GarageBand visit

Earlier in the week our whole media group visited the city learning centre for a lesson on how to use garageband. Ms Foster had previously introduced us to a video on how to use it but I found it very unhelpful and me and my group tried working it out independently but we failed miserable. So I was quite looking forward to this session to learn how to use it properly and so that we could finally start making the real music for our film opening.

We were taught how to find different sounds ranging from dark and intense to electro and rock. As our film genre is thriller/horror I found that the sounds under the dark and intense categories were suitable for our film opening.

Me and my group all began to start our own soundtracks as we all wanted to experiment a little and we were talking about which ones to use. But we were then told that we could produce a soundtrack on the macs at the clc so we all gathered on one mac and worked together.

We were also told that as well as using the sounds already on the software we could plug in real instruments and add to them so we decided to plug in a keyboard and start recording. We used the massive attack music as a guideline and tried to create something similar by carefully listening to each instrument played and repeating it on GarageBand.

Towards the end of the session we had really become familiar with the use of GarageBand and managed to record around 10 seconds of the soundtrack but we did not save it as we did not feel it was worth saving. I am really looking forward to friday's lesson where we will be able to start recording our own soundtrack especially as I now know how to use GarageBand.

What lies beneath

Over the christmas holidays I watched many films one being the thriller movie-What lies beneath. It is quite an old movie but seen as it was on one of the Sky movies channels I thought i'd watch it especially as I love thriller movies.

The film is basically about Harrison Ford who plays the main character of a lecturer and is married to his wife. But he embarks on an affair with one of his students which leads to him murdering her and he disposes of her body in the lake next to his house.The student then comes back to haunt him and his wife in the house and the clues that she leaves leads to the wife eventually realising that the lake contains something important. Soon, everything is revealed and Harrison Ford then attempts to kill his wife but it all backfires when the ghost of the student comes back for revenge...

The film is definitely a thriller full of suspense and kept me on the edge of my sofa! There is a specific scene that is repetitive just like in Paranormal activity where the bed scene foreshadows that something scary is about to occur. In this case, it is a bath scene where every night the wife sees the bathroom door open with steam coming from it and she hesitantly approaches the bath which is filled with water. One time, she saw the reflection of a ghost another time she saw a message on the mirror and at times nothing happened.This is what kept me hooked as I did not know whether something scary was about to happen or not.

The ending is implicit rather than explicit as it does not explicitly show you how Harrison Ford dies, it is left down to the audience to come to their own conclusion about his death. I think this technique is far more effective as it leaves the viewer questioning the event and allows them to interpret it as they wish. Also it is still left open so it could continue onto a follow up.