Music for our trailer

We found some music to accompany the ticking so we put it onto the trailer. However they didn't flow well together and we weren't all agreed that the music suited the style of our trailer. However a friend of ours, who studies music at university and is actually currently learning about music for films, offered to write and record some music for our teaser trailer. As this is our trailer, we have very specific ideas and will guide her throughout the process so it is exactly what we are after.

Our main ideas:

• As we had no dialogue, voice over or text, we really wanted the music to compliment and enhance the narrative. We wanted the music to change tempo and feel with what was on screen; start slow with the equilibrium, then to build up and gets faster as the action really begins. We also wanted the music to compliment the editing, for example, with the fast paced editing, we wanted fast paced music.
• Secondly, we wanted a ticking clock or heartbeat sound to get the audiences heart pumping and to create tension.
• As a main part of the narrative and theme is the email, we made the title to look like it was being typed, therefore we wanted a subtle typing sound to accompany this.
• We thought that a main instrument should be a piano because we found after listening to lots of horror film theme music, pianos were used a lot as they can create a brilliant creepy sound.

Our friend creating the music, Natalie, shared her music knowledge with us to help us make informed decisions about what we wanted for our trailer.

The beginning starts off slow and eerie with piano and pluck guitar with lots of reverb. The reverb is what makes the instruments sound distant and eerie. A suggestion of Natalie's was to make the instruments play dissonant parts; something that is dissonant means that it sounds wrong. We loved this idea because it meant that it wouldn't sound safe and normal, reflecting the forthcoming danger the characters are in.

Then guitar string scratches are played and a violin plays a tritone interval which Natalie told us is commonly used in horror. We researched the tritone interval and found that The Church called this interval the "devil's interval" and once disallowed it in any music. We also found that it was used in Alfred Hitchcock's psycho, which we loved because we were inspired by this film as it is of the same sub genre as our film (suspense). Also the violin mimics the scream of the protagonist.

The end builds up and energizes the action on screen. To create this great, dramatic music was drums, electric guitar, cello and bass. We had told Natalie that an idea we had had for music was the music from the zombie horror film 28 Days Later, because it is big and dramatic and heightens the audiences emotions.

I think our collaboration with a knowledgeable musician has worked really well and we have created a piece of music that adds to the narrative and creates atmosphere and tension; imperative elements to making effective horror trailer music.