After watching the making of video of silent hill, I have even more appreciation for the game than I already had. The sheer degree of effort that went into all of the work is astounding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f6EWqCscyc
The creation of the game started very soon after the release of Silent Hill 2, with the same script writer, the team wanted to focus more on fear in this. Silent Hill 2 aimed at the fear escalating to horror with a thought or an idea of something scary.
3 was intended to be a more direct fear - Shock.
The team used real areas for reference in the environments, but added to it to make the whole area seem that much more shocking for the audience. For example, bleeding walls, burning walls.
For even more realism the maps were also as real as the areas they referenced. One in particular, the chapel map looks as though it's a childs drawing which it was in fact done by a 5 year old child.
The starting sequence when it first sets the scene for the start of the story, is a simple closing in shot of Heather (the main character) waking up in a cafe. The effort in one of the most simple scenes is staggering, the sunset leaking through the windows is made to appear redder than it usually is meant to, 'as if something red is waiting'.
So the colour of the whole scene sets a foreboding image with the audience.
Heathers design was based off of people like Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Gainsborg
The design process for Heather went through a lot of stages, originally having long hair and trousers she progressed to have her shorter, wavy hair; and in a skirt instead.
Once the character design process had gone through the team held auditions for the characters actors, both voice and motion capture. The whole of the game was motion captured.
Soundtrack-
The sound designer, Akira Yamaoka composed the soundtrack after the script for the game was completed, reading through it and coming up with the music purely by the emotion of the script.
This was the first Silent Hill to have a voice in the soundtrack, Akira flew out to LA to look for the right sound, Finding Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
Yamaoka also composed the background sounds that are heard through out the game, strange erratic noises that are intended to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Along with that he designed the sounds the monsters make in the game, using pretty normal things to produce the noise; for example the 'Closer' monsters: the noise for them was actually a rhino.
http://images.wikia.com/silent/images/4/4b/Closer.png
This leads into the design for the monsters, Masahiro Ito (monster designer, closer art above by him) chose to stick with the human for for the monsters 'refuses to use elements that are too far from the human being' , 'deformed human appendages'. Every monster, with the exception of a few bosses and the spilt head dog monster, all of the monsters to have the human form taken into account. This link possibly making the player question why Heather's physical manifestations take such forms, it is pushed further as in one point of the game is shocking the audience into wondering if they really are monsters, that we are only seeing what Heather see's, not everyone else. In short it is implied the monsters are infact human.
at 2:20 onwards, the rug is pulled from under the players feet; but the character Vincent, playfully implies he is joking, only making it worse. It makes you look at the monsters in a somewhat different light.
The Silent Hill series is known for its deep psychological horror theme. A lot of the even the smaller features has meaning behind them.
In one case the recurring theme of the toilet stalls in the games, actually refers to an old horror story to scare children. In earlier years when toilets were just a hole in the floor that you stood above; if you fell in you would be lost forever. Clearly just to scare kids, but the use of this in the game as surprising, I didn't know the theme went as deep as that. Its shows just from that the whole idea of the games, being lost in a town with no idea of how to escape.
Another example is Valtiel (His name deriving from 'valet', being Gods valet) who is more often than not seen turning valves. This actually was made to represent the passage between the two worlds, the nightmare world and 'real; the turning of valves being 'water flows through pipes... valves allow and obstruct flow.' signifying the Valtiel is the one causing the shifts between the two realities.
The aim of Silent Hill 3 was to create a world permeated by doubt, doubt - Fear.
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