Creating the Soundtrack & Music

Once we had the rough cut finished and started editing the final sequence, we started working on the sound.
We used 2 programs to create the sound track. The first was Soundtrack Pro, which is part of the Final Cut Studio package. We used this for all of the sound effects and diagetic sounds (such as the ambient noise from the forest and the gun shot), and I used Logic Pro to create the music at home. Logic Pro is a professional quality audio and MIDI sequencing program used for recording and producing almost every type/genre of music.

Soundtrack Pro

In Soundtrack Pro, I went through the library of loops and sound effects to find sounds that would be suitable for the flashback scenes, as Courtney and Seb had already added the ambient sounds of the forest and gunshot at the end. I found several sharp, mechanical, and discordant sounds to indicate and enhance the effect of the flashbacks. These fitted the shots well, as they are supposed to be dark/painful memories which the main character is remembering.


In Logic, I used 7 software instrument tracks (controlled by MIDI) and one audio track, which was the SFX track created in Soundtrack. Unfortunately, I did not have the video file of the actual opening as it had not been exported from Final Cut yet, so I had to create the music with just the sound effects track as a reference to the timings of the flashbacks and character’s movements, but it worked out well in the end. 




I think the sound of the crow cawing works very well with the music, even though it was not intentionally added; it was just part of the ambient outdoor sound. Overall, I think the two parts of the soundtrack (effects and music) blend together seamlessly, and the end result sounds almost like a real film score.

Logic Pro