Film and Media Production : December 2013

For the Creative Media Practice project, we where given the brief to create a three minute experimental piece around this idea of “Sense of Place”. This piece included a standalone audio piece and experimental film in preparation we had plenty of seminars to help us build up our knowledge of experimental projects and help us explore different areas of films that we might have not been aware of. We had to work in pairs for the practical work so I joined up with Oscar Bernstein.

The original concept for our experimental project was to create a piece of music using every day sounds, coming from a music background I was fascinated in finding beats and rhythms in everyday sounds. I pitched this idea to our seminar teacher Lee Pearse who seemed to really like the concept. However the piece was lacking focus and direction and didn’t really fit to the brief. Throughout the duration of the semester the concept slight shifted focus, I still wanted to create a piece of music but it wasn’t until Oscar pitched the idea of creating a piece of work around the morning routine. At first I was quite skeptical as I felt the story had been told many times. After a while I warmed to this idea, like a lot of people I was unaware of the verity of unique sounds, which could be found predominantly in the morning.

The six equal boxes

I really wanted to capture the essence of a typical morning routine, following from when the alarm goes off, to when the person leaves the house and everything in between. I really wanted to capture the atmosphere and make people aware of these rhythmic sounds. They are lots of elements to project as the screen is split into 6 equal boxes, with a different action is taking place in each box, in the left had corner we have the cupboard door, while in the top left we have someone brushing they teeth and in bottom left they is a flashing image of spoon, just to name a few. The screen is overloaded with visuals, which are moving around, flashing, disappearing or zooming in and out. I wanted people to feel quite overwhelmed but not make the viewing experience uncomfortable, as I wanted to draw they attention to the verity and rhythmic sounds in the morning.

The piece starts off with a time lapse of Sheffield before the sound of an alarm clock kicks in. This is one of the first sounds the majority of use hears in the morning, the alarm clock acts as a metronome and is a constant factor through out the first half of the piece. Along with the sound of the cupboard and the alarm, these two sounds act as the foundation of my piece and everything was build around these two sounds. The piece is split-up in three sections the with two different time signatures the first half is in 8/4 times (meaning they is 8 notes per bar) while the second half is in 16/4 (meaning there is 16 notes per bar). The second part of the piece is much quicker then the first and acts as a metaphor for the busy morning. In the middle of I dropped the tempo right down to focus on the art of making a cuppa tea, this enabled me to senseless go into two completely different beats and helped the piece flow but also gave the audience a break from intense first half.

The film draws influence from experimental film such as the short film Tango Director by Zbigniew Rybczynski and Starguitar by The Chemical Brothers. You can see the impact these two films have had on our final piece, the repetition of Tango was a big influence on our final film. It’s quite hard to define who our final piece is aimed at, hopefully it would appeal to musicians, as it’s quite a technical but also I think it’s a piece that everyone can enjoy as its upbeat, exciting and leaves the audience guessing what the next sound might be.

Critically analyzing our work, I feel it has areas that could be improved. However I think the sound has massively improved from the first feedback session, the negative feedback really motivated me to improve our piece. For the sound piece I feel like the ending is quite poor, using the sound of the door I thought I would give the piece close but it sort of feels like I’ve just ran out of ideas. Another aspect of the piece I would have like to change was the levels, some of the sounds where a little bit quite and felt like they got lost when all the elements came together especially the sound of the teeth, I changed the levels to compensate this but the quality of the recording was just too quite. I was really happy with the layering technique I used in the edit, using the alarm clock and cupboard door as the foundation of my piece; it enabled me to build up the different layers adding more and more sounds. Overall I think the sound piece works really well its exciting upbeat and has many elements. To keep the audience interested I tried to add a new layer of sound every two bars. My original idea was not to use repeat sounds but due the lack, and poor recoding this wasn’t possible. Although I experimented with a number of different of effects I wanted to keep the sounds as raw and original as possible I added a couple of reverbs and changed the EQs, however I wish I experimented with more effects just to see what the outcome would have been.

In terms of the film I think the film look really good, the visuals where very strong and reminded of an Ikea advert especially the shot of the clock. Most of the visuals lined up with the sound there were just a couple I noticed that didn’t. On reflection I wish we kept the time lapse going throughout the piece and not just at the start as at some points in the film the audience where overloaded with different visuals. Another aspect of the film, which I would have like to change and experiment with, was the composition of certain shots. I would have like to have a couple of more shots out of focus and messed around with the depth of filed. Also I would have like to use a macro lens on some of the shots E.G the water boiling. I just think it would have made the piece a little more abstract. However I do believe the piece follows into the category of pure abstraction as a lot of the focus is on the sound, colour, composition of shots and a lot less on the narrative. It was interesting to see how everyone else adapted the brief, I thought that ours where very different compared to everyone else’s.

