The snow on the studio floor

Text C: an original fiction extract.

Amaya expected the sound studio to be full of expensive machines. There were machines behind the glass, but on her side lay a shallow tray, several old shoes and a cupboard containing things which looked as though somebody had failed to clear out a kitchen. She had won a day's placement with a film sound team. The first scene showed a woman crossing a snowfield alone. Amaya looked around for a recording of snow.

The sound artist, Ren, handed her two different bags of loose material and asked her to listen to each being pressed inside the tray. Neither sounded exactly like her memory of walking to school after a snowfall. Ren said they were not reconstructing her school journey. He played the scene without sound. The woman took six careful steps, stopped and looked behind her. Whatever she was carrying could not be seen.

Amaya tried making six identical crunches. They matched the rhythm, and she was pleased when the last one ended with the foot touching the ground. Ren played the picture with her recording. The woman suddenly appeared to be marching. Amaya watched the bent shoulders and the moment when the heel hesitated before settling. She had counted steps without noticing how much weight the figure seemed reluctant to place on each one.

On the next attempt, she varied the pressure and left a fraction of silence before the third step. Ren asked her not to anticipate the movement. Watching and pressing the material together was harder than either action alone. Twice she finished before the woman stopped. Once a bracelet tapped the tray and produced a small bright sound which belonged to neither snow nor shoe. She removed the bracelet and wrote down the take number rather than declaring that the whole attempt was useless.

The editor, Mila, came in to hear the choices. She asked for one version with a firmer surface. Amaya thought the snow already looked soft, but Mila played the next scene, in which another character noticed marks along a frozen edge. The first passage had to belong to that place as well as to the close view of the woman's feet. Amaya had been judging a scene whose surrounding story she did not yet know.

After lunch, they combined selected footsteps with the sound of clothing and a faint wind recorded elsewhere. Amaya could identify one of her own steps in the mix. She could not separate everything which made that step feel cold and isolated. Ren said this was not a failure of the work. The audience was meant to hear a person crossing a field, not admire a tray and a collection of separate contributions.

At the end of the day, Mila kept two alternatives for a later decision. Neither was called the final version. Amaya asked whether she could take home a photograph of the tray, and Ren checked the studio's arrangements before agreeing. On the train, she looked at her picture. Nothing in it explained the woman's hesitation. That had required watching an image carefully enough for ordinary material to stop sounding ordinary.

You are Amaya. A college interviewer asks you about the sound-studio placement. Write your answers to these three questions: “What did you expect, and what surprised you?” “What made the task difficult?” “What did you learn about effective film sound and collaboration?”

In your response:

• explain your expectations and the surprises in the studio
• analyse the difficulties of producing sound that fitted the scene
• explain what you learned about the finished effect and the people contributing to it

Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.