Sound Influence

Sound Influences - for panning shots (2nd influence)

'The Third Man' directed by Carol Reed in 1949, has a much more unconventional soundtrack to your more usual 1940's film noir. Usually, you would hear heavy orchestral music, but Reed decided to use a solo Zither (played by Anton Karas). This creates an extremely interesting sound and stands out amongst many other Film Noir movies of the time. Although, this soundtrack is slightly different to what we have decided on doing, it was certainly an influence in the deciding stage. We strongly considered using similar style music in our panning shots of London scene, but decided to go with the more classic film noir Jazz music, as we felt it fit in better with our opening sequence. 

    

Sound influences - Rest of Film

One of our influences when thinking about the soundtrack was music to, 'Psycho'. Not only is the soundtrack excellent, but the film is directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock is a major influence due to the fact that he is often known as, 'the master of suspense'. Films, such as 'North by North West' and 'The 39 Steps' have been big influences for Charlie and I, when deciding on what type of film we want to do. The 'Psycho' soundtrack is very good as it creates suspense fantastically well, which is what we want to do in our film. The survey we took showed that many people like films that create tension and suspense and 'Psycho' undoubtedly does this, especially through the soundtrack and so making it a strong influence for us.  

 Bernard Hermann, the writer of the 'Psycho' soundtrack is another influence as he has written the music for many of Hitchcock' movies. One of the movies he wrote a fantastic soundtrack for is,'Vertigo', again directed by Hitchcock, which similar to, 'Psycho' creates suspense and tension all throughout. The part from 24 mins onwards is especially good at doing this.

  

Sound Influences - rest of film

Another influence for our opening sequence was the soundtrack to, 'The Maltese Falcon'. It has some very suspenseful moments in it and would be great for the more dramatic moments of our opening sequence, especially the parts leading up to the killing of the Antagonists. However, Charlie and I are having problems deciding on the pace and volume of the music and the one issue coming from this piece of music is that it might be a bit too fast paced for our movie. Nonetheless, it is still an important influence as, "The Maltese Falcon' is one of the more famous Film Noir movies from the 1940's and has had a big effect on many of our choices for our short film.  

MT