Ok well now that this project has finally come to end, I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s been a crazy 7 weeks of ups and downs but we made it, I can’t be any happier with the end result. I feel we have done a great job to get this project to meet the industry standards on such a low budget. I can’t believe we did our first 5.1 mix and executed it in a professional manner, this is something I would be proud to showcase on my portfolio and feel its really push mine and Johns knowledge even further then projects before. At this time in the trimester, I would normal go back and reflect on my project, talk about how my journey went and how I feel about the final product. But seeing how this is my first ever sound replacement I thought it would be fun to compare my work and our budget to the original movie scene.
Below is the original scene take from The Conjuring 2
The Conjuring 2 is directed by Jame Wan and came out in 2016 and had a 40 million dollar budget and made twice that amount on release. Joe Dzuban of West Hollywood’s Formosa Group was head of audio on this project and work alongside Jame to create the overall vibe, Composition and sound design of the movie.Joe Dzuban has also worked on other blockbuster movies such as Insidious and Fast and the furious 7. For this movie Dzuban team consisted of sound effects editor Peter Staubli, creature designer Eliot Connors, supervising dialogue/ADR editor Lauren Hadaway, dialogue editor Justin Dzuban, and assistant editor Pernell Salinas. With a budget like 4o million, you can image how in depth and creative these guys could get, also how much lovely expensive gear they would have on tap. Both I and You are really big fans of Jame Wan work and really love how his reformed the horror world by using a modern approach to his work while keeping the old school vibe we all love and adore. While researching for this Comparison I came across a cool article by ‘A Sound Effect’ that explains how Dzuban and his team created the audio assets for The Conjuring. I’m really surprised that they used a lot of the same methods as John and me, But had better processing and studio gear on hand. I’m glad I only just came across this article, I and John made a Pact that we wouldn’t look at the original during the recording and mixing stages. We wanted to create our own version so it’s quite humbling to know we went down the same path as the professionals.
After finishing our version I went back and watched the original, I haven’t seen or heard this clip in like 7 weeks so it was a shock to me. I didn’t know how to take it, all I could hear was our version to the point that I diss liked the original. Even know the original scene had a bigger team, Budget, Equipment, and time frame I feel it lacks a lot of movement and intensity. Not saying ours is better than the big time Hollywood movie but I feel we have taken more of a creative approach due to the lack of budget and time.
Comparison
Movement
With the original, I feel that they went for ‘less is more’ approach. They seem to focus a lot more on impacts and letting the composition take the lead. Which really does drive the clip, but lacks movement and intensity. Especially during the last battle between Lauren and the demon. When you watch the scene on silent you can feel that there is a lot going on. Ed is struggling the whole time while holding on to Janet, the wind is pushing them around, The rain and thunder are getting more intents by the second, the curtains are falling everywhere and when the demon appears the room began to move as well which causes everything to smash against each other. When you put the sound back on you really see that the visuals are lacking sound. Dzuban has got rid of all the room assets and just pushed the composition, which to me feels empty and lifeless. Doing this does help make Laurens vocal more powerful but loses the realness of the battle. When I and John watched and mixed ours we tried to create every little sound seen in the room, Even when the battle between Lauren and demon happens we still have room movement. For example, the curtains are still moving, the glass is begin pushed around by the wind along with the furniture. I feel doing this really makes the viewer feel as if they were there seeing this hellish battle take place.
Composition
The composition in the original is amazing, the layering of synths and orchestral is done to perfection. You can really understand why they used this as the main focus point during the scene it really does drive the movement. But I do feel they overused the same feeling and sounds a lot. I’m not saying this is a bad thing but it does lack creativity and makes the viewer disengaged with what’s going on. For example with the use the same singing effect when the camera falls into the tree and when the dream first appears. The composition is very basic as well, but as I said it works. With ours, we really wanted to heavily layer our synth and sound design to create our composition. Once we did this we felt that the scene was still empty and disengaging. We wanted the viewer to feel scared and on edge and I think this is where the original lacks. I think our use of using a bow on a fuzzed out guitar really captured that, it’s played throughout the scene and really does add an element of anxiety. It’s weird sounding and also sounds out of control and really matches the scene.
Demon sounds
with the demon sounds, I feel that Justin Dzuban really smashed this out the park. Demon sounds are the hardest thing to create because of the fact that they don’t exist so you have to really think outside of the box and look to the animal kingdom to help add layers. It really is a fun process and takes a lot of time. The only thing I would say with the original is that from time to time you can really hear the animal sounds. At one point when the demon is looking at Lauren, you can hear that it’s a dog growling, which to the untrained ear you wouldn’t notice it. When John and I began creating our demon sounds we wanted to see what we could do just using our mouths this was due to our budget, but I feel we did and great job. We spent days creating layers upon layers of different sounds and only really used animal noise once or twice as fillers. Which work great because it really did create a weird nd monstrous sound.
Conclusion
As I have stated before John and I have big respect for these movies and really feel they are pushing the world of horror and if it wasn’t for Justin Dzuban and his crew we wouldn’t be trying to recreate this scene. I just feel even know they had a greater budget and time frame then ours, we really pushed the boundaries. I think this was due to us having no budget which meant we needed to be way more creative when creating our sounds. To push the comparison even further John and I have decided to send our final product to Multiple post-production Facilities around Brisbane to see what response we might receive. The studio we have chosen are The Post Lounge, Chop Shop Post, Traffic Film Productions, PixelFrame, Cutting Edge and Fifty Fifty Films.
Here is our final product, Enjoy
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conjuring_2#Music
http://www.asoundeffect.com/the-conjuring-2-sound/
Lloyds World of Audio 