Sound
Right from the beginning, we conceived the sound to be an essential part of our film. We wanted the sounds to tell the story in another layer, so it wasn't a secondary element but it would add conceptually to the narration.
We started doing research about the possibilities of sound during the scripting process. As the character can play only one note on her string and hears a completely new sound from above, we had to be conscious of making the difference between the two sounds very distinct but from a similar "source". As the character builds new ´steps´with her thread, she creates new sound. This meant choosing an instrument that had a wide spectrum of sounds to explore and play with.
After a few experiments, the decision of using guitar sounds came naturally with the material we used in the film. We liked that the strings made a "string sound" when played but adding a few effects to make it unique.
Another factor that would affect the sound design was the fact that the thread coming out of the character gets thinner and thinner as she climbs higher. This meant that the pitch would get higher as she climbs up.
Along the way we discovered that the resonance produced by the guitar chords gave this feeling of immensity, of floating in the space and having several sounds playing at the same time. We wanted to use this resonance also to create the idea of the "construction" and how the character evolves as she climes.
For the sound design of the character itself we wanted to keep it really simple, just a few breathing sounds and the movement of the textile, but that didn't distract from the actions. In terms of planning, we decided to record the audio once most of the shots were ready. This way, we would have the real visual reference to match the audio and create the string sounds accordingly.