in this building for nearly two hundred years now. People come and go every day, but I have to stay here. I am so jealous of the other children that come here with their parents and get to leave as a happy family. I really miss my parents.

I tend not to bother the customers or the cooks that work here. But I sometimes make noises to see if they notice me, and most do. However, some of the cooks don’t acknowledge me…and I don’t like that. It’s not nice to be ignored.

Around fifty years ago there was a new cook hired at the shop and he didn’t believe I was real, so I started being louder than usual…but that didn’t seem to bother him. So I started moving things in the kitchen to try and spook him…but still nothing. I felt that the only way he would believe I was real is if he saw me…I scared him so much that he fell backwards into the sink, where there was a knife facing upwards…There was blood everywhere and his eyes were so lifeless... I never wanted to hurt him…I just wanted to be noticed.

The original ghost story does not specify anything about the boy in the story, just that he doesn’t like to be ignored and that he occasionally moves things around in the kitchen. The only thing that I find holding me back from adding more detail and going further with the story is my self-imposed word limit of 200 words (as this is around 1.5 minutes of talking).

Prior to writing, I set out a list of things that I could touch upon from the original source material and a list of things that are seen a lot in media so that I could see how I could incorporate them into a story:

• Ghost Child – Would be the main character/Perosn who’s experience I am writing about.
• Blood and Death – Used in a lot of horror movies and often has an effect on people.
• Being ignored – I used this as a plot device to get to the climax – also a problem that children can experience often.
• Emotions – In the first two parts, it discusses how he misses his parents and that he feels stuck in a single place, which explains why he doesn’t like to be ignored – as he doesn’t get much attention.

I tried to take as much of the source material as possible, but also add enough to make it interesting.

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Source for the story: https://hauntedhistoryoflincolnshire.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/lincoln/browns-pie-shop-2/

Basic pointers on generating a story: http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Horror-Story

Help with first person and the climax : http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/shortstory/#view