Final Executive Summary

To me, this project has been a huge success, not just in terms of managing to prove the hypothesis that I set out for myself that through the use of compositional technique that manipulating a musical theme over the course of a film clip can change the perception of a character but it also taught me the history and an in depth understanding musical themes that I had not formally studied at length before.

The reason for choosing this project was down to my great interest in the film medium and to learn, in depth and practically how music works in a film narrative and more importantly how themes may be established and used to embody a character and immerse the viewer into that character’s shoes. I began by studying the history of music in film, from the founding conventions of opera and theatre pioneered by the techniques used by the likes of Richard Wagner throughout the 1800’s, into silent cinema incorporating the accompaniment of live musicians into the sound film era which advanced over time with technological advances to allow for multi tracking, mixing and endless possibilities for the modern composer to write and create music. From here I gained an understanding of how themes may be used, from the ostinato in Jaws to character themes in Amelie, themes have been incorporated into film since its sound resurrection.

Learning compositional technique, how to compose in such a short space of time to embody an image and then how to repeat these themes without becoming boring or the same, manipulating the themes through changes in melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation and tonal colour to advance and shape a theme. This is something that I practiced throughout first semester to both static and moving image before tackling my final project.

The final area of research was into psychological and emotional impact that music has on a viewer and how a viewer’s cognitive response may alter their perception of sound to image. This was one are that I learnt a lot in. I had never once thought of sound in film in the sense of an added dimension. Music is the elevated height that takes a film from showing emotion to interpreting and feeling emotion, an area that I may have acknowledged in the past but one that I have never looked into, or into why this happens. Why do western cinema conventions work, or does our perception of sound over our life change how we think about things. Why do we associate sirens with an emergency? Because that is what we have known them to relate to for our whole life, it’s the human art of comprehension.

The practical work of composing the piece was great fun, although at times pressuring. I am no stranger to composition or composing to a brief given to me both in academic and employed formats, but giving myself clear restrictions and making sure that I was the only person that was to answer to the reasons for why I may employ certain techniques was difficult to grasp when creating the initial ideas and concepts for the pieces. I knew that using the clip that I did, that the character was to struggle with his inner emotions. The character was to (in excerpt 1) begin a fragile, mourning man who suffers a mental breakdown and ultimately loses control of his life and is a danger to his own health. I had a number of words that I knew wished to describe the man at different points of the clip although these were not set in stone adjectives till towards the end of the practical process when I began thinking of testing. This was the first time that I had really looked into how key signatures had an effect on a listener over the major/minor/modal theories. I began writing the piece in C minor but upon research into classical key relations, found B minor to further connate the feeling of despair through previous work of 19^th century composers. I don’t believe that every composition should follow these key rules as that would not simply be the case that every piece of music written in B minor should establish a feeling of tragedy, but It added to my theory that paired with western musical and film conventions that an audience knows from their pre-conceived cognition of listening and watching that a meaning that I wish to portray in a short space of time may be done so quickly in a short hand language that the viewer subconsciously understands.

By the time I got round to testing, I knew the feelings that the music were to express, I had written down as I went, notes on how the character was feeling and why/how the music was to tell that. This made it clear as to why the antonyms I chose towards the end were chosen. I knew the character was never going to be a good character or bad character so picking any positive or negative adjective just wouldn’t work, the character had to be unstable and for that the antonyms provided all reflected mental instability with the feeling of mental order.

The testing was a success. Through the sixteen participants experimented upon, it was concluded that yes, perception to a character does change over time due to the techniques that I had applied musically. I do however believe that the test was not the number one method of testing. I do feel that this would have benefited from a cinema screen showing, although the test was more personal to the participant and was able to be personally explained in the best possible way to provide coherent answers. The film clip could have been longer, giving a more realistic approach to film scoring. I believe that the score that I have written in no way sounds disjointed but it does not reflect how a score or theme would properly be used in a film. One of my biggest flaws personally, was in the analysis of testing. As I had used likert scales that were filled in on an ipad (technically by hand) all data had to be worked out by hand and calculated by hand before being imported into Microsoft excel for full mean analysis. It would have been must less time consuming and stressful had this data been completed online in an online rating survey in which all data would be instantly exported into excel for quick calculations. This in no way affected my results but was more time consuming than it needed to be. My only other flaw was that I would have enjoyed composing a second complete score as opposed to re syncing the first score in reverse with minor adjustments. This is something that I began to look into doing but due to time restrains had to begin cutting back which ate into the time I would have to make as good a job on the second excerpt and was ultimately scrapped before any substantial work could take place.

