Bea Marston's Media Blog: Sound and Lighting

Sound Influences:

For the soundtrack of our trailer, we are searching for a piece of music which is melancholy and docile. We will use a single track throughout the whole trailer, rather than a number of varying tracks which is used in most rom-com trailers. In the trailers we have looked at such as blue valentine and Revolutionary Road, there is a single song used as the backing song, and the way the mood is changed is that the volume is varied or the beat gets faster and softer, building tension.

We are asking our friend Charles Stooke to write a song which is similar to these songs to use as the backing soundtrack to our trailer. We will write our own lyrics to roughly fit the narrative of the story, and instead of using multiple different tracks in our trailer like many other genres of trailer do, we are going to stick to using one song right the way through, because that is what the usual song is like in romance trailers. We will change the mood of the trailer from happy to sad using alternating speed in the song and during the happy montage we will most likely have the chorus, whereas during the sad montage, we will use the sad and melancholy sounding verse.

Lighting Influences:

We will have our trailer lit at the start in a warm dim lighting, as the couple will be at a bus stop in the evening so it will be dark naturally, however we will have to use some artificial lighting to stop the film from becoming pixilated and bad quality, but we do not want to over do it and make the shot look unnatural or unrealistic. We also want to set the mood at the beginning to be happy.

To make the mood seem uplifting and show that there is love in the air during the first montage and half of the trailer, we will generally use brighter lighting and dress Grace and Isaac in brighter coloured clothes to reflect their mood. An example of a trailer where they use this technique is 'Revolutionary Road'. The first half of the trailer is bright and sunny and the couple are very much in love, interested in each other, and seem to be happy. This can also be seen in 'Blue Valentine', when the opening few shots are noticeably lighter and more happy than the second half.

We will use artificial lights when filming inside to make the film clearer and better quality, and hopefully more professional looking. We will also use accordant lighting to show the mood, for example, we will use dull, glowing, warm, yellowy lighting to show intimacy, for example in shots where Grace and Isaac are inside their flat during happy moments.