The new re-make of Stephen King's "It" is unlikely to disappoint many fans of retro-nostalgic horror movies. Recently, I pulled a trailer from the web which to my surprise (and glee) included a scene that gave everybody a jolt in the theater. The accompanying music and sound design was terrific - perhaps a little sparse - but overall, it does the job. However, I imagined a less subtle approach could also be quite effective, in homage to the genre. So, I stripped the audio and kept the dialog and sound effects I wanted and began composing a new audio track. The result musically to many ears shouldn't be surprising - it contains blurred ambience, atonal toy piano, and of course, the classic screaming swell of out-of-register stings, woodwinds, choir, etc, I even found a strange sample of helium-induced clown-like laughter which you can hear during the "It" title rise. However, one particular element which has always stood out to me (I recall it first being used to great effect in 2002's The Ring) and ultimately something I wanted to re-create: I dub it the "11 (eleven) k Scare Effect". Essentially, it is a sudden burst of simultaneous white noise and piercing high-frequency (in this case, 11K). Needless to say, it is very jarring and out of place! In the sound world, it is the equivalent of a cheap jump scare - almost guaranteed to make one flinch. If you are at all interested in sound design, below I'll describe how I chose to go about creating this effect. Basically, the objective is to trigger the 11k Scare Effect at the precise moment Pennywise appears (in this clip, it occurs twice). To do this, I set up a noise gate (for triggering the effect chain and supplying white noise), tone generator (for the 11k pitch), and for added dimension, a waveshaper to add distortion on certain frequencies (to make it pop a bit more). Lastly, some tweaks to ensure the resulting sound doesn't severely clip the output stage. The noise gate is set to correspond when the music swells and gets higher in pitch. When it does, boom - the effect goes on and out just as quickly (fortunately, and to protect the ears). When it occurs just before the credits, I simply bounced the previous result as a wave file and then pasted it in, trimming it to align with a specific frame in the video. Adjusting an audio clip to play a couple frames before or after a visual appears can often make a huge difference in the overall impact (that's the stuff of brain science). Well, that's it - a fairly straightforward technique. When I have more time, I'd love to score the rest of the trailer. If I did, I'd be floating too. UPDATE 11/9/2017: The full trailer score is now complete. Check it out below. Copyright © 2016 Warner Bros. Pictures
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