Ultimately I do believe the test prove the results that I wanted which to me was a great success. Further analysis in the field would provide findings that would not only increase the conclusive evidence that I have found but would be of great benefit to both the musical and psychological world for understanding how we take on the mind of a fictional character through the use of music and its manipulation.

Musical Key Characteristics

The following is a piece that I have found online about musical keys and their believed interpretations.

I have never properly thought of key signature in the sense of its feel, I often write a piece in whichever key I feel to be natural and if it does not provide the right tone will experiment by transposing to other keys. In a sense I guess that yes I have thought about the characteristics of musical keys in terms of how they feel and sound to me when writing but I have not formally looked into this as a research topic and how the characteristics of a key may imply certain things. 

Much of these stem from established themes created in 18th/19th century music that over time have established themselves through our knowledge of these past pieces. 

When composing my practical piece of work, I began in the key of Cminor. Although happy with the feel of the melody, I was not happy with how the key itself sounded in terms of the richness of the dispair that I wanted to create, although I admit that I did play around  with the melody in various keys before further researching the characteristics of keys, it was after reading this piece that I believed B minor to be the ideal key, the 'key of dispair'.

I don't believe that these should be strict rules to stick to as I don't believe one key can some up any one thought, It is however associated with these thoughts through their use throughout the ages so just like musical conventions can be used to further instate a feeling that a listener may instantly recognise. Being that my musical theme is to tell the tale of a characters dispair then why not write in a key that classically concludes the feeling of dispair within its scale.


From Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806) translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983). 

C major	Completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.
C minor	Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
Db major	A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
D major	The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.
D minor	Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
D# minor	Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.
Eb major	The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
E major	Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.
F major	Complaisance & calm.
F minor	Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# major	Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# minor	A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G major	Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G minor	Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.
Ab major	Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
Ab minor	Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.
A major	This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one's state of affairs; hope of seeing one's beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor	Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
Bb major	Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor	A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B major	Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B minor	This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

Finished Project Videos

These are the finished musical cues put to clip. Unfortunately I could not upload the videos in HD quality as imovie (which I originally used to cut the clip before importing it to Logic Pro) would not allow me to export the clip above this resolution for an unknown reason. 

Excerpt One

Excerpt one shows the musical cues in order: 1,2,3,4,5
This clip begins slowly and delicately as it builds into a chaotic fashion where the character seems to be suffering through a nervous breakdown in which he loses control and becomes a hazard to himself and those around him.

Excerpt 2

Excerpt one shows the musical cues in order: 5,4,3,2,1

This clip begins chaotic, not allowing the audience to know what it is he has done, but it is hinted at that he is infact an antagonist until his inner suffering allows him to make sense of himself and we find the character to be a fragile broked man, mourning the loss of a loved one.

Testing/Results

So the testing went slightly different than I had expected it to from my methodology.

The outlook of my final questionnaire remained the exact same. The first problem was with quantity of participants, as it got closer and closer to the dates that I had wanted to test, volunteers dropped out due to other work/commitments. The result was a test upon 16 participants as opposed to 24, two groups of 8. Although I had initially stated 24 to leave room for any no show's or dropouts, I had not expected that many people to not make the experiment. As it became apparent that the groups were becoming less and more and more people could not make one specific time, it came to the point that I had to change the layout of the experiment as not everyone could make a single showing in the Hannah Maclure centre.

Instead of testing on everyone at the same time, I decided to create a 'personal' version of the test. I chose 2 days in which I could sit in Abertay Universities Whitespace all day and let people know where I'd be for them to come and test, on top of this for a couple people I personally went to for them to partake as they could not make it to the university.

The end result was for the video to be played through my macbook laptop, audio presented through studio headphones with the questionnaire presented to them on an apple ipad as an editable pdf where they could swipe on the likert scales for an accurate measurement of emotional state.

This actually turned out to be a more concise experiment in my opinion than the original method. Although the group of participants tested on was less than I would have liked, the test itself was no less conclusive with enough data feedback to accurately prove my hypothesis that a manipulated musical theme over the course of a film clip could change the audience's opinion of a character.

