Sound in Trailers

Sound is a very important aspect to film trailers as it is the sounds that help set the mood to the trailer in order to get a specific emotional response from the audience, weather it makes them scared, excited or saddened. The audience's response will be different depending on the pace/ tempo, the intensity of the bass and possibly the instruments involved in the music. For example, if the music played was a slow violin or piano we would be made to feel sadness if it was inserted alongside a scene of tragedy, but if we were to hear a song that had an electric guitar and a quick and heavy drumbeat that was inserted alongside a montage of action-shots then we would feel excitement and get an 'adrenaline rush'. Often in actions trailers, they would use a piece of music by artists such as Ninja Tracks, Two Steps From Hell, Audiomachine and Immediate Music. 

Trailer Example:
The Legend of Tarzan (2016, Directed By David Yates)   
This trailer features the song 'Axois' by Nathan Lanier, albeit it has been edited in order to help make the trailer more dramatic and does not begin until the middle of the trailer. There is a certain noise that is repeated throughout multiple times over the course of the trailer that sounds like a violin being played at a high key, the noise is made to sound unnerving. There is also a rhythmic drumbeat at the beginning of this trailer used to help gradually draw the audience into the trailer. This drumbeat runs parallel to the cuts and action. At 1:25 the drumbeat gains a quicker tempo in order to make the action seem more intense. The song 'Axois' has a female singing in a non-English language and a rhythmic drumbeat which is the similar to the one used at the beginning of the trailer and almost sounds tribal, which suits the setting of the film as it takes place primarily in a jungle.

Foley Sound

Foley sound is the reproduction of everyday sound, which is edited into films, videos and other media productions in order to help highlight can action so that we can recognise what the action is even if we cannot see it. Examples of these sounds can be a horse galloping (this sound can be created by clapping coconuts together) walking through snow (crunching grain in a glove), breaking glass. Foley sounds can be catagorised into three sections feet, moves and specifics. Feet refers to the sound made by footsteps. The sounds made vary depending on the type of surface that the person should be standing on and the type of shoe the character should be wearing. Moves refers to movement. This can be the sound of fabric swaying or rubbing against each other. Specifics refers to other sounds like doors closing, alarms ringing, or knocking. These sounds can help an audience get a better idea of the size and space of the room judging by the echo. Without foley sound the audience might not know what is going on in the scene as sometimes microphones do not pick up background sounds.

These sounds are created by foley artists. They are the ones who experiment with different objects and techniques in order to replicate the sound and they record them in a studio whilst watching a scene from a film so that they can time the sounds right and have a better idea on what type of sound to use. 

This video shows how foley artist Gary Hecker does his job as he recreated the sounds of footsteps by walking on a gravel-like surface whilst watching a scene from the 2010 Robin Hood film.He also created the sound of a sword being drawn by scraping two pieces of straight-cut metal against each other, a horse breathing by him cupping his hands over his mouth and imitating the sound of a horse, as well as the horse running by clopping cup-like objects against a sandy surface. He also demonstrates how he creates the sounds of a car falling out of a plane and crashing onto the ground. 









Foley Example:
Jurassic Park (1993, Directed By Steven Spielberg) Clip - Tyrannosaurus Rex 

This is the scene in Jurassic Park where the escaped t- rex comes looking for prey and crushes the Ford   Explorer which has the two children inside of it. At the start of the scene the dinosaur nudges the side of the car with it's nose. The noise made by the car being hit would likely have been made by a foley artist dropping or hitting a sheet of metal against a strong and hard surface. When we see the t-rex break the glass on top of the car we can hear the glass breaking. One  technique to do this is by laying metal wind chimes on the floor and either throwing or moving a small bottle over them. It is raining in the entirety of this scene, one technique to create the sound of rain falling is recording the sound of sizzling bacon. 

We cut to the two adults who are in the car behind, as one of them frantically searches for a box of flares, he has to shuffle paper around to find them, which can easily be replicated by repeating the same action in a silent location. When the car is bing pushed into the muddy ground we can hear the mud squelching as if fills us the car. This could be done by having a bucket of wet mud and moving the contents around to get the squelching noise. We cut back to the man with the flare, which is now lit and has a fizzing sound to it. A way suggested to make this noise is by placing a microphone close to a running stream of water and placing something in the way of the water to adjust the flow. When the wooden toilet hut got destroyed by the t-rex, the sound could have been made by throwing blocks of wood and woven wooden strips to the floor. The dinosaurs roar was created by using a mixture of dog, penguin, elephant, tiger and alligator sounds throughout the entire film. 

Diegetic and Non-diegetic Sound

Diegetic sounds are sounds that can be heard in a scene by a character in the scene. This can be something such as an alarm, a radio or a telephone. Other examples can be characters talking (in a conversation or in the background) or ambient sound of the surrounding area (eg. wind, traffic noise, weather). 

