Exercise: Creating a new soundtrack

Man alive, this was fun! I took the sounds recorded for the listening exercise and added them to the Alcoholic sequence back in the heady days of Project 2.  I had originally detached all the sound files from the sequence but I found I had to add back in the coughing bit as this is prominent.  

The other soundscapes were birdsong, a car in a nearby street, the sound of sawing and an angle grinder from a garage.

I like how these worked to symbolise a hangover or the feeling of fear and lack of control. I used four layers in the end. I heightened some bits to intensify the effect and had to be careful to keep them below the 0 dB level.

I think the birdsong running throughout acts effectively as an 'atmos'. [An atmos is described in the course notes as the sound of silence on set or location. A room full of people sounds different to an empty room even if they are silent. There are always extraneous noises in any location. Record some minutes of silence to give options to fill gaps in dialogue - can also play with the level and quality of the background atmosphere in post production.]

Exercise: Listening

This exercise suggests going to somewhere very quiet (always tricky in London) and thinking about what can still be heard. I spent some time thinking about the sounds to disassociate them from the object that made it.

I would recommend the movie Berberian Sound Studio (dir Peter Strickland, 2012) for anyone thinking about this - it is about an English sound engineer, Gilderoy, (played by Toby Jones) working in an Italian Giallo studio. He has to create sound effects to match the action on the screens in front of him (which fortunately we never see). We watch Gilderoy, pale with disgust, stabbing cabbages and ripping stalks from vegetables to create sounds of hair being ripped from a woman's scalp etc. 

Having recorded some of the ambient noises within earshot, I tried to use other sensations to describe the sounds:

• Flavour/smell (thinking like a wine taster)
• Colour
• Emotion
• Physical texture

Bird song
Sharp; pointy; happy
Jewelled; citrus; sweet; tangy
Undulating texture
Festooned; yellow-green; lime
Fresh

The fridge
Grey; octagon
Salty; ocean smell
Tense/boring
Rough

Car engine on nearby street
Linear shapes
Bland
Metal-smell
Industrial
Anticipation
White

Kitchen noises (someone unloading a dishwasher)
Fractal
Spicy; chilli peppers
Uncertainty
Firm; unyielding texture
Blue light
Petrol fumes

Angle grinder in workshop next door
Zig zag shape
Parmesan taste
Industry
Silver
Sawdust smell

Sounding of a power sander
Orange
Pointy mesh
Zest
Hot oil smell
Anxiety

It was interesting to see from other student comments that some similar themes come up (sound of a beach and the taste of parmesan!)

Exercise: Atmosphere

I have played around with a few ideas here and will continue to do so throughout the course. It is quite time-consuming though and I am anxious to keep moving forward, so will restrict this post to "Oh what a beautiful morning".  

The key thing I wanted to capture was a lovely bright morning with that pregnant sense of anticipation of all that they day may bring. At the weekends, I usually go into to the garden first thing to soak up those quiet moments and I think this segment works quite well here:




The soft focus on the water was to convey that early morning sleepiness, water to associate with showering and getting ready for the day. The plastic heart with wings was to include some enthusiasm and energy, contrasted with the slow sway of the clothes on the line and the gentle breeze shown in the foliage shadows on the newspaper.

If time, budget and equipment were no issue, I would love to capture London waking up. I always enjoy the buzz around the markets and shops opening as I walk to work. Similarly, all the street sweepers in Havana clean the squares immaculately while it is still cool and empty, the calm before the storm.

I have looked at the great work of some of the other students and found it inspiring, as always. 

I particularly like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yKMsswAgbU#t=35
The shadows work so well to create tension and anxiety.

My mantra at the moment is just to keep practising and experimenting.

It is very clear that lighting is absolutely essential - as with all photography. I need to be vigilant about what light is available and what I can add/subtract/reflect and I must be as creative as possible to make that work to achieve the required atmosphere.

Video of venue interior

This was a little experiment for work. We needed a video to show the interior of a new venue we are using for a conference so I got my camera on a dolly and whizzed around. It was fun.  I tried various light sources but it all got a bit Blair Witch so I kept it simple.

Reflections on tutor report from Assignment 2

The headlines from the my tutor’s feedback on the second DFP assignment are:

“I feel that this is pretty successful in achieving that major aim of the assignment to get you to make a short film that creates an atmosphere from the visual elements in the shooting.”

“I think you need to ask yourself if the movie itself in total tells us something we don’t already know, or at least think we know …does it tell us as much as it could about being that particular wheelchair user; could it be even more personal? It may be that you need to exaggerate or repress certain elements to achieve this, even to totally inventing something to do it.”

I think I understand what Peter is getting at here and, although I cannot immediately think of how I could have achieved this specifically, this idea will help me going forward.

What seemed to work well…

• Ensuring that people do not feel sorry for Matt and avoiding comedic levels of anger or frustration
• Shadows from the blinds looking like prison bars to accentuate sense of confinement from disability
• Peter liked how there was no clue to Matt’s physical state in the first shot - I hadn't thought about this before
• Shot 3 – the view of the skirting board seemed to be a hit with everyone
• I seem to have managed to show the repetitiveness of the struggle but by creating new situations (eg shot 3 compared with shot 7) so not boring
• The choppy editing in shot 9
• The smoothing of the duvet over the red towel
• The feeling of confidence and control when Matt puts his music on (Peter thought it was acceptable for this to be considered as diegetic as it was not a soundtrack as such and did not have a major effect in setting the overall mood of the sequence.)
• The few seconds of contemplation at the end of the sequence

General comments

Re: having to edit down the sequence to fit within the timeframe: “Often tightening up is beneficial to the overall project, however long or short it is.”

Always have more footage than you need as re-shooting or filling in is not good.

