Tonight we filmed for Dom's idea, which will take up the first minute of our three minute piece. We shot it after the sun had gone down so we could capture the street lights of Sheffield. The filming went even more successfully than planned. The slow zoom is hard to maintain, hard to keep going at the same pace without stopping or going faster at some point, so of course it took a few times. Dom did the filming for this one.
We decided to focus on the mug to begin with, choosing to put it slightly to the right hand side of the shot and as we slowly zoom out, a person's feet come into the shot, facing the other way and they are slowly revealed to be lying on the pavement next to the tram track. This already poses questions for the viewer and we intend to have the haunting sounds of a harmonica in the background, mixed in with the sounds of a passing tram.
We will not be messing around with the lighting in post production, as there was a street lamp that casts the perfect orange glow on the unknown man lying on the ground, which suggests a sense of loneliness.
This filming went even more successfully due to the passing of two trams in the space of a minute which leaves the perfect image for my cross cut of the hand emulating the shape of a bird flying, to flicker in between that movement, which will then lead perfectly into my minute by the sea. The passing of the tram also depicts a sense of loneliness towards the male figure on the ground; the world is carrying on, people are so caught up in their own lives that they don't stop or notice him.
This week we had a useful sound session about Pro Tools and I thought it would be useful to type up my notes so I can refer to it later on in the process of our project.
Pro Tools
"Start New Session"
Make sure the settings are 48kHz and 24bit rate.
Stereo Mix
File -- Import -- Audio -- Clip List
Make sure "az" button is in the edit window so shortcuts are enabled.
"R" and "T" = zoom in/ zoom out.
Click the cursor over a part that you want to get rid of. COMMAND E it and it will chop it down. Click on the end of the part that you wish to cut, and delete.
To cross fade a cut so it's a smooth transition, drag the cursor over the section you want to fade and COMMAND F.
If you want to fade in and fade out the beginning and end, then go to the top left or right of the clip in order to fade in/fade out.
Automating the Volume
Light blue arrow on the left hand side.
Come up with another bar.
Pencil Tool
Volume Control (How you control these
Mute elements)
Pan
Noise Reduction
Audiosuite (on the top bar) -- EQ -- Seven Band
Plays with the different frequencies so you can remove the more bass-like sounds/the higher frequency sounds.
Compression
Audiosuite -- Dynamics -- Compressor/Limiter
Take all the low frequencies off with the high pass frequency.
How to make the sounds sound like they're coming from headphones.
Auto-saves it for you to be able to use again in the future.
After the audio crits that we received, I was approached by Paul Brannan (also on our course) who after saying he liked the sound piece, asked if I would like to help make an experimental sound piece with Hannah Grencis for the art gallery on Chapel Walk (35 Chapel Walk), to which of course I said yes. The gallery is doing a whole exhibition based on the "nativity" but not necessarily taking a religious approach, the artists could do what they want.
We were given the subject of "star". Paul had already proposed the idea of emulating the sounds of the birth and death of a star. And with that, we all went and made our own separate recordings. I played around with various sounds, such as making a toilet flush sound as though it were part of the atmosphere in space, along with adding the sounds of an internet modem to make it sound as though it were a star communicating. I liked my experiments with the separate sounds, but when it came to putting it together, I could tell there was something missing:
After doing some research on what the sounds of a star would be, I found out that they would emit gas-like sounds and explosions in the atmosphere, so whilst I had the general "sounds" of space, I hadn't added any sounds like that, however, Paul and Hannah did. So we put all of our sounds together, focussing purely on the birth of a star as opposed to both the birth and the death; which means that towards the end, there is a crescendo of gas-like noises and explosions which I think work successfully and I hope people hear this too and enjoy the piece. I feel very privileged to already have a piece in a gallery.
Today Dom and I had to present a demo of our experimental audio piece. We presented a full three minute soundscape, however, we only really focussed on our first two minutes, therefore our third minute was just to fill in the rest of the time. It consists of Dom's vocals (with an added echo to portray a sense of loneliness) and the sounds of the sea along with a tapping to build the sound up into a crescendo halfway through. After this, the sounds of the sea calm down and is almost followed by silence.
