Lord of the Rings, Soundtrack Deconstruction

Assessment Task 1

The film score is the song which is played throughout this scene, it was composed specially for this scene. The song is used to add dramatic effect to the scene & to keep up the pace of the action. The score for this scene begins at about 0:25 seconds and plays throughout.

The ambiance of this scene includes multiple horses running, shouts screams & horns playing at about 20 seconds in.

ADR is used in this scene during the kings speech.

Sound design is used to create the sound affects of the dragon. Foley could have been used on the horses along with a wild track and ambiance. There could have been multiple techniques used to create the effect of hundreds of horses running all at once. 

Foley sound affects are sounds created specially to match a scene and exaggerate the action in the scene, for example normally you might not hear a punch hitting someone quite as much as you do in movies, they do this to emphasize & communicate action better. Foley sounds are also heavily used to create sounds for futuristic things, like light sabers and space ships. Foley artists use items such as meat, coconuts, sand & coat hangers to create sounds. Although however most futuristic or non- existent creatures and sounds are created during sound design.

ADR stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement, which sounds much more complicated than it really is. ADR is a process which involves recording audio for a scene which might have previously been un-useable. For example recording dialogue to go with a scene where the previous 'original' speech was muffled by the wind.

The art of 'Sound Design' is creating audio to match a scene of a futuristic being or thing, such as wall-E, they use 'Foley' like techniques however they are usually edited in post processing.

The Purpose of a SoundTrack

1) In the sound track to this scene, one of the purposes is to involve the audience and communicate well that the battle is bigger than it is, we can hear shouting off screen which suggests there is more of a fight going on in the distance.  They would have used ADR a lot to create this effect, like the distant shouting and the clashing of swords. This occurs from 4:07 till the end of this scene. We hear shouting and bloodshed even when its not on screen, this is clever as it helps our minds to create the image which we aren't seeing on screen

Another purpose is to sublimely tell a part of the story, we can see this well when the sad section of the music plays while there is a close up of the protagonist on the screen, this then occurs again when the score goes quiet while the protagonists are on screen. This is so we can emotionally link ourselves with the characters. This happens at 2:06 with brave music for the heroes of the movie, showing how they are courageous and honorable by going into battle, it also occurs at 1:09 - 1:18 for the antagonist, the music fades out to portray 'him' as an emotionless monster.

 One more purpose is to establish a time or place, by this i mean that by playing classical music, horns etc we can see that this movie is not set in a modernistic era, although if it was it would be a different reality from our own, If the scene was playing 'dubstep' or something similar it just would not fit & would clash with the narrative. Although it would be quite amusing. This goes on throughout the scene.