Juliet and I talked briefly about the sound in the film more generally, but we wanted to focus specifically on the taster. This particular scene doesn’t have much of the fun purgatory stuff in it unfortunately, but I added a new intro to the scene that will provide an opportunity to play around a little.
The taster film opens with landscape shots. There are multiple different approaches to take for this sequence. I want to film the very much be from Ellis' perspective, so the world should appear to him as flat, muted and dead and I want to sound design to reflect this. One way of achieving this would be by having a cool breeze blowing through the landscape. This would make it feel much more barren. An example of this can be found in True Grit.
On the other, what if it’s just deathly silent? I like the idea of there being absolutely no noise other than the dying trees creaking and cracking.
This is something I want for the opening of the final film, but it might be worth looking t here as well. In Roger Waters' When We Were Young I love how distant and obscured the voices are. They repeat the same phrase over and over again, yet it takes a long time before we quite register exactly what it is he is saying. Elements of this might be nice for the taster.
In fact, I put together a playlist of songs for Juliet to communicate the vibe I was thinking for this section. It can be viewed here.
So we sort of see Ellis making his way through the trees in almost a daze. And we cut sharply. We’re suddenly right there with him. We’re right on his shoulder. We looked at the sound design in this scene in The Revenant.
I'd like to build a soundscape around the standoff and as soon as it starts, suddenly there's silence. I was looking at this scene in Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro. I really like how the birds in the background are very present in the mixing, but as soon as the characters draw their blades, we get silence.
Juliet raised a few practical concerns and ideas for the taster. With regard to actually recording sound, our location is wide open. There is no shelter and the forecast says “moderate breeze”. This means that we'll have to rely heavily on lavs. However, this then affects what the characters can wear. Juliet warned against noisy clothes including squeaky leather. I've always imagined Kane in a leather jacket, so we'll have to have a think about this.
The guns we are using obviously aren't real; they're made of plastic. I suggested to Juliet that potentially metallic handling sounds might help to sell the illusion. Juliet had the idea that if Kane wears a ring, then she can have the tapping sounds of the ring against the gun to work with as well.
Here is a playlist of other clips I suggested to Juliet.
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