Post-production: Audio editing

For sound, we originally planned to create a soundtrack that increases the tension and suspense. We figured the soundtrack would either put the cherry on top of the thriller, or completely ruin the entire thing. We eventually decided that using a sound track, along with sound effects and lots of action visually, would be too much to absorb in such a short amount of time.

 We instead only created sound effects, by layering different sounds on top of each other. We used different sounds from the school's sound effect file 'Hurtwood RAID'. Some of these sound effects included, gun shots, bullets dropping, body dropping, jail door opening, dripping sounds, footsteps and talking in the background.

 We started with the dripping sounds. We put these on a loop for the entire sequence, including title cards. We used different layers in adobe premiere pro to assemble the different sounds together. The original gunshot and door clips had multiple different versions (reverbs and durations) throughout the clip. We used each version on our thriller so that the sound effects do not sound exactly the same and realistic. With the gunshot, comes the footsteps, the door opening, the bullets falling and body falling.

We placed these clips all together on the timeline to happen one after the other. We then copied this across the sequence. We allowed hesitation between some sounds such as footsteps to door, door to gunshot. We varied this pause for each version of sound sequence, so that it doesn't sound robotic. People would not proceed each stage with the same duration of hesitation. We wanted the audience to think the sound effects were a person offscreen walking closer. The pauses between door and gunshot etc allows this person to hesitate and breath, as any human would.

 We placed this gun sequence throughout at different spots in the thriller. It was vital to have one significantly loud gun shot where our actor imagined a shot; and the ending where he is just about to place the key in the padlock.

We increase the volume further into the sequence, to represent the enemy coming closer and closer to the character. This is important to show his distance from the visual action as it is the stimulus of his panic.

Once we had the sound sequence assembled. We exported the file as a waveform audio. (Audio only, image not included)


We then opened up Adobe Audition, another program that helps us edit sound. The sound effects felt too robotic and unrealistic.




So we decided to add reverb and delay to the sounds. These features distort the sequence into sounding metallic. As if sound was bouncing off metallic floors and walls. We explored with different settings to eventually get the sound we want. Delay also adds a more realistic effect on the sound sequence.

We finally saved the audio again and replaced the first cut with our final sequence in premiere pro.
Only difficulty we ran into, is that after we had used audition, all the different layers merged into one. This means that if we wanted to tweak something in particular, we couldn't unless dissecting the one layer or editing it as a whole.

reverb setting on the sound sequence