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.
No comments:
Post a Comment