Creative Media Practice Project End of Semester Self-Evaluation

The main idea behind our experimental film and soundtrack was to convey our ideas and opinions on a modern ideology that everyone should keep themselves to themselves, no one has time for each other and everyone is caught up in their own little ‘bubble’ of a world. We wanted to do this by creating a sense of a very busy place or places and add a very surreal element to this to make it seem as though the audience is being shown this through someone else’s  perspective as if they are trying to focus on what’s going on in this hectic, busy world. We also wanted to show that the whole idea has somewhat caused everyone to be in a trance like state or dream world, which we portrayed using editing techniques. Our main influences were from Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930) by Luis Buñuel who was a French surrealist and experimental film maker and we adapted certain techniques he used in his films as a guideline for experimental conventions to use in our film. The idea for the main message behind our film came from a short film we had watched in a previous seminar called Salaryman 6 (2002) by Jake Knight which shows a man stuck in a daily routine where no one takes interest in him and uses time lapses and other techniques to connote his loneliness which we adapted to our film as well. Our general sound recordings which were almost exclusively taken from just the market, with a few from the train station being used in the end and the idea behind this was to try and give a real distinct sense of one unified sense of place and even for distinct sounds such as footsteps and cars going past, we used scraping sounds of worktops being sandpapered down from the market, and chopping sounds of meat being cut. Once again we didn’t really have an intended audience laid out for when we were planning the film as we didn’t want it to affect how we put across our ideas on the subject matter, however it would most likely appeal to those who enjoy experimental and surrealist cinema, whom would probably be around the ages of 20-50.

Our finished project had many good and bad things about it, and one of the major problems we faced was the lack of original footage we recorded. By this I mean we had a lot of the same style of shots from different locations with the same kind of compositions which meant a lot of our footage was quite ‘samey’ and didn’t really dazzle the audience with clever and original compositions. For example we used a lot of mid shots of peoples feet walking and used a time lapse with these shots, and although they were all filmed in different locations, they still gave a kind of complacency to the film and didn’t really challenge the audience’s attention which could cause them to simply stop engaging with the film and switch off. This linked in with another issue for me that I thought that the locations we shot in were somewhat uninspiring and unoriginal as they were only the university itself, the train station and the indoor market. This had the same negative impact on the films effectiveness as the previous point and was definitely something I wasn’t too proud of. Although this situation could have been solved by having a more clear idea of what we were doing straight away and if we had planned more effectively, the locations definitely server their purpose of showcasing busy places which is in itself quite effective for the purpose of our piece, yet I still believe we could have found more interesting locations if we had used our time more wisely. This time management issue also links into if we had storyboarded early, we could have got more interesting compositions from the locations we did have at our disposal which would have definitely helped our aims be clearer. A final negative point that hindered our progress and quality of our work was the fact that both me and my partner George found it very difficult to interact with the brief of an experimental film as we had never really watched something like them before, so we didn’t really know what to create whilst still making the film a true experimental one. This problem could have been overcome if we had done more research into the matter and in the end I believe we did so there wasn’t a massive difference in genre in our final piece, however I think it did mean we had to cut a lot of our other footage down which made our film quite short in comparison with others which may or may not have made the film less correlated with our aims.

There were however, still many good points in our film, which most importantly were helped by the best thing overall, our sound design. There are quite a few things I’m happy with in terms of sound design, which includes our general sound recordings which were almost exclusively taken from just the market, with a few from the train station being used in the end. We manipulated abstract sounds which would have no real place in this piece, as mentioned before the meat being cut, and designed them to be used to mimic footsteps. Not only did this tie all the sounds into one by being from the same place, it also added to the dream like reality which some of the shots attempted to mimic. This careful sound design also worked in unison with the imagery it was shown with, and the background increasing humming noise (a stretched out, edited sound of a door closing) which in itself was very effective as it was not simply just a static atmosphere track which meant it added some form of direction to the whole film, made the film seem surreal and have a sense of journey along with the desaturation used on the majority of images and total black and white shots of slower paced shots. All of this linking in with our aims and satisfied the brief by giving a distinct sense of place. Other parts of editing I thought were effective were the collaboration between sound and image in scenes where we got rid of the time lapse and tried to give a point of view of someone observing individuals within the sense of place and when these images were shown, the sound was edited by using the graphic EQ to take off all the high frequencies to give more bass and muffle the sound to mimic concentration. However a connotation of this was that by observing others within a busy place, the individual was made to seem lonely and as if they were the odd ones out within that place. Finally I think that the pace of the whole film was quite effective as it wasn’t just linear or static and it changed around a lot, this was through using time lapses and loud atmospheric sounds and interchanging them with muffled conversations and slow paced focus pulls or pans. This incorporated the experimental film convention of an abstract ‘narrative’ but still able to convey aims and ideas throughout the film.

