Creating Sound

Firstly I decided to do some research on sound within supernatural horrors. I looked at demon/possession sequences as well as paranormal sounds including door slams, scratches etc. I also looked at how sound can create such an eerie atmosphere by itself, even if nothing scary is going on on-screen, for example, in the Shining. Some of my sources of inspiration:

Here, non-diegetic sound is used frequently to add suspense and build tension, which is important in supernatural horrors as you are scared of what you can't see. Furthermore, you don't actually 'see' so much scary stuff in this film but the sound really gets to the audience and has them on the edge of their seat.

The Shining is a classic example of where sound is used to create an eerie atmosphere, like in this famous scene where Danny comes across the two dead girls. This film is quite old now but is still thought to be one of the scariest films ever made and I believe this is because of the use of non-diegetic sound.

As well as this I looked at tutorials and other peoples work on sound and tried to recreate some of the sounds they made as well as trying to come up with my own. After watching a few videos on YouTube I decided to download a software and try and create sounds completely from scratch. For example:

How I did it

• I used the program "Audacity" which I downloaded for free on the Internet
• I used a tutorial (seen below) to create my sound
• I got an old guitar in my house and strummed the strings a few times whilst recording
• I then slowed the track to make it creepier
• Then I played around with some of the effects and managed to make it louder, almost double the volume it was before. This gave it a deeper bass and as a result made it creepier
• I then played around a bit more and reversed the track.
• To me, it sounds like at the end of the build up it would go silent for a second then a blood-curdling scream would come.

Tutorial:

Here are the sounds (FOR BEST QUALITY, USE SPEAKERS WITH BASS/TREBLE)

I then tried again using my own voice and piano notes from an old out of tune piano in my house. I did similar things in the editing, just playing around with the tools on the software. Here are the results...

Evaluation of my sounds

I think for a first attempt my sounds are quite good and with more practice and knowledge of the software I can produce pretty scary sounds. Also, perhaps experimenting with other software and downloaded sounds could be useful. On a whole I think I made a good first attempt at trying to create sounds from scratch and tried to approach it in a different way by attempting to use a software I have never used before.