Sense of Space - Psycho

The Bates Motel

For the sense of space project, we debated several different ideas, including creating Dante's Inferno - which we decided would be very ambitious as it required many layers of sound and a lot of tracks to keep up with - and a piece about the famous 'Hole In The Road' which used to exist in Sheffield.

However, the most interesting and evocative idea that we came up with was to recreate the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film, Psycho. The idea was born out of the consideration that some very famous cinematic scenes are completely defined by a non-diegetic soundtrack. The murder scene in Psycho is a fantastic example of this. Upon watching the clip of this scene in Psycho, we noticed that the sounds are very limited and thin, and the famous score by Hitchcock's most frequently used composer Bernard Herrman creates all of the shock factor that the scene is so famous for.

We decided that we would attempt to create a 3 minute soundscape of the Bates Motel, recreating this scene with the aim to induce more tension than the film itself. We will attempt to edit it so that it could be laid over the muted sequence and it would fit completely.

In terms of the development of sounds in the piece, it will begin with Marion writing at the desk in the motel room and then move from the bedroom to the bathroom, really picking out the sounds of her movement along the way. The tension will rely on very acute attention to detail and a very quiet solitary atmosphere. We will use a variety of microphones to evoke tension in the listener, for example, the possibility of using contact microphones to feel Marion's footless into the bathtub, and hydrophones to feel as if we are with Marion in the shower. We will use sounds that cannot be heard in the film that we feel would add to the atmosphere, for example, the breaths of the killer, Norman Bates.

The biggest question is, from whose perspective should the sequence be. We could do it as if we are Marion, or we could do it from the perspective of the camera. There is also the possibility of doing it from the perspective of the killer, but that would assume that he was hiding in the room the whole time. We think that it would be most effective to act like an omniscient presence, but staying very close to Marion throughout.

We feel that the recording of the piece will be fairly easy, it is the creation of tension that will be difficult, and to do this, we need to be subtle about our manipulation of tracks. Too heavily edited, it will be very difficult to feel as if we are in a real place. The other difficulty will be making the track fit with the sequence, however, it is not an impossible task if we chart a sound map of the film as well as our project.