My main role within the post production of this film was editor of mainly the video, but also the sound and I worked in collaboration with the director (George) to make sure we were both happy about what was happening with the film. Working together on most of the different parts of the film also allowed us to both have control and input to every tiny detail so we could share and get the best out of our ideas.  Most of the technical aspects were done by me, including most of the video editing and effects in the final cut stage of our film. I also had the idea to use jump cuts and flashes to try and break up any form of narrative and I did the sound design for that using simple EQ effects on screeching sounds and chopping sounds. Although we didn’t do a clear storyboard for the project, once again to try and minimise the addition of a narrative or strict sequence, we did have a small shot list and good idea of what different shots we wanted to form a sequence with. However in our critical review session with the group, we got some solid feedback about how certain shots didn’t fit in with the rest of our film and how others seemed to just be thrown in for the sake of it. This obviously changed what we had originally envisioned as being a change from a very busy place to a calmer atmosphere but in the same places. We therefore had to cut a lot of these clips out and change the sequence around which we actually found quite easy as we agreed with the comments we got and found that with the suggestions, our overall film became more effective. As I’ve mentioned previously, this production issue we faced was due to our lack of experience with these forms of films which could have been avoided if we had planned and researched more efficiently.

The most important and influential I have learnt during this project, is the importance of sound within a piece of film. In both my wider research and personal experience during the production of this piece, I have found that the soundtrack not only accompanies the images diagetically, but also provides the mood, pace and overall impact of the film as a whole even if it is only subtle atmospheric sounds they all play a massive role. I’ve also learnt to try and read more around the topic or genre of the brief to give myself the best knowledge possible and hopefully enable me to create work to the best of my ability. I also liked how this brief gave us chance to play around with editing techniques in both final cut and soundtrack pro as experimental film is the most versatile in terms of interpretation and abstract features which both pieces of software can allow you to accomplish. I therefore experimented a lot with various effects, transitions and sequence layouts in both the soundtrack and film to try and convey ideas more easily, for example, when in the train station, a time lapse of everyone walking to the platforms is split up by a multi-layered shot of a man talking to someone where I used image mask effect along with feather mask and mask shape to create a circle around the man, him being the focus point. I then added a blur effect to the track underneath that one which made everything but the man blurry which added on the point of view idea we had originally.

As a team, both myself and George contributed equally and were very vocal in getting our ideas and opinions across to both be happy with the films overall outcome. As we both had the same form of experience when it came to making films, we helped one another technically and made sure the other understood the logic of changing certain shots and doing things how we did them in the end. As we both got on quite well we had no issues when pointing out potential floors in one another’s contributions to the piece, which meant that we didn’t have to do many different cuts, re-rendering and re-editing during the project. We could both have improved by being more proactive in terms of research and time management which could definitely have made the film more powerful in the end as we could’ve been more creative with certain aspects. Apart from this among other things, I’m very pleased how our overall project has turned out , especially with our sound design, and considering the amount of time we invested in it and our lack of knowledge on the genre, it has been a great learning curve and insight into the film industry.

Experimental Film Feedback

On Thursday, myself and George presented our experimental film titled 'Aint no time for nobody' to Debbie, Dom and the rest of the seminar group. Although we knew it wasn't the final piece especially as we were struggling with re-opening our soundtrack the previous day to edit it more, it was very helpful hearing what everyone thought about our film and also to see how other groups were getting along. We got some very solid and fair criticism about certain shots we had almost 'thrown' in and it made us think about what else we would change and which shots didn't  really have a whole lot of meaning to them. The majority of the group and tutor feedback we got was to delete the end sequence we had where the music slows down and we show reverse shots.

We both agreed after talking about it after, that these shots were not necessary and didn't really fit with the rest of the film. Although comments about the end sequence were brought up by Debbie, the rest of the class didn't really mention anything wrong with the way the sound changed and only had a problem with the reverse shots, so with the footage we have, we will play around with what form of a sequence we can have at the end. Both of us like the focus pulls we've captured and agree that their meaning is definitely something we want to include in the film as it shows what a lonely place a busy place can actually be and how people are wrapped up in their own worlds. We may add some blur effects to these end shots to give a heightened sense of this.

All in all, I'm still very happy with the context of our film and with the style we've edited and shot it in. The feedback we got was also very helpful and we will try and incorporate the majority of 'errors' within the film to enable us to convey our thoughts effectively through film.

