Sound Textual Analysis

Sound Textual Analysis 

The scene which I have chosen to do my sound textual analysis on is the “Everytime” Scene from the American artistic drama called “Spring Breakers” which was released on March 15th, 2013. The film was written and directed by Harmony Korine who is a 41 year old American film director. The film features James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, Selena Gomez and Ashley Benson. To give a little context, the film is about four college aged girls who want go to a party destination for their spring break, they get arrested for something quite insignificant but then they are bailed out by a drug and weapon dealer and altogether “bad guy”, Alien. the girls end up getting sucked into his world of drugs and violence and become part of it them selves.

Spring Breakers (Poster)

The scene starts with ambient sound, you can hear the wind blowing through the leaves of the tree in the shot, and you can hear the sound of waves or flowing water and also the sound of seagulls, this is done as sort of an “establishing shot” but with sound, it lets the audience know where this scene is taking place. With the sounds given to us we can decipher that the scene will be taking place on the ocean front because of the probable personal experience of the audience and thanks to the help of what one stereotypically thinks of when thinking of the sea/ocean we picture seagulls, the sound of the water and the sea breeze. 

As for diegetic sound, you see three of the girls walk out of the house, and so the diegetic sound which you can hear is the footsteps of the girls walking out. You also here the slight clattering of metal at 00:02, as one of the girls grips a gun in her hand, even though it is not very loud it is quite a distinctive sound which you hear a lot in movies, this combined with the movement of the gun which is in the hand of the first girl too walk out of the house is done so that the audience notices the gun in the girls hand; because we here the sound of metal clattering so we look where it is coming from, an our eyes are instantly drawn to the movement of the gun which is the first thing to appear out of the house.

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (00:02)

As well, you can here the sound of a Piano being played, at first we are not sure weather this is diegetic or non-diegetic sound. But when the camera pans left at 00:05, it is revealed to us that the sound being heard is actually coming from a piano, which is placed outside and being played by the character Alien. Since we can see the source of the sound in question on screen, this now tells us that the sound we here is diegetic. The piano which is being played starts off quite fast, and as the character Alien see’s the 3 girls exit the house with guns the pace of the piano playing gradually slows down. This seems to be the opposite of the convention normally used in a lot of films, where the music slowly speeds up and gets louder, until the point where something happens, to create suspense. In this case the director has chosen to do the opposite, the piano sound starts off quite fast paced, and as the girls get closer and closer too the piano, the music slows down, synchronously to the gradually shortening amount of space between the 3 girls and Alien. This along with Alien’s facial expressions of slight fear and discomfort, is done to create suspense for the audience, we think that maybe something will happen when the music will stop, so unconsciously the audience start getting worried and apprehensive of what might happen once the music stops. The final note played does not match well with the notes played before, it is a lot lower them, this tells the audience that this is the final note and that something might happen since it is the big finale of this piece.

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (00:09)

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (00:10)

The next sound we hear is diegetic, it’s voice, one of the girls saying to Alien “play something” she says it rather aggressively like an order, this is emphasised by the gun she is holding. Alien reply’s rather nonchalantly, asking them what they want to hear, and they reply by saying “play something sweet, something uplifting” & “Play something f**king inspiring”. The song which Alien decides to perform is “Everytime” by the American singer & song writer, Britney Spears. 

Britney Spears

Britney Spears "Everytime" Single Cover

Alien starts playing the song at 00:46, some of the lyrics are “Notice me, take my hand”, “Every time I try to fly, I fall without my wings, I feel so small”, “I guess I need you baby”. The connotation behind these lyrics being used at this point in the movie is that these lyrics are very weak, they symbolise being vulnerable, The “notice me, take my hand” lyric sounds like a pled for attention from a scared child, the “I need you baby” and “I feel so small” lyrics show that the person in question cant be alone and needs to be with someone and that they feel small, and the connotations behind small are weak, vulnerable, powerless and because of this probably scared. the girls are dancing and singing along in their cheap, girly, pink tiger bathing suits, their pink, my little poney balaclavas, and their sweatpants with “DTF" on the rear, which stands for “Down To F**k” and  they also have shotguns in hand. This gives avery big contrast between the lyrics and the situation because the lyrics represent someone so weak and helpless yet the girls singing it are dressed so provocatively and violently. What the director has done here is called counter-intuitive soundtrack dissonance, he decided to add music to the scene which was "wrong" or “ill-fitting”, this practice is used to force out an emotion, weather it be sadness or laughter or some other feeling. By creating this sense of unfit it forces the consumers to listen to the lyrics and see the difference between them and what is happening on screen, by doing this, a greater rection from the audience can be achieved in comparison too if a song which did fit with the situation was chosen.

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (00:28)

At 01:33 the song goes from being diegetic sound (Alien and the girls singing the song), to non-diegetic sound (the original song “Everytime” by Britney Spears being played). The sound is now non-diegetic because we cannot see the source of the sound on screen, and their is no implication that the characters can hear what the audience is now hearing. The start of this non-diegetic sound triggers a montage which shortly proceed’s (01:55) where the song is being played over the top of it. This montage with the song is the greater continuation of the already started counter-intuitive soundtrack dissonance. This montage is a compilation of shots showing the 3 girls and Alien doing criminal activity and not what the audience would think of when they think of 3 teenage girls. We see shots of violence, for example at 02:10, where one of the girls is holding a mans head between her legs in a rather sexual, provocative and manly manner with a gun to his head. Another violent scene is at 2:19 where the girls seem to be robbing a store at gun point. There are also shots of the girls doing drugs like at 03:46. All these shots of violence, blood, guns and drugs in contrast to this sweat, innocent, vulnerable sounding song which is playing throughout this scene emphasises the already commenced feeling of this song not belonging, and not being the correct song for this scene.

