Sound Research: Badly Drawn Boy

Most of the trailers I have been watching include at least three different soundtracks throughout. A new soundtrack is used to reflect the particular section of the story which helps distinguish the various sides of the narrative, as well as maintaining the flow and viewers interest. The first soundtrack of the Son of Rambow trailer and Juno trailer are two examples of the style of music appropriate for our film. They both include indie songs which are very stripped down and have a simple feel to them. Predominantly, I have been listening to the soundtrack for About a Boy which was composed by indie singer-songwriter, Badly Drawn Boy. Most of the tracks on the album are exactly the kind of sound I imagined for the lighter parts of our trailer; there is frequent use of the guitar, bass, piano, keyboard, strings, glockenspiel/celesta, tambourine and other light percussive instruments. The combination of these instruments create a very warm, cheerful tone which is what we hope to achieve overall.

Below are a few of the songs I have selected from the About a Boy soundtrack which would suit our film well and also a demo I have created which was inspired by Track 2. Dead Duck.

                                      

Room Tone

We plan to use an external microphone whilst filming in order to achieve a high quality sounding product. We will be editing in sound bridges and cutaways throughout our trailer so we want the dialogue and diegetic sound to be as crisp as possible. One thing we were told to consider when recording a scene with sound was background noise. Every room or location (including different dimensions within the same location) has it's own unique background noise, so to avoid the issue of differing aural signatures during editing, this silence is normally recorded at a location for usually around 30-60 seconds. This is known as room tone. Once this is done, the editor can insert the room tone under any cutaway shots and you are left with a smooth soundtrack. Here are a couple of videos I researched to help me understand room tone.