Soundtrack Analysis

Soundtrack Analysis

Documentaries are not that dependent on the soundtrack, they are not as vital to the final piece as you would see in other films. Typically you hear a very calm beat as the soundtrack, the purpose of it is to help the audience stay interested in the documentary meanwhile not being distracting and removing focus from the video as the message comes through there. Below is the complete soundtrack from Sugar Rush (2014 by Michael McMullan )which I will analyse.

Throughout there is one non-diegetic soundtrack, the slow playing of piano keys. This runs over the dialogues in the short film. As both the narrator and other interviewees are talking the music can still be heard the volume is just decreased. One of the struggles with audio in pieces like this where various sets of audio have to be combined is editing the volume levels to be the same and have it fade it and out correctly throughout the piece. Around 4 minutes into the film a few students are being interviewed about diabetes and here the music is stopped, the diegetic sounds from the interview are present such as the wind blowing and other background sounds. The same goes for interviews around 8 minutes in, the one thing these interviews have in common compared to the earlier interviews with the doctors is that they are live interviews, in the sense that they were not planned and the responses could have been anything. By having the diegetic background sounds available to the audience it helps them verify that these statements are not rehearsed and make us believe in what is being said, as to when the experts speak or the narrator.

In the final minutes of the film, the pace of the background track is picked up and a faster drum beat is added. This slowly fades in as the narrator is making is final points and play fully at the credits. The point of this technique is to help the audience understand the final messages given from the piece, it is always good to end on a happy note.

For our production piece we are going to use something very similar to the soundtrack in this piece. We will try to incorporate the technique of having the music play but at a lower volume at rehearsed interviews but in real time interviews use the diegetic background sounds. We will possibly record our own soundtrack as it is going to be a simple combination of piano keys which we can do ourselves, this also means we avoid any copyright issues. The final technique is also vital, to end the piece with a similar but a bit faster pace and possibly add another instrument. We want to focus on our editing a lot, as it is important to have smooth transitions not only between shots but also the sound as a lot of our information is going to be displayed visually through dialogue.