Diegetic Sound Example:
American Graffiti (1973, Directed By George Lucas) Clip - 'Must Be Your Mama's Car'

 In this scene we first see two characters having a  conversation in a yellow car, until a driver behind them in  a black car clearly wants their attention, he drives to the  side of the yellow car and the two drivers start sparring  non-offensive insults at each other. The entirety of this  scene is made of diegetic sound. At the start of this  scene we can hear the conversation between the two  people in the yellow car which is clearly diegetic as it is  not a voice-over or narration. We can also hear the faint  sound of the radio playing in the background with the DJ  in the middle of talking, though this is slightly muffled so  that we pay our attention to the main conversation going  on between the two characters. 

When the driver of the  yellow car realises that the driver in the car behind is  clearly trying to agitate him, he immediately stops his  car in which we hear the screech of the breaks. The car  pulls up into the lane next to them so that the cars are driving side-by-side. The two drivers then start shouting to each other from the cars until they reach a set of traffic lights. They decide to compete in seeing who can drive off the fastest and both start roaring their engines. For half of the duration of this scene we can hear music playing in the background which does not change volume as the drivers move along, and sounds as if it is coming from a distance from a radio, so we can assume the music is coming from one of the car radios. 

I think that they decided to make this scene entirely diegetic to create a sense of realism of what it would be like driving along the streets at night, in order to make this scene feel like something that would genuinely happen in real life. The audience would not feel as if the characters were real or relatable if the music in the background sounded non-diegetic and just played over the top of the scene as it would set an entirely different atmosphere. 

Non-diegetic sounds are sounds that the characters in a scene cannot hear but the audience can. This can be a piece of music incorporated over the top of a scene to compliment the events going on, a leitmotif (a piece of music attached to a character) or can be a narrator talking over the top of a sequence. 

Non- Diegetic Sound Example:
Forrest Gump (1994, Directed By Rovert Zemeckis) Clip - 'Peas and Carrots'
In this scene, Forrest Gump reflects back on his childhood to the time where he first met his best friend and love interest Jenny. For the first10 seconds in this clip, all dialogue spoken by Forrest is diegetic. After this, all lines spoken by the older version of Forrest turns into non-diegetic sound as he is now narrating his past rather than speaking to someone next to him about his life and he is not physically present in the past. During the entirety of this clip there is a piece of joyful, violin, melodic music playing to help add a happy tone to one of Forrest's favourite memories so that it is easier for the audience to relate. 

 

Trailer Example:
Batman V Superman (2016, Directed By Zak Snyder)

For the first 45 seconds of the trailer, most of the sound we can hear is diegetic. From 0:00-0:15 we see Alfred driving Batman's jet towards a building so that Batman can jump through a window to get inside. The diegetic sound we here here is the clicking of the jet's controls as Alfred moves the levers around, the sound of the jet's engine when it is viewed from a long distance shot, and the crashing of the glass when Batman breaks through the window. 

The scene changes to when Batman breaks through the floor boards of a room with a number of armed men. The sounds that are diegetic in this sequence are of the wooden floor panels breaking, punches being thrown, wooden crates being crashed into, an explosion, the scratching of knives against metal and men being thrown to the floor. In the background of this scene we can hear a very faint sound of violins making an increasingly loud screeching discordant noise, this is non-diegetic as the characters in the scene cannot hear this as it is very unlikely that there is a violin orchestra sitting in the back of the room, casually watching this act of violence play out. 

The scene changes again to show Alfred talking to Bruce Wayne, Bruce telling Alfred 'I'm getting slow in my old age Alfred', and Alfred replying 'Even you've got to old to die young, not for lack of trying.' This dialogue can be heard over a black screen as a clip of a character walking through a corridor filmed from an establishing shot starts to fade in, during this time the dialogue is non-diegetic. When we finally see Alfred and Bruce as close ups this dialogue can then be classed as diegetic. 

As this cuts to black, the song 'The Seeker' - Waspland remix starts playing. This song is used non-diegetically throughout the rest of the trailer, albeit it is edited in order to run parallel to the action in the trailer. The line 'He has the power to wipe out the entire human race' is non-diegetic as it is spoken over a scene showing Superman looking at oncoming missiles. We find out the speaker of this line when he continues with the line starting  'If we believe that there is even a one percent chance....'. This line is continued over a shot of Superman being crowded around by a group of people to which the dialogue then switches to non-diegetic. The remainder of the dialogue in this trailer is either entirely diegetic or non-diegetic. Any sound effects such as explosions, throwing knives, guns being fired, breaking buildings and attempted kicks are all diegetic. 

I think that the reason why they chose to switch between diegetic and non- diegetic dialogue is to help add drama to the trailer, when we hear the voice but not see the speaker first it helps to create an enigma of 'who is speaking?', and when the dialogue is continued over a clip from diegetic to non-diegetic, it can help tell the audience that what they are talking about is significant to what is being shown at the time, like in this trailer when a character says 'The greatest gladiator match in the history of the world. God versus man' and the scene where Batman arrives in his bat-mobile to confront Superman is shown, clearly referencing that Superman is the 'god' and Batman is the 'man'.