Soundscape for dream-to-reality transition

Soundscape

One of the key elements of making a dream sequence is the transition back to the real world. It has to be smooth enough not to take audiences out of the story, but, in my case anyway, it also has to be jarring enough to make audiences feel uneasy.

Because I knew that getting this right would be difficult, I decided to try out making just the audio for the transition first and imagining the visuals that would match (these visuals will be storyboarded soon, so no-one else needs to 'picture' the scene). This was partly to make sure I knew what I was going for, and partly to make sure that I didn't waste my time shooting something properly only to go into post-production and realise what I have didn't work.

The reason I think that I can make a soundscape for this particular section is because the audio is the key element of the transition. The sound of Scott's phone ringing is the link between the dream world and the real world. In the former world, lots of weird effects have been added to make it sound piercing, screechy and generally nightmarish, to the extent where it doesn't fully sound like a phone. Maybe it's a bit far to suggest that enigma code is being used here and that audiences are made to wonder what that noise is which leaves them in suspense, but then again maybe not.

The voice heard in the soundscape (which is mine now but won't be in the final production) is also a bridge between the dream and real world, but it has purposefully been done so that only an echo of the voice is heard in the real world, which reflects how, while the ghost of the dead girl is haunting Scott's dreams, the 'echo' of the dead girl is haunting his reality.

The two above elements are ways which I have tried to make the transition flow. In order to create a jarring effect that indicates the show has switched worlds, I decided to create a build-up in the background music. This is probably the element of this soundscape that is going to change the most, because I am yet to (and likely won't until all of my filming is done) create the actual score for the show, which will likely be different to what is heard in this soundscape. Despite this, the fact remains that the music builds to a climax before abruptly cutting off and leaving only Scott's heavy breathing and the ringing phone (which actually fades in) as the remaining sounds. This juxtaposition of musical layering of climactic music into silence is used to further indicate the transition, but is utilised more as a way of harshly snapping both Scott and the audience out of the dream.

This is a scene that has been done quite a lot of times before in films/TV shows, so my version likely wouldn't actually surprise audiences with this jarring awakening, but the idea is still there that the music, sound effects and dialogue all work together in order to both link the dream and real worlds together and to snap the audience from one world into the other.