The test itself was able to be more in depth as the viewer was able to watch the clip at their own leisure, allowing them to pause the clip at the end of each musical cue if they wished to catch up and think a wee bit more about their answers.

Below is an example of a filled out questionnaire.

Once all data it was gathered into a spreadsheet for each excerpt as shown here:

The mean value of each scale within each cue was then calculated that could be formed into graphical evidence as show here:

What do these results mean? (The following is the initial result write up that I have written for my dissertation:

For the initial dissection of these results, the Emotional – Emotionless scale will not be taken into account as these results will be further examined on their own. 

The graphical results clearly conclude a confirmation of the hypothesis, that an audience’s perception of a character in a film may be changed through the manipulation of an established musical theme, in both excerpts. In excerpt one, other than the initial first cue result of the innocent adjective, all of the left hand adjectives in cue one exhibit a mean value of between one and two before gradually rising to between four and five in cue five. In excerpt one, the first of these scales, Unalarming – Threatening, produce the most conclusive evidence gathered with a variance of 2.64 between the mean of cue one (1.95) and five (4.59) producing a clear indication in shift of perception between the initial cue and the last. Excerpt two, exhibits similar results with a variable of 2.20 between the first and last musical cues, with means of 2.01 and 4.21. Both of the excerpts show a strong feeling of indifference either slightly above or slightly below the mean of three during cue three, where the music crosses over from a fragile, innocent tone to a more sinister, uncontrolled tone or vice versa.

In excerpt one, the scale of Innocent – Menacing demonstrate the least absolute conclusive result out of these five scales with a variance of 2.33 between cue ones mean of 2.18 and cue fives mean of 4.51. Although this is the lowest of variance, the information gathered still constructs conclusive evidence that there is a large shift in perception between cues one and five with cue three demonstrating almost complete indifference of feeling with a mean average of 3.10. This same scale in excerpt two provides the second most conclusive results under Unalarming – Threatening as the difference between the means of cues one and five is 2.17.

Excerpt two on each of the likert scales underperforms in examination compared to excerpt one. This does not conclude that excerpt two does not demonstrate a change in perception or a conclusive result as there is still a distinct decline in figures from the right hand adjective to the left. Contained – Uncontrolled exhibit the closest of these varying figures as the second cue rises from a mean of 3.38 to 3.56 before declining. Cues three and four have a very similar mean of 2.78 and 2.75 before dropping to 2.19. The participants feelings here were that the character was never in complete control of himself throughout excerpt two. Although the excerpt begins with the most chaotic rendition of the musical cue, the character is contained to his car making him only a threat to himself whereas upon entering the hotel, the musical cue begins to stray away from dissonance, there is still an element in tonal uncertainty that paired with the characters introduction to civilisation may perceive him as in less control of his emotional state. Once the character is once again contained in an isolated space, the musical theme is capable of perceiving the character in a controlled, fragile state.

As excerpt two begins with the instant musical theme implying a chaotic disturbance in the characters frame of mind with little visual clue as to why the character may feel that way, the experiments volunteers may have found it hard to place exactly how out of control or aggressive the character is in the initial cue before making up their mind over time as cue two is beginning to take effect. If this is the case, there is no reason as to why the evidence does not continue to prove the initial hypothesis as the viewers perception clearly changes once they are happy with their conceived idea of the characters state of mind.

The scale of Emotional – Emotionless was left out of the resulting discussion above, as it provides the least conclusive of results to the hypothesis, however, this does not make the results invalid to the experiment. Although excerpt one ends with the male character standing in his room expressionless before holding a shard of broken mirror in a trancelike state, the character at no point loses his emotional depth in terms of inner misery and frustration. Although the character may have begun the excerpt in a controlled state of mind, this does not make him any more or any less emotional, neither does this change through his distress as at all times the character feels pain and misery. In both excerpts, the character may end in contemplation, whether that is in reminiscing what has previously happened to him and how he will proceed in life or the contemplation of himself being a threat to others or himself, these state of minds are still backed by an emotive force which provides a character with a human element at all times whether he is an uncontrollable threat or is innocent and sane. Excerpt ones results all fall within a mean average between 1.85 and 2.11, concluding that at no time the character presents himself as emotionless. Excerpt two exhibits a range between 1.66 and 2.79, again at no point bridging into an emotionless state but interestingly does show a slow decline into an absolute emotional state between cues two and five as the music becomes more delicate and harmonically close, this explaining that although the character is never presented as emotionless, that he does become more emotionally involved as the excerpt progresses.

