Carrie Sound Replacement Project: Making the Soundtrack

With about only a week left until we had to submit our final sound replacement, we had to come up with a soundtrack that we'd use in the back of scene, so I decided to make a scratch track. This was then used as the final soundtrack which I was happy with and was glad to help get the soundtrack over and done with. With that done, we then were able to focus on mixing and finalising the whole project for submission.

Before I began making the scratch track, I looked for horror soundtracks that I could use for a reference. In one of the first weeks of beginning this project, we, as a group, discussed that the soundtrack was going to be in a minor and that it was going to start off as a major key and then slowly turn into a minor chord as Carrie begins her rampage. We also wanted to have musical cues here and there to heighten the scenes for example, where the hose comes out and where the fire starts. Having those in mind, I started looking for reference tracks.

The only reference track that I found that suited the scene well was a track from the horror movie Sinister titled "Enthral", composed by Christopher Young.

Enthral - Sinister (Soundtrack Score OST)

I really liked the drone effect that this soundtrack had and thought it would suit the prom scene because most 70's horror films are famous for having droning sounds and having a lot of bass frequencies really help to bring high tension, and lets the audience know that something bad's about to happen. "Enthral" also happened to have instruments that played off-key or dissonant chords/melodies which can be very unsettling. This track also had no time signature and was just a constant loop with different instruments/effects added in along the track to thicken the mix. I thought this kind of structure would be a perfect suit for the prom scene as the music won't disturb the ADR and the foley sounds, which is the main element that we want to stand out in our project. Having no time signature and just having the track constantly playing would also help because most of the scene is slowed down and doesn't seemed too rushed From analysing this track, I was able to make a start on the scratch track with a direction.

First, I wanted to create the bass-y, drone effect. Listening through the Sinister soundtrack, I could hear that it sort of sounded like a low double bass I went through Xpand!2 and went through their string section and used their Bigger Legato Strings instrument. I played two notes that were next to each other, which gave a dissonant tone, and played it at a very low octave, and it worked! I then added another layer on top of it, but with a strings section instrument that played at a higher octave, and played it at the scene of the blood spill, which added more noise. Adding more noise to bass frequencies, I found, can easily intensify any horror scene.

I then moved on to try and create some off-key tones to really unsettle the whole scene. I created a scratch track from a soundtrack from A Nightmare of Elm Street (1984) on a previous project and used some untuned bells for the melody line and it worked well to give that chilling feeling. I used the Untuned Bells instrument as well as the Complex Bells instrument from Xpand!2 and played the same two notes that the drone effect had (one note played after another repetitively), but because those bells instruments had different tones playing within the notes, it made the entire note sound off-key which was what I wanted. This was then played faster as the scene intensified and then slowed down again as the scene ended. I had the complex bells start to play when the bucket was introduced into the scene and had the untuned bells playing a repetitive upscale melody when the firehose was being unreeled by Carrie. I also added a loud clash of the two notes for when the blood gets spilled on Carrie, to help bring out the impact of the spill as well as for the audience to feel the shock that Carrie felt. I also added them to the door slams for the same reason but had them panned.

Listening through to what I had, I felt that the droning effect sounded too high quality for a 70's horror film, or that there were too much high frequencies for my liking or for what suited this scene. I have started to use the Lo-Fi plugin quite a bit in my compositions so I gave it a try and just added them to the both instruments that were playing the drone effect and it did it's job. It also blended well with the bell instruments that were playing as well because the bells seemed to have a high cut around roughly 5-7k and up so they all were kind of equal. Adding the plugin definitely helped mend the whole mix and I was then happy with the entire mix and didn't seem to add anything else.

I was stoked to see that my two group members really liked my composition and was glad to help get the composition out of the way. I was open to any other suggestions that they had to change the track which is why I titled it first as a scratch track but then we just made it as the final soundtrack. Before I made the soundtrack, my two group members added rough midi instruments on some parts of the scene so I kept some of them as they helped the soundtrack too, with intensifying some scenes.

So that's the process I went through to make the soundtrack for our sound replacement project! Really thought it would've taken me ages to really capture the mood of the scene as well as to scare the audience but I did it, in the space of about 3-4 hours (including 1.5 hrs of procrastinating). It was fun to mess with dissonant chords and other notes that don't gel together very well so yeah, I hope to make more horror soundtracks soon, and maybe incorporate some of them into my productions too, change the game up a bit.