After we played the sound to the tutor and the class, we explained the concept behind it. We wanted the listener to be able to detect a sense of loneliness in a big open space; feeling alone in such a large world. We also explained that me and Dom have a minute of our own ideas (Dom's is the first minute and mine the second). Mine involves sounds of the sea and a singular bird can be heard, along with Dom's haunting vocals (made this way by adding an echo in post-production).
The feedback we received was mostly positive and complimentary, the majority of the class hearing that sense of loneliness, they especially enjoyed the crescendo of the sea, the vocals and the bird in comparison to the quietness that follows. We were also informed that our ideas for the visuals would work well with our audio.
The constructive feedback we received was mostly involving our last minute, which we completely agree with as we both know it needs work. We both had our own ideas for the first two minutes, so now we need to collaborate and come up with a third one to fit in perfectly with the mood we have created. The only constructive feedback we disagree with is that it did not really portray a sense of loneliness; instead it depicted a tribal, spiritual mood. However, this is only one person's opinion and whilst we will be keeping our sounds, we will make sure it is clearer to the listener that our idea is about isolation.
Even though I have the role of "sound recorder", I observed Dom during some of the editing process and offered my opinion and ideas so that it sounds the way we both want it to sound. To begin with, we put an "echo" effect on Dom's voice as he sings Don't Give Up by Peter Gabriel featuring Kate Bush. As mentioned in a previous blog post, Sigur Ros is one of my main influences for the experimental piece, so even though Dom sings a Peter Gabriel song, during post-production we have edited it to make it sound more haunting and atmospheric. In Sigur Ros' songs - his first album in particular - he creates an atmosphere outside of his voice; as though he is singing down a corridor and the sound is in a large space. We tried to replicate this sound by playing with the varying effects in post-production. We messed about with turning the reverb and echo effects up and down to create a similar effect that Sigur Ros does - as it emits a sense of loneliness and isolation; one person in a large place singing to themselves.
Interwoven with Dom's voice, we made the decision to place sounds of the sea and birds with it in places. To begin with, Dom's voice dominated the first minute of the soundscape - to go with his image idea - but we felt that it worked better in my minute of the piece; set on the Cleethorpes beach. With the sounds of the sea and birds merged with the singing, a melancholic mood is created along with this feeling of isolation that we hope to enrich with the imagery.
For the first minute - instead of using Dom's singing - we used the recording of Dom playing the harmonica. Once again, we played around with the reverberation on the recording and with this, we set the mood for our piece; "Looking for Solitude". We made the decision not to add any more sounds to the first minute because we felt as though isolating one sound would also succeed in creating a sense of isolation for the audience.
For our last minute of sound, we chose to use my recordings of myself humming followed by a simple, repetitive riff on my ukulele. We overlayed the humming, with two separate bars of the same tune - one slightly behind the time of the other, therefore creating an echo with it. We also modified the speed of the recording to constitute the sounds of loneliness, as though it is only one person playing these instruments and humming to themselves amongst a vast, open landscape.
Whilst both me and Dom work well together as a team, we have experienced issues in terms of editing the piece together. As he is doing it on his computer, I have been unaware when he is doing it so we have been experiencing some communication problems because we would both ultimately like to edit the piece together, although it has been difficult with me balancing my job with university work and Dom failing to inform me when he is editing.
Nonetheless, since we have experienced this problem, we have made more of an effort to collaborate with each other and have edited the piece together. Regardless of the initial communication problems, when we do actually edit the piece together, we listen to each other's ideas and contribute equally and I am now much happier with the end result as I feel like now my ideas are involved, for example, the flashing of the cross cuts and the appearance of the second shot in Cleethorpes.
This week we studied some experimental films in our seminar group. I chose a couple of favourites of mine, that link in some way to mine and Dom's piece; Om being one of them. I enjoyed the unpredictability of this short experimental film. To begin with, I thought the man was a monk and I then thought the whole piece would just be him humming one long, monotonous sound, so when he says "diddly bom" I was certainly surprised. This is one of my favourite parts because the piece goes from being very intense (even verging on boring) to being humorous.