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (02:02)

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (02:46)

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (03:46)

At 04:05 we non-diegetetically hear Alien’s voice whisper “spring break”, it is almost as if he is trying to hypnotise us into wanting to do the same thing, he is reeling in the audience to want to do the same things, as he did to the 3 girls.

Then to wrap up the entire scene, at 04:06 there is a non-diegetic sound bridge with the use of a sound effect in it, which leads from the end of the montage to the start of the final shot in the scene. The sound effect used as a sound bridge is distinctively the sound of a gun reloading which ties back to all the violence in the scene. This sound bridge smoothly transitions to the final shot of the scene  at 04:07 which has only diegetic sound. It is Alien and the 3 girls standing by the water, and Alien shouts “spring break, b**ch’s!” and then they all start firing guns and cheering (diegetic sound). This completely raps up the scene because it talks about the them of the film which is spring break and what it is to them, which is shown by the firing of guns which can be very well heard and echoes throughout the air, for everyone to hear.

Spring Breakers "Everytime" scene (04:09)

In conclusion, I find that this scene from “Spring Breakers” was an excellent scene for sound. It showcased a mix of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, it had a song in it, it had ambient sound, it had a sound bridge which had a sound effect in it, and to finish with what impressed me the most was the fantastic use of counter-intuitive soundtrack dissonance in this scene.

Prelim Task

Prelim Task

Part 1

On tuesday the 7th of October when we arrived in class Mike told us that he would once again be bringing us to the film room, he told us to leave all of our stuff in the class and to follow him to the studio; Upon arrival we were told by Matt this class he would not be teaching us anything, but that instead we would be filming something our selves. Matt gave us wo pieces of paper each which looked like this:

Story Board (Page 1)

Story Board (Page 2)

He told us that these were story boards that we would have to try and re-create ourselves, he put four cameras and four tripods on the table and split us into groups, in my group there was myself, Simone, Xalil and Nikita. Right off the bat Simone offered too be one of the two actors/actresses needed, the rest of us wanted to be behind the camera being either the camera man or director but evidently there had too be two actors, so we did the only logical thing left to do, Rock - Paper - Scissors, I lost so I had to be the other actor, Xalil was the camera man and Nikita the Director. 

Next we unpacked the tripod, bubbled it, then unpacked the camera, turned it on and put it on the tripod. Whilst Nikita and Xalil looked at the story board and decided how and where the camera would be set up to try and recreate what was seen on the story board, me and Simone read through  the story board and tried to learn our lines and practice them too each other. We started off by deciding where the scene would take place, we decided that Simone would be the black coloured character on the storyboard and that i would be the pink coloured character on the story board. Simone would come through the main door of the media room and that i would be against the wall which is in front of it, and that Nikita and Xalil would be on the other side of the room and that the 180 degree line would be placed in-between where Simone and I were placed and Where Xalil and Nikita were (Simone to the left of the screen and I to the right). 

Once we were all ready to start filming, we came to the decision that we would start off by filming the Wide Shot’s (WS):

Nikita and Xalil set up the camera facing me and Simone’s sides, like the shot is shown on the story board. the camera was not placed pointing downwards or upwards but simply straight forward as in the storyboard. After we made sure the white balance and focus were correct, and tape was placed on the floor to know where to stand we started filming; We filmed the whole script through because if we filmed only what was shown as Long Shots on the storyboard then it maybe it would not look very natural or like the conversation was flowing, and we know that you cannot film too much only too little, it is always good to have extra footage just incase.

The next shots we filmed were the medium close up (MCU) over the shoulder (OTS) shots:

We started by filming the shots over my shoulder so Xalil set up the camera and Nikita made sure it was perfect with Simone perfectly in focus whilst my shoulder and the side of my head was out focused and not taking up to much of the screen, and of course respecting the 180 degree rule. We filmed the whole script through a few times to make sure we had footage to choose from. We then shot the over the shoulder shots which were over Simone’s shoulder with me as the main subject of the shot and did the same.

We then shot the single character medium close up shots (MCU):

I was the only character in these three shots, and since I am quite tall Xalil had to raise the tripod to be able to get a front facing MCU shot, which was a little to my left so that it wasn't directly in front of me and so that I was not looking right at the lens to show that I am not talking to the camera but to Simone because it was not meant to be a point of view (POV) shot from Simone’s point of view.

Once we had filmed all the scripted shots we decided to film extra shots for extra footage. We filmed shots of Simone’s hand on a door handle opening the door and a shot of Simone’s hand with a phone in it putting it into my hand and a few more shots. We filmed these shots just to add extra footage to make the scene look better on screen.

In conclusion, even though I did not have a chance to work behind the camera as i would have liked too, I still think that the task was good to put too practice what we had learned in the previous classes with Matt and Paul.

Part 2