Twelve of the participating volunteers were aged twenty-five or under, the remaining four ranging form thirty-one to sixty-one. Eight volunteers either study or studied audio at a formal educational level, four regard themselves as musicians or can read sheet music and four have no previous musical knowledge. Through analysis of results, age and musical background did not play a factor in the change of perception and was left out of the graphical analysis as each scaled posed similar results regardless of this information.

Eleven out of the sixteen participants regarded the character to be of threatening behaviour when asked how they felt for him either at the end or beginning of the clip depending on which excerpt was viewed. Interestingly, out of the five that did not believe the character to be of threat at all, similar comments were made whereby they believed the character to be in a state of emotional significance or felt that the character although did not become threatening, did pull through a strong emotional struggle within himself. This is largely supported through the participants interpretation of possible plot to each of the excerpts where the most common themes were; the character going through a mental breakdown, the loss of family to an accident, the loss of the characters wife, the descent into insanity, running away from life, a wanted man, personal distress, the contemplation of life and the contemplation of suicide. These themes give a range of emotional states that may be felt for a character at either end of the scale before they were turned around through the use of manipulated musical themes.

To conclude:

Through practical development in compositional technique and study of its application to film music, the experiment displayed two film excerpts that prove the hypothesis that an audience’s perception of a single character may change throughout a film clip through the use of an established musical theme that is manipulated throughout the excerpt. Excerpt one displayed a character theme that began melodic and harmonically close to the tonal centre before spiralling into a dissonant breakdown of controlled chaos whereas excerpt two swapped this around, beginning with little harmonic tonality. Five out of the six likert rating scales given to an audience concluded results that there was a gradual change in perception through the five musical cues heard. Excerpt one established a variance between cues one and five of over 2.33 in a five-point scale for each of the scales but one, demonstrating a clear shift from one perception to another. Excerpt two’s results were less favourable with a variable result of over 1.19 for each of the rating scales but one. Although this spread of data provides a tighter curve of result, graphically the evidence continues to example a clear change in perception from the beginning of the excerpt until the end, the audience possibly feeling reluctant to commit to a true immersive emotion initially as the musical cue begins so harmonically detached.

If this experiment were to be further tested or reworked for a larger audience the first change to be made would be in the compositional styles of excerpt one and two. Although two varying pieces of music could in theory manipulate the concluding results as certain styles or genres of music may create a preconceived mood or perception for the subject on screen, they may provide more coherent results, as the composed theme is not written entirely for one excerpt before being edited for the second. This initial method of testing proved to perform strongly in the first excerpt but did not have the same strength of result upon the second due to the fact that the audience was not presented with an initially recognisable, conventional or tonal theme either melodically, harmonically or rhythmically to grasp on to and associate with the character instantly, instead the viewer had to become accustomed to the theme in which by cue two, they could compose an accurate judgment on their perception.

To examine a full change in perception of a character, using a full feature film to subtly change the viewers understanding of the characters inner emotions would allow for a substantial analysis of musical representation of those emotions in a considerably greater narrative setting. Within a feature length film, music could not only perceive the character in more than one light but could steadily change that character throughout the whole feature creating a distinct manipulation of personality from the first scene to the last. Within this experiment, five musical cues were presented within a three-minute space that does not portray how an audience would commonly hear music in film. Within a feature film music would be interspersed between dialogue and other narrative devices such as transitions, camera shots, action sequences and so on, allowing a much greater time frame for a character to become who the film dictates he should be and a much longer time for that to be further shaped or altered. 

Scruton - Aesthetics of Music 1997

I have previously made some quick notes on reading this book, but on going back over some chapters I have made some further notes upon reading Scruton - The Aesthetics of Music on the features central to triadic tonality:

A triad is a three-note chord, fundamentally built with each note possessing an interval of a third between each other creating a harmonic tonality. These notes may be varied in terms of augmentation, key, modal scale and so on to create a further three-note chord voicing. There are a number of features widely recognised as central to triadic tonality and both its use and manipulation.

The key signature employs a particular arrangement of notes based upon the tonic note, in which notes are disposed off in relation to the root note. The important function of the key signature is to bring melody and harmony close and constant relation.