The sound then takes a clever turn by the humming becoming the sound of the razor as a barber comes out of nowhere to shave his hair off. This adds another humorous element to the piece and plays with the sound going from diagetic to non-diagetic. I like the simplicity of the idea, it shows that experimental does not have to be full of flashing imagery and unnecessary confusion; it can be about taking one idea and changing it so it doesn't fall under the conventional film categories which I think this one does perfectly. For my experimental piece, I hope to achieve this; by taking a simple idea and making it rich through a smaller amount of shots and sounds, for example, me and my partner would like to try and limit ourselves to only three shots throughout our three minute piece. We would like to take on the challenge of three slow zoom-outs in the space of three minutes without it becoming boring for the viewer. This one just uses one shot and manages to keep the audience interested, so I will use this as an influence for our piece. We hope to achieve this through our use of echoing sounds and our use of location and shot placement.
And finally, another aspect to this piece that I would like to incorporate into my piece is the black background. This keeps the audience from being distracted by activity going on in the background. It focusses completely on the close up of the man's face as he hums. For our piece, I would really like to do a cross cut to something where the focus is on the foreground and the lighting only focusses on what's going on in front it.
After the session, I undertook some research on the experimental filmmaker John Smith and found one of his short pieces that I watched in a gallery in Leeds a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it.
Once again, it uses the humorous side of filmmaking. perhaps his message (through experimentation) is not to take it so seriously. Film does not always have to be about a serious subject and John Smith certainly shows this in some of his work.
I love the voice over he uses. He just films a street and once again, this would seem like a boring subject, however, he keeps the viewer interested by commentating and directing the people who pass by, as though the whole shot is planned, whereas it's all really done in post-production. I just thought it was an excellent idea, to re-iterate, he is showing that film does not always have to be serious and depressing. I like that he takes something potentially boring and changes it entirely to amuse the audience.
I loved the mixture of animation with real life in this short experimental film by Dryden Goodwin. The locations especially influenced me. Both my partner and I would like to incorporate vast landscapes and varying locations just like in this piece, with its use of both the cityscape and the forest. For two of our shots we would like to use the tramlines and the forest, so this piece has helped us to imagine what it could look like when we get round to filming the visuals to our audio piece.
The use of lights on the cars within the cityscape scenes appealed to me because it relates to our idea of using the city as one of our locations. It has provided us with a possibility within the city aside from just using the tramline. We thought we could maybe play with the focus on the camera with the city lights (or the lights by the tramlines so we could mix both of the ideas together) so that the lights dance across the screen. However, this will not really fit into our slow, long zoom out as the shots will need to cut as opposed to a minute of the same lights.
This short piece also uses a couple of long shots, including a slow zoom out from the structures of the office buildings in a city and then slowly, the forest becomes the foreground of the shot and the city the background. This is an influence for us because we would like to achieve something relatively similar. The idea of doing a long, slow zoom out has the potential to become boring for the viewer but through experimentation, we hope to reveal more within the shot rather than focussing on one object, for example, we would like the first shot to focus on an object (such as a mug) and then as it zooms out, a person facing the other way, lying down on the ground. The audience will want to know more about the character and will automatically begin to form a context behind this character and the relevance of the mug. In this piece, the audience is kept interested through the mixture of real life filming and animation which inspired us to keep going with our idea of three consecutive zoom outs.
Finally, the quick shots/flashes at 5:20 inspired me to come up with some cross cuts to put in between our three long zoom outs, for example, the idea that I keep blogging about, of a hand emulating the shape of a bird.
After doing some research into the experimental-structural film movement in the United States (in the 1960's), this ten minute short film was a recommendation for me. Although this short experimental film has an entirely different vibe to it-in comparison to Geoffrey Jones' Locomotion- the structure certainly appealed to me. Sharits' use of one word, "destroy" is a structure in itself as it is repeated in a robotic, monotonous male voice. As well as this being said, the sound of a drum or tapping (similar to that of a heartbeat) is played underneath it, changing its tempo throughout. In my opinion, the sound on its own is disturbing to begin with, however, after a minute of listening to it it becomes meaningless. When put with the images though, the repetition of the soundscape remains powerful.
