Research - Sound & Editing

    Even though I hadn’t started editing yet, I still planned out how I wanted my film to sound and feel I planned to use non-diegetic sound like eerie background music to create suspense. I also wanted to include diegetic sounds like footsteps, breathing, and creaking doors to make everything feel more realistic and much more intense. Silence is also something I wanted to use. I learned sometimes having no sound at all in a scene can be even more effective than music because it makes the audience focus and feel uncomfortable. 

This an example of the type of music that we would edit in the background!

To break the silence, I incorporated the main character humming in the scene. Introducing humming allowed the scene to maintain the realistic feel since there was no loud, copyrighted music that might have made the scene feel embellished or produced and might have broken the tension or the focus of the audience.

For editing, I planned to use slower cuts at the beginning to establish the setting and then gradually make the cuts quicker as the tension increases. I also thought about using jump cuts or flashbacks to confuse the audience slightly, which fits the psychological thriller genre. Planning the sound and editing before filming helped me understand how everything connects.

It’s not just about what you film, but how you present it.. I thought a lot about the right sound for the scene. Sound is really important in psychological thrillers because it builds tension without the audience even realizing it. Thankfully I have Spotify premium and have sounds like this available to me always!