In my original music test, I started the music with harmonies and strong melodies coming in right at the beginning of the film. After I had seen the animation in full, it didn’t seem to fit. Although these harmonies were beautiful, I felt that they came in too soon. At the beginning of the film, the audience is still climatising to the tone and the atmosphere that we are trying to create so I wanted to have more of a build-up rather than jump straight in with melodies. The audience wouldn't have formed a connection with our character yet, so I didn’t want the music to confirm their assumptions. I wanted them to come to their own conclusions and have the music guide them along this journey with the phantom.

 

I copied this beginning section with the harmonies and placed it at the end of the composition. My struggle was not knowing how to build up to a pinnacle point, so I thought it might help me if I put the section that I felt was already too developed, at the end. I decided to try and work backwards. This really worked in my favour. 

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I took the melody from the harmonies (which you also hear very briefly at the beginning in the form of a synth, just to give a hint of themes to come) and developed the chord progressions. I did this first just on one track and thought it sounded really beautiful and resolved. I then decided to add new instrument tracks with different synthesisers on each. I duplicated this new melody and added it to each track to layer this section up. When I played it for the first time I got goosebumps because I had actually almost achieved what I had been struggling to do. I had that pinnacle moment. It sounded to me like a manipulation of time. When you’re listening to this little part, you feel suspended in a timeless state but it also feels like you’re being propelled into somewhere new and unknown. While creating the chord progression, I had inspirations such as Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score and Radiohead songs in my mind. I wanted to put myself in that strange, disjointed, experimental, timeless and unknown space. I added some bass for the last chord to just round it off, ground it and add depth. 

 

Content with this development, I carried on working backwards. It was easier now as I had this moment to build up to. I decide to tackle sound design for the fall next (the scene where the character falls to the world below). I managed to distort an effect on Arcade to create this sound that’s as if you’re being sucked into something. I placed this to be timed perfectly for when the phantom falls into the hole to the bottom world. I also used a synth that sounded to me almost like a warning and placed this just before he falls. It had some depth and bass to it so sounded really good and let the audience know that something was about to change. I then had to build up to this. For this part I went back to the beginning again. I created a slow, gradually developing melody that would play under everything else until we reached closer to the fall. 

 

When I reached this shot, I immediately wanted to add sounds of chatter, laughter, children playing and city ambience to imply that memories still remain within this world and the phantom is only at the beginning of their journey. I placed all of these sounds within this section and was really happy with the outcome. It’s a sweet, melancholic moment and cuts through the eerieness of the world. Within the melody and the sounds of laughter and chatter, I started to place more industrial, harsh clanging sounds. This is to suggest to the audience that we are still in a surreal, odd and timeless environment. 

 

From this scene up until the fall, I added a distorted recording of a train going past. I lowered the volume so you can just hear more of the rhythm rather than the entire train sound. I didn’t want to make it too clear that it was a train you could hear, but I put it in there to imply that the journey is developing at a faster pace now. The rhythm of the train also fits with the odd industrial sounds that we would’ve heard previously. It’s also the first moment within the film that we have a consistent rhythm to set a way of counting time. This disappears again as soon as the phantom falls through into the bottom world. As soon as the phantom fell, I cut all other sounds. For the fall scene, I created what sounded like someone’s muffled voice. I wanted the audience to feel alienated like our phantom would be feeling at this moment in time. 

 

For the bottom world, I wanted an entirely different tone. I added some deep, bellowing synths that made the place seem big and threatening. I added a sound of a light flickering when they walked past the buildings. I added an echo to this to make the sound seem bigger than they are. I also added some muffled voices, like what we heard in the above world but I used the flex tool to distort them and make them sound backward and robotic. I brought in the music that I used to have at the beginning to create a motif. This worked so well and also saved me from having to make something new for the ending. Instead, I made it so the pinnacle moment plays when the credits come on. This did look really good and was a nice touch to end the film and the sound design I have leading up still sounds really effective when put alongside the picture. I want to extend the length of this film so that I can further expand on the sound but overall, this was an extremely successful project and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating the sound.