This project is an experimental fictional image project completed in cooperation with Central Saint Martins (CSM) students. The visual and conceptual content of the film is mainly completed by the other team, and my main responsibility in this cooperation is sound and music design.
The project revolves around themes such as “existence”, “assumption”, “death” and “human cognitive boundaries”, and tries to express it in the form of speculative fictional film. The project does not try to explain death as a clear answer, but understands it as a state that always exists in front of life and is inevitable but cannot be truly verified.
The project was inspired by science fiction films such as Blade Runner (1982) and 2001: A Space Odyssey. These works do not simply predict the future, but project and construct the future based on the experience, knowledge and imagination of human beings. Therefore, we gradually understand fiction as a “hypothetical mechanism” and an imaginary structure formed by human beings in the face of the unknown future.
In such a cooperation framework, I am mainly responsible for establishing the sound and musical language of the whole film. Compared with the way of directly guiding emotions in traditional film music, I prefer sound to become a way of constructing “existential space” in this project.
Therefore, in the early communication stage, the partner mimi provided me with several music references, hoping that the overall music could run through the film, instead of appearing only as an emotional aid in a specific scene. The references they provide include the dramatic tension of Boards of Canada’s Olson, Thomas Newman’s Track 6 – Up the Down Trench, and the theme music of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
These references made me begin to think about the function of sound in this project. It should not be just a traditional soundtrack, but more like a persistent perception structure. Compared with clear melody development or emotional promotion, these musics place more emphasis on atmosphere, spatial sense and time extension.
Since this project itself has strong conceptual and experimental nature, continuous communication and adjustment between sound and image also need to be carried out in the process of cooperation. I don’t simply add music after the video is completed, but I need to constantly readjust the sound structure according to the rhythm, visual density and overall philosophical atmosphere of the picture. After listening to the reference track sent to me by Mimi, I tried to make a small demo and communicate with her about the general direction of music.
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