In a recent Sound Studies and Aural Cultures class, we watched the first 20 minutes of ‘Full Metal Jacket’, Stanley Kubrick’s analysis of the effects of the Vietnam War on soldiers as they begin to get ready for deployment.

In watching the beginning of this film I was shocked to realize a major shift that was created through the introduction of the score, and this realization caused me to purchase and rewatch the entire film as soon as I arrived home that evening. The introduction of the film starts with the new soldiers receiving buzz cuts alongside the song ‘Hello Vietnam’, after this, there is no included music for the following 26 minutes of the film, up until the point Private Leonard is assaulted as a result of his subpar effort and ability during training. This has an intense psychological effect on him eventually leading to his own suicide, and this downfall and shift in the film is introduced to the audience through the addition of suspenseful music in the film. Contrary to the relatively humorous and offensive dialogue that occupied the sound space of the film prior.

This change inspired the second music cue in my Element 1 submission for Sound for Screen, inciting suspense through the addition of dissonant music.

I was unable to book the composition and foley studios for this project, and initially, I was hesitant to record because I thought the quality of the foley for this project would be affected by the volatility of the sonic environment that makes up my current house. However, in the comfort and proximity of my own space, I was able to create a vast and detailed collection of sounds for this clip, and the ones that inspired me the most were the ones thought of last minute.

Early on in this project, I realized the immense detail that goes into creating foley for film and the intense specificity, time, and patience it requires. Initially, I was hesitant in re-recording audio for an already released film. There were certain parts of me that thought any work I would contribute would somehow be unoriginal, as the film is already its own entity. In spite of this, actually placing emphasis on the detail and quality of my own composition and foley performances for this project was an amazing exercise and exploration into the world of foley and sonic construction to environment-specific scenes and situations.

In my score and sound design for the clip from ‘No Country for Old Men,’ I am expanding on the Coen brothers’ approach to utilizing proximity and sound as a theme throughout the film. While the film does not have a score, there is an emphasis on silence as well as observation through sound.

I currently have a rough mix of the foley sounds and themes I am using in my soundtrack for the scene I have chosen. The two musical themes in my composition are very different in tonality. Theme No. 1 follows a structured progression and melody, however, places an emphasis on dissonant rhythmic qualities. Theme No. 2 is a prolonged drone for which I recorded saxophone across different timbres and in different positions from the Sennheiser 418 microphone I was using. Playing two octaves of g with slightly different embouchure styles in order to get different tones, the second piece is my approach to creating dissonance and tension through tone and volatility.

My foley was all recorded live in my bedroom using a variety of props and miking techniques. The session quickly grew to roughly 50 different stereo and mono tracks and in organizing them I found that balancing and including and excluding certain sounds is an entire creative process, as well as deciding between tones and objects to use.

I used a series of guerilla foley recording techniques as well as in-studio techniques. Recording cars tailored to the scene was a difficult process, especially getting single-car takes that matched the low rumbling of a Chevrolet Impala. I used a Sennheiser 418 stereo 5 pin microphone for the majority of the recordings but for the outside ambience and other guerrilla foley (i.e. cars), I used a stereo zoom h6 microphone.

One of the most challenging aspects of my recording was the timing, and estimating the different weights and toe placement of recording steps in my room. I used carpet, tile, and a large Moog subsequent 25 tour case to record the variety of materials pictured in the scene I chose. Another challenging aspect of this recording process was the recreation of a motel vent. I used the Sennheiser 418 and recorded a boom pole hitting the vent above my stove in order to get the metallic clanging in the motel air ducts.

Tape was another sound object that was important to me in recording foely for this project. I used a very direct miking position while recording the duct tape being used in this scene. The two themes followed and emphasized throughout my composition of this soundtrack include proximity and tension, focusing on recognizable sounds that depict closeness and both fear and hostility. Another object I used in the recording is a pair of Red Wing boots I own; both for footsteps and the part of the scene where Anton Chugah removes his boots before attempting to murder Llewelyn Moss in the motel room. The Senehiser 418 has a great frequency response and in recording the shoes I was able to capture a very clean leathery sound.

I have finished my first working mix of the main and introductory theme for my composition for a scene in the film ‘No Country for Old Men’.

The motif I am following for this work is proximity. In expanding on the directors’ intentions of causing the audience to be aware and listening throughout the film in long silent stretches, I am composing music around the idea of an almost eery and itchy collage of sound depicting tension and suspense. I want the audience to be thrown by my score. I want the audience to feel as if they are the protagonist, not as if they are watching the protagonist.

For the first theme, I wrote an electric guitar part, that resembles a low repetitive drone. Almost blues-like and almost dragging. Suspenseful but recognizable. I plugged my guitar directly into my UAD Arrow interface and used a Strymon Tape delay effects pedal and a Hudson electronics console preamp effects pedal with it to achieve my desired tone. Over this I layered an ambient guitar track; playing with harmony and string buzz. I also improvised a bass track on a Moog Subsequent 25 synthesizer and a cello drone on a digital mellotron synthesizer. I plugged the mellotron into a warm audio octave fuzz pedal for some extra hair as well.

The percussion was also important to me for this first theme, so I recorded a shaker track (large beans used inside) and I also recorded myself tapping a poorly homemade contact microphone to use as a low kick drum track. In a separate session, I recorded a series of brush strokes using two jazz-style drum brushes on a variety of surfaces to create a poly-rhythmic and dissonant-rhythmic track to blend in with the main theme. This picks up in the scene as Anton Chigurh approaches the motel where Llewelene is hiding out.

For microphones, I tracked the percussion with a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser MKH 418.

In preparation to begin gathering both guerilla and studio foley recordings for the scene I am recreating the soundtrack for in the film ‘No Country for Old Men’, I have made a list of sounds I need to collect or replicate or imitate in order to structure and represent the tonality of the environment of the scene. The two main components in the foley are ambient sounds and sound objects (i.e. duct tape around hangers and the beep of the tracker).

My perspective around both the sound design and composition for this film scene is driven by the initial perspective of the Coen brothers, which was to create a sense of proximity throughout the film without the ‘barrier’ of music blocking the audience from immersing themselves into the story. In striving to recognize but develop this perspective in my own way I will focus on the sound objects that make up the resonating aspects of the foley for the scene I have chosen. I will also compose ambience and a musical theme to represent the growing tension throughout the scene.

In an effort to practice what I had learned in an in class exercise on tape loops for Sound for Screen, I recorded and created a 4.8 second loop of one of my favorite song introductions, ‘The Ocean’ by Led Zeppeling. In the introduction of the studio recording and live recordings of this piece John Bonham, the bands drummer, recites ‘we’ve done four already but now we’re steady and then they went 1,2,3,4’ in order to count off the intro tempo of the song. The purpose of this was in recording this piece, the band was having initial trouble syncing up the slight polyrhythms that occurs throughout the duration of the song, and in an attempt at humor, Bonham shouted that phrase which was then picked up by an overhead drum microphone and released with the album ‘Houses of the Holy’.

This tape loop is a minor tribute of mine to the band.

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.