Film for A Sense Of Place

Our original idea for the sense of place video footage was to show just a busy area, most likely the Sheffield train station, and do a time lapse of that area and add in various other layers to that played over the top of that one to create a business effect playing on from the soundtrack. However we decided in the end to film 3 different locations and not change the soundtrack as we wanted to show how the contrast in locations has no effect on people whatsoever and because all the places are still very busy, no ones attitudes change to one another and everyone is still caught up within themselves. We tried to show this by doing various small time lapses of different places whilst incorporating various other experimental techniques we had seen in our experimental film analysis. This including jump-cuts, the flashing of images within long takes (or in our case time lapses), transitions between scenes and final the colour correction or de-saturation of the video.

As the soundtrack didn't involve show any major change when moving inbetween the different locations, we had to make the transitions smooth and not jarring. We did this by using slow cross dissolves which corresponded to the slow change in sound and I think effectively changed the place, without effecting the overall sense of the place which is what we were trying to achieve.

The first draft of the film which we showed to the group and our tutors, was given a decent amount of feedback on certain aspects of the film which we will attend to and improve as soon as possible. The main things we are in the process of changing are the title, the end of the film where we show clips in reverse, and the volume of certain aspects of the sound. Even though we were criticized on other points of the film, I believe it was because we came relatively unprepared to the presentation and didn't have all the notes we needed to be able to justify a few of the shots, so for the final presentation, we will create a powerpoint or bring the necessary notes we need to justify every shot and every decision we made throughout the film and the soundtrack which will hopefully make our intentions clearer and give our audience an insight into our ideas and thought processes we used to create our final product.

Soundtrack For Experimental Film

For our sense of place piece, we wanted to convey the sense of a nondescript busy place/places to our audience. We had numerous difficulties when doing this as we didn't want it to be very obvious what sounds reflected what particular image so there was an enigma around the whole soundtrack. However we did include sounds of noisy places with hundreds of peoples voices speaking in unison so we didn't make the whole project reliant on just the images. Our intention overall with the piece was to show how nobody has time for one another and how everyone is just caught up in their own little worlds and we did this by using a lot of layers over the top of one another and merging in convocations within layers of traffic noise, atmos tracks of places like the market and the train station to try and portray those small bubbles people live in.

This screen grab of the starting sequence shows the layering of the different sounds we used to give a sense of a busy place and we did this to attempt to make the sound cluttered and hard to distinguish one sound from the other to add to the busy feel of it. We also used repetition of the same sounds again and again in a loop to try and play on the fact that people are stuck in routines and as they don't attempt to change it in anyway or try and break out of their 'bubble' they get more and more complacent and start to loose their originality and flare and become just another person stuck in the busy place. I think the techniques we used to apply these ideas into the piece were very effective and didn't sound too abstract so you could still hear where the place was.

Another technique we used was changing and manipulating sounds through the addition of effects in soundtrack pro. We only recorded about 30 minutes of raw sound to really try and lock down that sense of one whole place, but we altered the sounds to make them more abstract and distorted to try and connote the warped way in which everyone hears these sounds everyday when they're in a busy place, but they never really listen and absorb the sounds and just let them go unnoticed. What we tried to do was make these sounds more abrupt and harsher to listen to as to draw the attention of the audience to these sounds and make them question if this is what they really sound like.

With the traffic noise of a car rumbling at the start of the clip, we actually used the sound of a train starting to set off and edited out the high frequency hissing sounds to get just the bass rumble of the trains engine. We then highlighted a specific frequency of this rumble and then cut a small section of the whole clip out and repeated it in a loop which gave us the desired effect of a cars engine 'chugging' along but in a whole new abstract way. We carried on this repetition of certain remastered sounds throughout the soundtrack to carry on the sense of place.

Our final piece before we presented it in our group tutorial, in our eyes, had matched the brief and given a good sense of place (even though we tried to hide it a little in just the soundtrack) and was very effective in connoting our ideas and inspirations we used to create it.

Sound Sampling and Design

To help myself improve sound design techniques for my experimental and production skills films, I researched various artists who are known for their sound design and sampling of other tracks and noises to create music. The two main artists I looked at were The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers and the tracks 'Voodoo People' and 'Hey Boy Hey Girl', both electronic dance music from the 90's.

Both pieces sample sounds from other previous songs, The Chemical Brothers sample from both a 1980's Hip Hop song: Pee-Wee's Dance by Joeski Love, and another 1980's hip hop song: The Roof is on fire by Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three. Both segments of samples taken from these two songs are manipulated in post production by the producers to create a whole new listening experience from the original sounds. They do this by either adding effects, changing EQ or levels and in this specific example, repeating the sample over the top of another and changing the pitch slightly. The sheer amount that is done on just one sound to make it perfect is amazing and full length songs can take months to fully complete. I will take this into account when producing my own sounds for both the experimental, and short film pieces, and even though we aren't allowed to use samples in our project, I will incorporate the techniques used here to design the sound specific to the clip or sense of place. I think the use of sampling in this piece is very effective as it underpins the whole of the piece and makes it not only memorable, but also somewhat original because of the use of the sample in a very unique way.

