In this essay I will evaluate my Creative
Media Practice Project which included an audio only project and an experimental
film project. I want to discus all the stages of the production process I went
through, ups and downs along with achievements and failures. I will talk about
what I have learnt and what I wish I knew before I have started. Also I want to
touch upon the effectiveness each stage of the production, the final product
and how we worked as a team. have influenced my work and how my idea came to
live in front of my eyes over a short amount of time.
The audio project has been the first project we have been
introduced to. It was a sound scape exercise in which we had to create a sense
of place. I believe the purpose of this exercise was to make us aware of how
important the sound is in films and how hard it can be to record Foley sound
without having the image in front of you, and also teach us the sound recording
equipment and software.
The three of us had a library session in
which we got together around a table with one of the bigger screens, we researched
and exchanged ideas for what the very short brief represented ‘sense of place’.
One of my original ideas was to recreate sounds from different planets and have
an in depth research how the atmosphere is like on each of the planets in the
solar system. This idea was soon picked
apart by our tutor as it had flaws and was very unrealistic as we could not
have possibly recreated an atmosphere of all the planets in the short amount of
time that we had and the three minutes would have given us about 20 seconds for
each planet which is not enough time to represent a sense of place.
Instead we went with the idea of a mental institute much like the
one you see in ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s nest’. I have drawn a plan of the
institute to help us plan how we would record our sound and what sounds we
needed to put where. We have decided to make it seem as if the person listening
to our project is in the space our mentally ill character is in. The journey
the character goes on is very short yet it meant a lot to me to create a
routine like feeling. He is sitting in front of a window at the beginning, gets
up, walks over to take his pills, you can hear the sound of a busy common room
in the background. He then walks down the corridor whistling, in this corridor
you can hear other patience mumbling and laughing insanely. When the character
walks into his own room someone shuts and locks the door behind him. The steps
die down and you can hear his heartbeat, water dripping, he sits down on the
chair in front of a window and you can see that being alone effects him as the
sounds becomes distorted. This idea proved to be effective and it gave us a
structure that we needed to be more organised. We have written down a list of
sounds we needed to record for the next time we were going to see each other. The
pre-production of this part of the project went very smoothly as we were all
determined and motivated to make this idea work.
In the experimental film part of this project
I found myself to be motivated more then my colleagues. One of our original
ideas was to match the sound project and the film and make the sound come to
life so to speak but I thought this idea was very weak and as the sound in my
opinion is not a strong piece of work it would drag the film down. I have
researched into non-linear structure narratives, which fitted my idea of the
film, but I have always wanted to play with the concept of pure abstraction in
film. Though I do believe I am leaning more towards non-linear structure as the
film has a clear voiceover of the first and the last chapter from the Holy Bible,
which I have cut into pieces and fitted as much of the footage, I have recorded
and gathered over the summer. The idea for this piece came from a late night
with the voice of the film Josh Turner during which we picked up a Bible from
my friend’s flat and started reading through different chapters. I found that
the first chapter ‘Genesis’ which talks about the creation story combined with
the last chapter ‘Revelation’ which tells us the tale of how the earth will be
destructed by God and his seven angels. I found these two chapters to be very
characteristic and interesting. What he created he can destroy, this message I
found to be very powerful and I hope it comes across in the film. I was trying
to be careful about putting too much dialogue in as it could distract the
viewer from images but I believe I have created a good balance because the more
frequent the voiceover is the more layers you can see. I have not storyboarded
this idea nor have I written a script as I had very little time as both of the
team members have had problems with being able to meet me and discuss ideas.
I have called this film Revelation because I
believe it is suitable to what this experimental film is about. The two stories
from the bible are very rarely linked together and presented against each other
which to me is it links to the first definition of the word. And as to the
second it links directly. I am a non-believer but I do find that this book is
full of very interesting stories and it has a lot of power within its
pages.
The sound project even with everyone’s input
and effort didn’t raise to my expectations. I think if we all have spent more time
on the production and didn’t leave the post-production process to last minute
it would have sounded better. I do believe if we had prior experience with Pro
Tools it would have been a lot easier for us to make sense of what was on the
time line. If I could make the sound project again I would have gone with a
different idea which was simpler and easier to record as I have struggled to
get the right floor to record the sound and we all have difficulties with the
H4Z zoom and the Marantz as they were very new to us.