Screen Grab of time line for our first feedback session

For the sound part of the project I was the editor while Oscar was the sound recodist. As I mentioned before I complete start the edit again after our first feedback session. Its was clear in the feedback that people like the concept but not too keen on the actual execution. The main problem I had was the lack of knowledge using Avid Pro Tools, at first I found it very difficult to use. The piece I produced for the feedback session was an example of my skills on Pro Tools and fond it hard to replicate the beat and rhythm I had create in my head. After this session it really motivated me to learn how to use Avid Pro Tools. At times I did feel a little lost but Ron and Darrell where more then happy to help and provide feedback. I got a little frustrated with Oscar while editing as I felt I did most of it by myself, I fully understand that he didn’t understand how to use the software and felt his time could have been better spent else where but it would have just been nice to have another pair of ears listen to the piece and give me regular feedback. As a group I feel like I contributed a little bit more towards the sound part of the project as I came up with the original idea and concept, sometime I felt like Oscar wasn’t as motivated as me but that was understandable as I found it hard to motivate myself when I cant really see how the project is going to pan out. However when it came down to the visuals side Oscar more then pulled his weight, he came up with majority of the storyboards and many ideas on how to improve the piece.

final Timeline of Pro Tools

For the visual side of the project we swapped roles, as I became the cameraman while he was the editor. I had a clear idea of what the piece wanted to look like so that’s why I decided to film. We did the majority of the filming at Oscar’s apartment and used both canon FX100 and canon 450D. As the 450D was Oscar’s camera he showed me how to use and what lenses to use in different situations. This time I felt like we both equally contributed to this side of the project.

Personally I think the film and sound came out exactly way we wanted it. I was happy with the work we have both produced, even through things where a little shaky due to the lack of commutation. Through the duration of the semester I fell I have learnt a lot especially using the software Pro Tools and using a verity of different equipment to capture footage and sound, which I thoroughly enjoyed. While learning how to use the Zoom I learnt how to use external microphones to record sound as the process was very new as I had always used the microphones on the camera to record the sound. I knew they where different types of microphone but never knew the difference between them. Using different microphones open my mind up to different possibility and enabled use to get a catalogue of a verity of different. While recording the sound we came across a number of problems like not changing the mono mix when using external microphones this is something I only found about in the edit, after I realized I went out and rerecorded the sound using the Zoom.

As I said before I had never used Avid Pro Tools before so had a lot to learn. Lots of the answers could be found on the Internet and Ron and Darrell where always around if I needed any help. Now I feel quite competent about using the software although I know there is still a lot to learn. I leant simple task like creating a project, using the tools and smart tool. To the more advance task of using effects to befit my work and using short keys to help me work more efficiently.

On reflection I think we did work quite well together, although we did have our difficulties at times. The lack of communication at the start of the semester was quite difficult to deal with, it made sticking to schedules quite hard and became difficult to generate ideas which we where both happy with. At the start we both had complete different ideas but managed to come up with an idea and concept that we where both happy to pursuit. Like I mentioned before during the process of editing sound I felt like Oscar didn’t really contribute but can totally understand why that was as he didn’t understand how to use the software either. However in the end I think both contribute a lot of time and effort into this project, although very frustrating at times getting used to the software and equipment I really enjoyed this brief as it gave use a chance to express ourselves but also explore an area of film that we might have never explored before.

We had our tutorial with Lee, in which we showed her our finished sound piece but also a rough edit of our experimental film piece. We really wanted to show the variation in the two beats, which I had created to represent the morning rush. But also get an essence for the morning routine.

I had completed finished the sound but Oscar still had a little but of work to do on edit. It was really interesting to see how everyone interpreted the brief, as everyone seemed to go do the similar route although really really good, just seemed a little dark. I was a little concerned at this point as ours where very different.

We where on of the last people to show our work I was pleasantly surprised when people started to laugh. The feedback we received was very promising, everyone seemed to love the idea and concept. A fellow student told us it remind him od a Pink Floyd song Money just was a very big complement and wasn’t expecting our piece to receive that much praise. Another student said he really like the rhythms and was intrigued to find out what other elements where going to added.

The only concern and criticism we received was the ending, which we are looking to change. Overall I was very pleased with the feedback session.