The diatonic scale allows for a scale to have an ascending and descending version by designating certain tones for each key; seven tones for the major scale and nine for the melodic minor.

Non-designated tones allow any of the twelve chromatic tones belonging to the key to be added to the melodic or harmonic structure as an accidental whereas designated tones within a key have their own individual character emerging from their relation to the tonic.

Major and minor have long been a fundamental function for tonality. Every major key has a designated relative minor that utilise the same notes in their scale but begin from an alternative tonic note found three semitones below the relative major to create a new harmonic sound.

Chord relations and cadences allow for harmonic progressions and boundaries. Chord relations incorporate harmonic flow from one chord to another by progressing major intervals in relation to the tonic key. Chord cadences act as a boundary that may be either closed or act as an interruption through perfect, plagal, interrupted or imperfect cadences. These are built upon tonal tradition of what human perceives to be a perfect or imperfect ending to a chord sequence, for example chord V-I signifies a perfect ending whereas V-VI would be an interrupted climax.

Tonal music is not just driven from the notes of the diatonic scale and the harmonies implied by them, but uses these notes to create a tonal centre for where harmonies can work closely or distanced.

Cue Sheets

Cue Sheet 1

For each of my film excerpts, I prepared cue sheets to establish the main hitpoints in which music enters or causes a desired effect. Cue sheets are used to directly identify time down to the exact frame per second that a sound is to be heard, they identify what sound it is that is to be produced, how long that sound is to last for and any extra comments or directions. Writing up a cue sheet for me was ideal for knowing where each musical theme was to enter and finish and where I thought certain changes in camera shot or scene change could benefit from becoming musical hitpoints for a change in music, melody or adding chords or harmony such as toward the end of Excerpt One where chords played on piano occur directly on the camera shot change to add to the shock/chaotic factor of the piece and to develop the suspense within the music. 

Cue Sheet 2

Final Storyboard

Storyboard

Each excerpt uses the same film clip playing in the same order with the order of the musical cues reversed i.e. Excerpt 1 = Cue 1,2,3,4,5 and Excerpt 2 = Cue 5,4,3,2,1.

For lack of repetition, only one excerpt will be storyboarded.

Excerpt 1

Cue 1

The first cue of excerpt one is where the characters theme is established in its purest form, instantly recognisable by melodic pattern, harmonic intervals, instrumentation and rhythmic contour.

Figure 1

The theme (Figure 1) is written in B minor, a key that nineteenth century composers such as Tchaikovsky and Schubert established as a key of delicacy, heartbreak and despair (Satis 2012) to represent both the isolated heartbreak of the main character and the troubled breakdown that ensues during the clip. Piano leads the melody of the key coupled with a reverb effect to create a sense of space, representing the piece of the characters life that is missing as well as the glazed over look of the world as the character can not just see the piano for its true colour. The piano itself characterizes the delicacy, isolation and tragedy of the character harmonised by a cello and viola playing pedal tones using B minor, B augmented and B suspended fourth chords, creating a further sense of deep, resonant sorrow. Rhythmically the theme follows an up and down pattern as the tonic note of B is followed by an interval of a perfect fifth before the crotchet notes play back and forward by major second intervals. This rhythmic setting is one of the fundamental aspects of the theme, where the melodic patter allows notes to come bounce back and forward between each other in an up and down motion allowing for a memorable melody line that is recognisable not just by pitch value.

Traffic

As the cue comes to an end, background traffic noise fades in to regain the filmic immersion and provide a sense of continuity during the wait for the second cue.

Cue 2

The second musical cue (Figure 2) changes in two fundamental ways; it begins to incorporate the melodic minor scale within the cello, viola and bass harmony and the rhythmic pattern changes by adding quavers as opposed to the previously used crotchets.

Figure 2

Although the rhythmic pattern adds half notes to the second and third crotchet, it continues to be a recognisable melodic pattern through the up and down patter of a major second still found in the lead notes of each beat. Adding quarter notes almost enhances a sense of urgency and confusion into the previously established, walking paced theme. Harmonically, the pedal tones found beneath the main melody change during this cue as the cello and viola use diatonic chords to provide further colour to the tonic note whilst the newly introduced bass instrument this, at first supporting the establish chord pattern before harmonising using a major third to widen the sense of uncertainty. The last suspended note found after the established melody, predominantly played by the string harmony is an A sharp, found in the B melodic minor scale. The B melodic minor scale begins continues to enter the theme more and more throughout the musical cues as a hint to further chromatic dissonance, to create an overshadowing sense of uncertainty and to begin to cover up the home key by pulling further away from the tonal centre.