Voodo People by The Prodigy samples over 4 songs including Very Ape by Nirvana, a 1990's punk, grunge metal group and Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin, a 1960's rock/metal band. The fact that the song they produce is a electro dance music piece, the way they sampled these two pieces is truly impressive. They use the same techniques as The Chemical Brothers, repeating small clips, reversing and adding effects, and they still produce a very unique piece of sound when combined. It is also clear that there is a large amount of tracks within this song as a lot of different sounds occur at once. Whereas this could be difficult to digest and enjoy, the way it is done in this is very powerful and gives a very unique sound. I will take this into consideration for both my films soundtracks, especially in the experimental piece, as the use of multiple tracks could prove very effective when trying to give a sense of place.

Black Swan Experimental Techniques

Whilst looking into more abstract blockbuster films as inspiration for my experimental film on 'A sense of place', I was advised to watch Darren Aronofsky's 'Black Swan' (2010) in a seminar session by Ron Wright, and pay close attention to the sound design used in the film. Although it was my first time watching the film and was therefore reasonably distracted by the story line of the film, I did try and pay close attention to the sound throughout the film and was amazed as to what it does for the film as a whole. As with a lot of Darren's work, he applies surrealist elements to his film, normally combined with the use of drugs, to create a huge impact on audience. The only way these scenes can have a big impact on the audience is through the use of sound design. A scene in Black Swan, where Nina (Natalie Portman) and Lily (Mila Kunis) are in a club after taking what is made out to be MD-MA (Ecstasy) and listening to 'rave' music (provided by The Chemical Brothers here). The bass hum in the background with a rhythmic drum beating over the top adds the 'pace' of the scene as being very busy and chaotic. There is then a synthetic buzz that is played in intervals within the shot and these are synced with the flashing of a camera shot of Nina through a neon light.

This begins to incorporate the surrealist theme emerging, as flashes of not only the location of the rave are shown, but also of Nina dressed up as the black swan, and as these begin to appear, the music is almost completely faded out and cross faded with a repeated chanting of 'Nina' accompanied by what sounds like an eerie whistling sound that instantly cuts back to the music when we hear Lily shout for Nina's attention. This whole scene relies heavily on the sound and it would have a completely opposite effect on the audience without any of the precision sound design that accompanies the experimental film style video.
When the music begins again, the sound of people yelling excitedly and talking is integrated back in and the musics pitch becomes higher but softer with less bass. This creates a more safe and comfortable environment and changes the place from being a scary, abstract area to a more common and relatable one. The sudden jump from these two places is a convention of surrealist cinema and experimental films as it somewhat distorts the normal convention of a clear, linear story line and challenges the audience to digest what they are seeing instead of passively accepting what is being shown to them throughout a scene.

Watching this film has taught me the importance even subtle sounds can have on the overall effect and story of a scene, and how well both video and audio can be linked together in order to create these desired effects. It has also expanded my view on how to interpret more abstract clips in all films which I will attempt to digest and apply to when I do my own experimental film.

Short Film Research

One of my all time favorite short films is 'Zombie In a Penguin Suit' (2011) by Chris Russell and, unsurprisingly, it is about a zombie that is wearing a penguin suit and the film consists around him wondering around a country eating people and basically just showing what the world looks like after a zombie apocalypse. The reason this is my favorite short film is because of the synergy between the composed music and the films context. It has no little diagetic sound in the film and no speech from any characters (the closest you get is a scream or two) which theoretically for a horror film such as this one, make it hard to relate with the characters and hard to understand their emotions and who they are on a deeper level. However, the context of this film is that the main character is a brainless zombie, so the confusion and enigma around him works extremely effectively and this combine with the ambient, orchestral soundtrack somehow create a huge amount of empathy for the zombie.

The camera and editing techniques used throughout the film also play a big part in the empathy created for the zombie as there are countless hand held point of view shots, also a fair few tracking shots of the zombie, over the shoulder shots, extreme close ups, pans, slow zooms and pretty much every camera technique in the book which all help the audience engage with the character and the situations occurring within the film. The lighting used is also very powerful as in this particular scene when we see the silhouettes of the zombies attacking someone with more silhouettes of people running around in the foreground which connotes the hopelessness of the situation and the denotates the sheer number of zombies there are.

I will think about how lighting, editing and camera techniques are used in this short film when I do my experimental film, and I will also reflect on how an arguably unfitting soundtrack can be used very effectively to give a deeper meaning to a film.