The film ‘No Country for Old Men’ (2007), by the Coen Brothers, is a tangled look into an intense game of cat and mouse between an initially unassuming hunter, who discovers a briefcase full of money from a drug deal massacre, and a psychopathic killer whose ‘morals’ separate him from the civilized world of law and order. This veers the story into what I would define as a modern and dark western. While the story is full of tension, there is no definite score or musical theme during the duration of the story. Without being guided how to feel from music there is a certain proximity the audience has to the characters in the story, both unknowing and guided by fear.

There is no score for the duration of the film aside from a drone that follows the introductory narration, and a closing theme that concludes the storyline along side the credits. This is one of the main reasons why I am choosing to score this film; in an attempt to create a narrative for an original score without infringing on the director’s decision to maintain both ambiguity and proximity with the audience and the characters on screen.

I am currently planning to approach the score through a combination of both musical, spacial, and foley elements; using specific instrumentation including acoustic guitar, lapsteel guitar, maracas, and a collage of static recording and environmental effects. The two scenes I am deciding between include the hunting scene towards the beginning of the film where Llewelyn discovers the briefcase, the scene in the hotel where Llewelyn and Anton come face to face before engaging in a shootout, and the interaction between Llewelyn and the men on the bridge on the Texas/Mexico border.

For my Specialising and Exhibiting Element 1 project I will be re-scoring a scene from the film ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Ehtan and Joel Coen. The film was released in the United States on November 9th, 2007 and was a modern interpretation of the neo-noir western film style. The Coen brothers utilized a minimalistic soundtrack, emphasizing space and silence to build suspense. My approach to the re-scoring and interpretation of sound for this film will involve creating a new sonic narrative while trying to emphasize the original perspective and techniques used from a musical point of view.

In Sound for Screen week 4, a small group of classmates and I went into the foley studio and small composition studio at LCC to record and experiment with the art of recording foley alongside a scene from the film ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’. From the beginning of the session we noticed the immense amount of variables and factors to consider when recording effects to screen.

We used a single AKG large condenser microphone and a Senhiser shotgun microphone during the recording, and ran a Pro Tools session as well with the imported video. We all switched off between running the DAW and experimenting with live tracking for both footsteps and dropping a pill bottle, both taking place towards the end of our assigned scene. Experimenting with weight and different tonal qualities dependent on which material we used to walk on were basic factors in the output for recording the bare footsteps, however, the most difficult task seemed to be getting the tempo of the footsteps aligned to picture. In the end we just decided it would be easier to manipulate in the DAW, rather than continuously reattempt the full scene. I quickly developed a great admiration for foley artists.

Another factor I noticed and thought about when recording was the mic placement in relation to the scene. There was something off about our initial microphone placement and after later evaluation I concluded that despite choices in leveling certain sounds over others to serve the narrative is completely separate from the techniques used to record them. If I redid this exercise I would emphasize recreation of the spaces in the scenes in order to represent the narrative of the film, rather than just attempt to recreate the visual sound objects.

Here is a screenshot of my exported Pro Tools session for this exercise.

In week 2 of Sound for Screen, we went outside to examine, map, and record the soundscape of the traffic-filled area outside of the London College of Communication. Within this exercise, I tried to focus on my subconscious and personal reactions to the sounds I recognized recording, and then following the organization of the clips and sonic qualities I mixed the field recordings into a soundscape of the environment.

The area’s sounds included metallic high frequencies and low end that I was able to physically feel. There was a lot of construction, and mixed with the screeches of a murder of crows nearby. I separated the visible experience from my interpretation of the sonic environment, and while mapping the sounds on paper I emphasized specific sounds and sonic qualities I noticed in the environment. In organizing the collected recordings I highlighted the sounds that stood out to me in my collage of the recordings (crows, constructions, voices, etc). The sounds of the site allowed me to interpret the environment from my own perspective and sense of space.

In preparation for the first session of this module I watched ‘Fatima’s Letter’ (1992) directed by Alia Syrd. The film prompted me to look inward in interpreting my reaction towards the use of language and text throughout the film. I noticed that I was forming my own assumptions around the narrative of the film as a result of not understanding the language; much like forming assumptions around the environment during the sonic mapping exercise done in class. The use of text on the screen throughout the film pulled me back into the physical environment of the Whitechapel station used as the backdrop for the story, however, interpretation and assumption were promonant themes throughout, relying on the ambiguity of the sounds and camera angles to cause the story to mold to the viewer.