Sound Exercise Evaluation

Plot
The story starts with Freddie stalking Alex. He watches her without her realizing. Alex then realizes something is wrong, so she gets up to leave and walk down the hall with Freddie following her behind. Alex is unaware of this but he bumps into the door while trying to be as secretive as possible. After hearing the door, Alex runs away down the stairs but the audience find out that he is hiding under the stairs. However, Freddie doesn't jump out at Alex. Alex then bumps into her old friend Carl, and tells him what has been going on. However, he doesn't seem to believe it. Freddie then appears and has a quick chat with Carl and Alex says how he is the stalker. As a result of this, they both walk to the stairs to look for Freddie, and he is nowhere to be seen. Out of nowhere, Freddie appears and kills Carl by slitting his throat. Instantly, Alex runs away from Freddie, and runs down the corridors and into a hall. She hides in a rolled up mat, which Freddie thinks she's gone inside. Freddie then goes inside the mat to try and find her, whilst Alex who is actually hiding on the outside, realizes he is inside. She folds the mat so the mat is covering his body. Freddie then suffocates and collapses on the floor. Alex then grabs his legs and pulls him out more to the open and then stabs him in the face to make sure he is dead. She quickly walks away from his dead body and leaves the scene.
 

Sound 
Diegetic (within the world of text, characters can hear sounds) 

• When Freddie hits the door, When Alex drops the book

Non-diegetic (everything outside of the world of text, characters can't hear sounds) 

• The Background Music

On-Screen (the audience can see the sound source) 

•  When Freddie hits the door, When Alex drops the book

Off-Screen (the audience can't see the sound source) 

• When Freddie gets stabbed

Parallel (when the soundtrack matches the action) 

•  When the music drops as Freddie enters

Contrapuntal (when it doesn't match the action) 

•  There was no use of Contrapuntal sound

We didn't use Contrapuntal sound because we felt that it wouldn't make sense within the film, because even when the film starts, the audience can tell that something isn't right.



I feel that as a group, we did capture all of the sound effectively. I think this because all of the important sounds were clear and loud enough to be heard and understood. All of the key sounds that happen are very clear in the video. For example, when Freddie bumps into the door, the door makes a loud noise which the audience can hear very clearly which makes it very realistic for Alex to hear too in the story. Also, we feel that we used background music effectively in the video as the music that we chose to use built up the mood at the specific time. For example, as Alex is walking out of the room at the start of the video, the music we chose to use builds up the suspense that something is about to go wrong. When Alex turns around, we stop the music to let the audience know that something is definitely wrong. This is effective use of sound because it built up the mood and then the stop of the music means that something is definitely wrong. We used the sound equipment very well, but there was one little problem in where you could hear rustling in the scene where I am talking to Alex. This is because we didn't want the audience to see the microphone, and so we clipped it on to my tie, but as I turned round, the movement of me turning around caused the mic to pick up the rustling noises. We did use diegetic sound and non diegetic sound well in my opinion and is easy to tell the difference of how we did so. For example, the diegetic sound is used well when Freddie bumps into the door because Alex actually hears the door bump so obviously that sound is diegetic. We used non diegetic sound with the background music and I feel that we used that well as it built up the mood and gave a clue to the audience of what's going to happen. We also think that we used on-screen sound and off-screen sound well. We used a number of on-screen sounds e.g. Alex dropped her book. This is effective because the audience knows why that noise has been made and knows that Alex could be in trouble. We also used an off-screen sound where Freddie got stabbed. We used this sound to make the stabbing seem more brutal. We didn't use a contrapuntal sound so we was unable to show the difference between a parallel and contrapuntal sound.


Overall, as this was my first finished project, I feel that the video was a success. We put a lot of time and thought into it and am quite proud of what we have done. If I had to make improvements, I would try to get a contrapuntal sound into the video and also make sure that there was no rustling sounds in the video.