Month: April 2022

I am a big fan of the horror movies directed by James Wan 温子仁.

Wan is a master when dealing with the scary effects. He otfen uses sounds to direct audience’s attention, like the squeaks from a door. He is also good at illustrating spaces and utilizing psychological effects to generate horror. There is a Classic “Hide and Clap” scene in The Conjuring 招魂 from 2013, where he scares the audience with an unexpected hand clapping.

He uses multiple techniques to create the atmosphere and foreshadow, as well as pushing the plot. For this one, as we audience are anticipating something comes from the front with the main character, the ghost suddenly appeared from her back and clapped twice. Also to mention he has done it with various shot angles and camera movements.

I tried to identified the most important shots involving camera movements and created 12 frames for the scene, to explore the techniques he used and illustrate it with explicit words and signs.

Video Clip:

The Conjuring – Wanna play Hide and Clap? – YouTube

Storyboard

PDF Version:

Storyboard 1 Storyboard 2

 

Sound Track:

Concept: 

I typically remember I was afraid of darkness during the period of adapting to sleep alone in my childhood. At that time I was sensitive and highly alert to the sounds around me, as if there were danger hidden in the darkness.

So I want to create the warm, comforting atmosphere in contrast with the anxiety, tension and horror.

• Scene depicted

Mom finished telling the bedtime story. She coaxed me to sleep with soft patting, kissed me goodnight, turned off the light and then left the room. 

(Actually fell asleep…) I dreamed about hearing some strange sounds as if there were a monster wandering around. I got really scared. Suddenly the monster attacked me. I woke up in a sharp gasp and found out it was a dream. Finally I turned on the switch.

Sound Elements:

filping pages/ closing a book/ mashing bed sheet/ patting / kiss/ footsteps/ switch/ turning door knob/ wind/ waving curtains/ trembling breath/ spinning coin/ monster( metal scratching wooden closet) / gasp

Editing:

The sound track can be divided into two parts. The first part ends with the door knob sound (0:42).

I put the orginal sounds into multiple sound channels. And the sounds with similar properties or linear connection are put into the same channel. 

Basically the techniques I utilized are noise reduction, panning, volume adjusting and diagnostics. I put for example the footstep panning 100L to 100R to create the motion, and the others followed 100R to indicate space and position (coin spinning as well).

There were some air explosion sounds generated by curtains and winds, which couldn’t be removed through noise reduction, so I kept it for its nature. I tried some echo and delay effect for the coin sound and curtains, but that turned out to be confusing and disrupting.

Challenges:

Overall the most challenging part is collecting satisfying sounds elements. Due to limitations of physical surroundings, I spent a lot of time experimenting with the stuff and figuring out the way to collect the sounds.