Cue 3

Theme three (Figure 3) continues to stray further from the tonal centre by introducing the first signs of dissonance by adding an F natural accidental before the already established F sharp.

 Figure 3

Dissonance is used in this section not to completely skew the theme and its meaning but to begin the breakdown of the characters mental state, the character doesn’t all of a sudden mentally break down, it takes time for him to become who he will be which is represented in the theme as it does not imply an over use of chromatic notes, instead using one to create the sense of unease to the previously established melody. The rhythmic pattern again stays the same, reinstating to the audience that this theme embodies this character whilst suspense is created once again through the harmony, this time using a tremolo technique in the mid range viola and low range cello. Tremolo used in the string section by quickly bowing a note back and forward is a film convention established in Hollywood cinema for creating suspense (Kalinak 2010) by creating the audio equivalent to trembling. The tremolo is played in unison by the viola and cello on two different octaves to create a bee like buzzing sound, the violas high end cutting through with an almost shriek like effect through it’s darker, richer tone than the full warmth of the low end cello.

Narration

As theme three ends, a narration spoken in French by a woman begins. This piece of dialogue remains in the video for two reasons: the is to create an unknown reason for the characters breakdown as the viewer can visually see that he struggles with himself, the audio narration reinstates that this woman’s voice is the reason for that struggle whether she is someone that he has lost, a victim of his, he is a victim of hers, someone that he is trying to find or someone that has caused for him to leave. Hearing this voice in excerpt one leads to a full breakdown of the characters mental state whereas in excerpt two it soothes his breakdown, allowing him to take control of himself. The second reason creates the unknown mentioned above, as there is no English language spoken or subtitled. If the audience cannot grasp on to what it is that the narration says, they cannot anchor down an exact plot, only a possible cause or effect.

Cue 4

Theme four (Figure 4) pulls further away from the initial key of B minor as the melody incorporates G sharp and A sharp found in the melodic minor scale as well as the use of chromatic chord voicing’s such as the incorporation of the minor second to create a sense of chaos within the chords. 

Figure 4

The previous sustained tremolo notes no longer play in unison, instead favouring for harmonies within the B melodic minor scale to enhance the feeling of unease when compared to the original melody in B minor. Rhythmically the piece changes slightly as the full melody is now played in quavers, slightly changing in pitch value but continuing the original shape of the melody as to not detach itself from its fundamental purpose, to act as the mental state of the character. The rhythm acts as the characters mental state, an unreadable cacophony of confusion chaos and anxiety in which he cannot shut off from his rhythmic pulse. A violin section that rapidly raises the pitch of each note played to form a scratching effect is implemented into the instrumentation, acting as a devil on the characters shoulders and the parasite that breaks him down, playing strict half notes repeating itself in rhythmic pattern as it gradually creeps up the B melodic minor scale with chromatic notes introduced creating a diverse chaotic range. 

Vomit

This cue ends as the character vomits. The use of silence here is a powerful injection into a music heavy soundtrack, allowing the audience to take a moment to reflect on what they have already heard and see, and feel shocked by the image they are seeing, feeling detached from the character’s state of mind until the musical theme once again enters to reintroduce the viewer with the characters current metal state.

Cue 5

The fifth and final musical theme begins as cue four finished, reiterating the previously established melody (Figure 4) and violin pattern. The harmony played out between cello, viola and bass begin to diminish the original melodic harmony, the cello for one, creating a sinister, swarm like effect by clashing the tonic note with a minor second and minor sixth note. Clashing notes from both the melodic and natural minor scale are used to full effect in harmony in this section such as an A being played under an A sharp and F played under an F sharp, all used to add to the confusion of where the home key is now situation and distorting how the viewer looks at what they believed to be the feeling of home, detaching the sense of control with the uncontrollable. The very last bar of this cue reiterates the first musical them harmonised with chromatic notes to create an uneasy melody, warming the viewer to the conclusion that although this may be the same character in visual state, his mental frame of mind is far removed from his initial introduction. 

End