The Tinnitus Effect

Sound Progression

It was decided in pre-production that the film would imitate a 'tinnitus effect' to reflect Pam's post traumatic stress involving the late passing of her best friend. With each memory she ponders back to of Abby, the ringing begins to develop the sense that she is dissociating.

An example of the tinnitus effect used in a short film. Here it is used to amplify the explosion's effect, having caused tinnitus in the ear of the characters around it. It creates uneasiness and chaos as the ringing overpowers surrounding sound.

A sequence where ringing is gradually added as Pam stares at her reflection holding her friend's jewelry, thinking back to the promise Abby made when she was alive.

The instrumental from the song 'Lvl' by Asap Rocky was taken and edited without the bass playing for its electric and glitchy sound impression. It paired well with the ringing and was intentionally faded out so that Abby's words to Pam, "I'm gonna stop" are heard clearly as they echoed. Echoing this allowed the words to be heard by the audience better and added significance to the flashback. 

How the echoing of the scene was done, using CapCut's voice changer feature 'Echo.' This was enhanced on Adobe Premiere Rush using the 'Balance Sound' feature and increasing the volume of the take itself to overpower the ringing for just a moment.

Additionally, the shot duration of Pam in the mirror is short and flips back and forth similarly to the rhythm of the music to convey fast flow of time and repetition of Pam looping in her thoughts. Going straight into silence in a long take after this sequence implements Walter Murch's editing theory that slow, contemplative and silent pieces accentuate mournful emotions being portrayed.

In other reminiscing scenes, the story of their friendship is unraveled further. Although helpful in telling the story, it appeared repetitive when the scenes were first edited chronologically. So, I decided to edit each flashback differently and place it in this order; the last promise Abby gave, their friendship before Abby's addiction (laughter scene), and the last argument they had (post Abby's addiction issues). This developed variation between how the story is presented.

The next reminiscing scene using a J-cut, where the audio from the flashback can be heard before it is shown to bring the connection closer between scenes and increase overall continuity of the montage editing style chosen.

The non-simultaneous sound that is heard is both the ringing noise and a muffled, low timbre tone quality version of the characters Pam and Abby laughing with one another. The muffling is often paired with tinnitus effects in films to create disorientating scenes and in this case, distances Pam between the memory she is thinking of and it being edited to begin playing before showing on screen establishes a sound bridge to the memory being transitioned to. The abrupt silence's placement that follows is again a pattern in the film to indicate Pam returning to the reality her friend is no longer alive in and is determined by the straight cuts between scenes.