I do like
the way the film has turned out given the circumstances. When looking and the
title sequence I believe I could have put another layer of film into the title
but with that said the semi transparent white title, in Arial font makes it
subtle yet the audience will be able to remember the name of the film. And I
think if I did put a track matte key in Premiere Pro and put another moving
image into already very busy space the viewer could pay less attention to the
name. The layers and opacity levels were tricky to play with as you can see
on
this screen shot of the workspace the most layers I have had at once was 5. One
thing I would have changed about this project is the chance to film everything
in the period of time that we were given so I didn’t have to use any of the
footage from before I have started this semester as I wanted to learn more and
progress from what I have already been taught. I am proud of the footage that I
have filmed and my original photography yet I am not satisfied. The beach
footage is from Bournemouth, the shots of people are from my previous school, the
tunnel footage is from Paris and so is the sped up traffic, the nature if from
a local park in London where I have lived previously, the fire place is from
last year’s Winter Wonderland in London. The three pieces of footage which are
not mine are archive footage from a website called ‘Archive.org’ All of them
are a type of a film burn or a light .The only shots that I have filmed for
this project are the out of focus lights of the streets and the trees outside
of city campus. These lights have added depth to the image making it more busy
as the voice over moves from Genesis to Revelation you can see the change in
editing and layering, I tried to introduce the idea of chaos that the scripture
talks about. Overall I believe I have done my best when looking at the
production and post-production process as I have done it in 3 days from Friday
morning till Sunday evening and the idea for this film came to me on a Thursday
night when I was left by one of my team members in the editing suite when we
were supposed to talk over the plan of action for this film. If I could do the
film again knowing what I know now I would have either tried harder to motivate
my team mates to do this film or I would have chosen different people to work
with. Also If I was to work with the same idea I would have worked on the sound
more as I have not been able to run it through Pro Tools as I run out of time.
The process when working on the mental
institute project was very straightforward and during this part of the project
each of us had equal input into the finished piece, yet I was left to re-work
the sound levels after the critical analysis with Martine. During the research
and putting ideas down on the table we all had very strong ideas that we
contributed, when finalizing the idea I drew a floor plan of where I would like
the character to go which was welcomed by my teammates because it gave us
structure. When recording I went to the Workstation near the city campus to
record the steps and doors shutting as it had wooden floors and not many people
were there after 6 pm. I was then lead to believe me and of my team mates were
going to record the rest of the sounds at his accommodation but when I was on
my way he changed his plans. This was very frustrating as I was determined to
finish all the sounds that evening and I wasn’t able to record any more sounds
without his help. Another problem I have encountered is the software we had one
session on before having to create this piece of work during which I found the
tutor to be going a bit too fast when explaining things to us which resulted in
much confusion during the post production process but we have been able to ask
other members of our course and were able to edit in Pro Tools. We have had
equal opportunity to edit this piece as we all sat together and worked in a
team, making sure everyone liked what they could hear. When exporting this
piece of work I was the one that stayed behind to export the footage, I have
struggled as I had trouble exporting it as a single file but two of my course
mates helped me with the settings then burning it onto a disk.
During the experimental project I have came
up with an idea in a day that grew on me the more I thought about it. I have
recorded the voiceover on Zoom H4n on a Friday morning with Josh and presented
about 2:40 minutes of the unfinished film to the tutor by Friday afternoon. I
have edited this piece as well as I have shot and found the archive footage I
have spoken about earlier. All the footage you can see in this film was filmed
on Canon 60D and most of the close-up shots if not all were filmed with a 50mm
lens and the out of focus lights that I have managed to film with Hannah on
Friday for an hour were filmed using a standard lens. Some of the effects when
looking at the lights in this film were purely due to the rain on the lens,
when I asked Hannah to use a torch on her phone and shine it into and around
the lens the drops of water created an interesting effect. I have edited this
project on Premiere Pro CS6, which I have used last year for my final project
before coming to university. As I have edited everything on my MacBook Pro I
was able to work through the night on Friday and some of the night on Saturday.
I enjoyed this process the most as I have had a lot of experience with the
software prior to this project making it easier to edit when knowing many of
the short cuts. The moral issue I have encountered when editing this project is
when I had to use the archive footage to make this film come together as I was
not able to burn film nor was I able to film anything like the light you can
see through all the shots.
During this project I have learnt that
compromise is very key when working in a team of people with very different
visions. Also I have been able to learn how to use Pro Tools, Zoom H4n
microphone, I have also been able to be more creative on the editing software
as I did not have to keep to a structure except the one created by the
voice-over. Creatively I have been very happy with the way I have been able to
put my ideas on paper and transform them into something visual and pleasing. I
have developed team skills along with self-motivation, which was quite
difficult at first yet once I have started something the ideas were flowing
smoothly. I have also been able to give myself critical feedback and really try
to stand back and pick apart my own film and sound piece as I have found it
challenging before this project.
I think I worked well in a team for the first
part of this project as everyone tried to put equal amount of effort into this
task. I have then slowly lost communication with my team as this semester went
on which was disappointing because we chose to be in this group. I was the
designated director of the film project and I believe I could have done very
little more when it came to communicating and motivating the team because when
they could not make the time to meet me it was very hard to talk through ideas,
research and actually go out and produce a film. I believe I could have made
more phone calls and sent more texts to my teammates and try and talk through
some of the ideas on Facebook group message.
The Experimental film - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4E-Jr5Otk4
