Soundtrack Design

In this task I was asked to choose from one of three film clips, remove all the sound and replace it with non copyright sounds I found online, I chose to do a car chase scene from The Matrix Reloaded.

The first sound I chose to add was the background music as this sets the mood for the scene, I decided to use the music that plays when you are being chased by the police in the game Need For Speed Carbon, I had multiple different songs that I could’ve chose from however I felt that this one was the most fitting for the scene. I also found a sound of a car driving at high speed which was recorded from inside the car, I have this constantly playing in the background alongside the music. The non-diegetic music and diegetic car sounds add atmosphere to the scene and make it so that the scene isn’t silent when there is no action happening on screen. I then had to add gunshots, tire screeching and a car crashing into for the first few seconds of the clip, I also added police sirens that start when the police cars are first visible, these police sirens continue to play in the background for most of the video, increasing and decreasing in volume depending on wether the camera is inside or outside a car. Next I added the sounds from the fight scene inside the car between one of the twins and Morpheus, this consisted of thuds for the twin entering and the gun dropping, knife sounds for when a knife is being used, punch sounds the the fight and swerving sounds for the car is shown swerving. The rest of the clip uses similar sounds like gunshots and car crashes when appropriate and continues to have the music, sirens and car sounds in the background.

The music I added in the background is the only non-diegetic sound that I added, this is because a lot is going on in the scene and there are a lot of diegetic sounds, the fast paced action music matches the action packed car chase scene really well and enhances the mood of the scene. All the other sounds in the scene such as gunshots and cars crashing are diegetic sounds as the characters in the film would be able to hear them, as there is so many things happening in the scene there are a lot of chaotic diegetic sounds immerses the viewer into the scene.

I feel like my soundtrack definitely enhances the visuals as it immerses the viewer, if the whole scene was silent the viewer wouldn’t be able to feel how chaotic and action packed the scene is, even though they would be able to see it a lot of things are going on in the background which you can only hear. The background music also plays a very important part in enhancing the scene as without the music the scene would feel quiet and awkward.

I feel like some of my personal strengths on this task was sound syncing and attention to detail, I made sure all the sound effects were played at the exact correct time and at a correct audio level compared to where the camera is in the scene.