The image consists mainly of a medium close up of a man facing the camera. It flickers constantly between him just standing there with his eyes closed, to him about to cut his tongue off, to an unknown person holding a mask over his face - is this to resuscitate him or to smother him? I ask questions like this because of the disturbing sound of "destroy" being said over and over. The mix of these images and the sound increasing in tempo are an uncomfortable watch as it is but Paul Sharits takes it further via post-production using red as a primary colour, which I link to the cutting off of the tongue. Along with red, blank screens of orange, purple, white and yellow are shown in between the sequence of images, providing the viewer with a small "break" before the continuation of the decline of this man's sanity or perhaps even his last moments alive. This short film is not a particular favourite of mine but what I do like and appreciate is the simplicity of his sound, his use of repeated images and the discomfort it evokes in the audience.
Towards the end, the flickering effects on the image of the man begin to form square shapes in the centre of the screen to add to the madness. From start to finish, it seems as though there is no end to it either; it is eternal. Although in the centre of the short film the sound cuts out and is replaced with a buzzing, which I found even more uncomfortable to listen to and watch. Images flicker across the screen, and we can only catch a glimpse. The more I play it, the more I see a woman lying down and perhaps an organ being removed. It may not be these images, but for me, it is certainly disturbing.
Even though our short experimental piece will not look or sound anything like this, it is still one of my influences because it played a major part in the structural experimental movement and shows that repeating the same images and sound can work without the audience becoming bored. If anything, if the piece were much shorter, I don't believe it would have disturbed me quite as much. For our piece, we want to use the repetition of the camera movement; just three simple zoom-outs, showing the vast expanse of the city, sea and forest, but also portraying a sense of loneliness in such a large place. We will also be using our own flicker effect with the cross cuts to the hand emulating the shape of a bird, "looking for solitude" and T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G influenced me in that sense because it shoes a different way of doing a flicker effect to keep it interesting, for example, changing the colour.
Geoffrey Jones' experimental short documentary on the development of Britain's railways has certainly influenced our experimental piece, due to his zoom-outs from still images mixed with the sound of the folk-rock group Steeleye Span along with Donald Fraser's electronic chugging noises. The messages that Jones wanted to convey are expressed through his alternate use of sounds-emulating that of a moving train. This short documentary is also a structural experimental film, which is what we intend to achieve with our piece. He does this through his constant use of still image, with cross-cuts to the movement of the railway itself, travelling through the decades, even bringing in the context of the era itself, such as the first world war. We wish to achieve the structural experimental side to experimental film through our use of three long, slow zoom-outs, with a cross-cut to a hand in the shape of a bird.
We wanted to convey our "Looking for Solitude"idea through the means of a song and music also, as well as various other sounds that can become instruments through editing, such as tapping a table or flicking a light switch. In addition, we wanted the audience to hear our idea of loneliness in such a vast, open space - through echoing the voice and adding in our own bird sounds and sounds of the sea. Through his sound, Geoffrey Jones suggests the development of Britain's railways by increasing the speed in Donald Fraser's electronic chugging. Towards the end, the chugging becomes the more dominant part of his soundscape, perhaps to suggest Britain's dependence on trains now or conversely, it could suggest the power of our trains now.
One of the cross-cuts used.
Geoffrey Jones' image style has also influenced my development of our ideas, as he uses still images and zooming out of them to create a sense of movement still. Following this, he uses cross-cuts to video footage from the eras, which has influenced my idea for the repeated cross-cut to the hand emulating that of a bird. As Geoffrey Jones' Locomotion progresses, the editing runs at a faster pace as it builds into a crescendo bringing the viewer through the decades into the modern railway movement. The cross-cuts become faster too, which we intend to do with our hand shot.
From Locomotion, I have come to realise that we need to think more carefully about our decisions for what to put into our piece. Everything we record needs to relate to our message/theme. It has to mean something, so I believe we need to cut any unnecessary sounds from our soundscape so that the message we wish to portray is pure and powerful.
