I finally watched We Need To Talk About Kevin after recording the ambience for the foley experiment I wanted more context towards the piece. The sound in this movie is really well done. I read the small blog post on a feminist approach to this movie and after watching it I can really tell what she meant. The dialogue is minimal, the way it carries the story is through image and sound. Not directly telling you what’s happening. The beginning has the curtains flying with a sound of a sprinkler which until the ending you would never know why it’s happening. Throughout the movie, you can hear the subtle sound of the sprinkler coming on and off. Foreshadowing the ending, the sound is playing even though the sprinkler isn’t on screen.
One of the strongest elements I felt the sound design helped was to convey the film from her point of view. In the intro scene where she is in a tomato festival and she lies down and is carried in the air, you can see she’s in a dreamlike state. The audio in the clip conveys a similar message. Throughout the movie, there are constant flashbacks between her post-life after the murdering by her son Kevin to flashbacks before. The sound design never makes you feel like your comfortable and always unsure of where you are in the story.
In some scenes, the sound design is very minimalistic. Whenever there is a dialogue that is very little the sound effects cut out. All you hear is the room abience and very close mic technique recordings to get all the subtle mouth movements. I feel this creates concentration and suspense within the viewer. As most of the movie has synths and drones to make you uneasy that as soon as there is silence you know something bad is about to happen.
I’m going to carry on the exercise and do a bit more foley on the scene from class before working on my own clip. I think the practice is going to help a lot.