“As you get more advanced in your audio editing – perhaps with more advanced software or simply more experience with what you have – you will be able to add different sound clips from sources other than the camera and/or recorded at a different time. This can give you much greater control.”

Areas to consider and develop

Whilst acknowledging that it is good to “make work about what you know”, Peter has suggested that as I progress I should “stretch that idea at least to breaking point and beyond!”

Shot 4 – view of the shower curtain.  The comments were:  “You might like to think about how this scene relates to all those other shower scenes that we are familiar with. Do these connections add to or detract from what you are setting out to do?”

I had wanted to build some anticipation and highlight our sense of voyeurism and I think this was partly achieved. I can see now that this might come across as a bit of a parody if the viewer was thinking of Psycho. And it is a rather overworked device, I suppose.

Action points

Peter was very supportive of my comment that I need spend a lot more time actually shooting and editing sequences. I need to set myself some targets for this, whilst leaving enough time to work through the exercises and keep on top of the mind-expanding theory stuff.

I have finally worked out how to add ‘labels’ to create a navigation menu. I have broken this down into: Assignments; Exercises; Experiments; Film reviews; Interesting links; Reflections; Research and Study visits.  This is already feels better – I can see where the weak spots are on my blog (although a lot of these areas have been covered in my handwritten log/course folder) and I have a renewed sense of purpose!

Suggested reading/viewing

BFI box set of films from the British Documentary Movement between 1930 and 1950 that are well worth studying:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/land-promise

For a different take on narrative, Carol Morley:

http://vimeo.com/33157806 and if you want to take her further The Alcohol Years dvd is worth getting.

The shorts made as music videos by Michel Gondry, many (most?) rely on animation techniques but are still worth analysing. E.g. :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S43IwBF0uM

Comments from fellow students:

Stuart:  I liked the film! I was constantly wondering whether your husband was ‘acting’ or whether he’s really like that every morning. ;) There’s a really strong sense of frustration and annoyance throughout the whole film. I loved the way you also used close-ups of the wheelchair to portray frustration - we didn’t always have to see Matt’s face. For example, getting his chair stuck on the corner edge of the wall and having to shuffle his way back and round again - the audience could see the markings on the wall where he’d had to do this before, so it helps build up the feeling of frustration because we can see that it’s something he’s had to deal with often. And the same with coming backwards out of the bathroom door, having to get the wheelchair perfectly aligned with only 1cm either side of each wheel in order to get out - and all done as close-up’s again. Great stuff!

I think the only negative criticism about it from me is the focus - but that’s the down side of filming on the 2-inch screen on a DSLR. There were shots where the depth of field was so shallow that it felt like the wrong thing was in focus. For example, I think in one shot the dof was so shallow that your husband’s shoulders were in focus but his hair was blurred. It felt odd to see his head out of focus. I’d have probably put the alarm clock in focus during the opening shots until your husband woke up. Then we knew for sure where the sound was coming from - even though I’m guessing you added the sound as foley, did you?

Nico: Just watched your film and I must say that you did a really good job on it. As you said in your notes you did not want anyone to feel sorry for Matt but every viewer would have sympathised with him, where we leap out of bed and not even think about simple things like getting into/out of the shower/bed/bathroom, he does exert more effort into those tasks than an able person. 

I love the low angle shot at flood board level when he comes around the corner, its a very graphical shot and the fact that he has to do a two point turn around that corner makes it even stronger.

I think the effort it takes to leave the bathroom scene is very strong too, as the viewer you almost want to reach out help. I think both lighting and the sound of the chair here really helps and it ends nicely too with the chair coming towards camera.

In the dressing scene the bright yellow wall and even the light coming through the blind lifts the scene and even though we see that Matt has to work a lot harder to get dressed it does not feel oppressive. 

I like your ending too, I am a big fan of silhouettes as they are very graphical.

One thing I would suggest and I only say this because it took me a long time to convince myself because I got so worried about composition that I never wanted to move the thing. Try and add a bit of movement to the camera, not on every shot, and when you do it just very subtly, less is more, it may not work on every shot and you may not even like it to start with but when it does work it feels like cinema. 

You should be proud of your film, its got good framing, your sound is good but I believe the best part of it is that you started with a very strong story and that is what makes this film so compelling. So well done.

Hannah Höch - Whitechapel Gallery

I do love a study tour and so, this morning, I braved the long and arduous (eight minute walk) from my flat to the Whitechapel Gallery for the Hannah Höch exhibition.

The weather was glorious so it was actually quite hard to drag ourselves inside but I am very glad I did.
  Höch (born in Gotha in 1889) was a leading light in the German Dada movement, which began around 1916, and is considered to be a pioneer of photomontage. I had found the promo image for the exhibition to be a little off-putting, as it seemed like rather crude and dated pop art, but this show is actually incredibly subtle, beautiful and intriguing (and big!). There is a lot to absorb and I suspect it requires a second visit to really do it justice.



The work is presented chronologically and begins with embroidery designs, rich colours and repetitive motifs with strong black edging, exploring compositional form. We can see the influence of Cubism and the pleasure the artist takes in abstract shapes and textures. This leads into the early photomontage work, which is surprisingly small and has a distinctly Expressionist feel to it. It is quite mechanical, jerky and industrial. Most images have human figures included, albeit from quite poor quality newsprint. The colours are very muted - browns, greys, washed-out reds. The elements have been swapped around, juxtaposed, deconstructed and recombined - "cobbled-together" as one contemporary reviewer commented. Here is a brilliant study of how photomontage can completely change the power dynamic (see especially the Staatshäupter - Heads of State).

Context can be altered, borders blurred; the perception of large and small can be entirely different according to viewpoint, all on the "strength of imagination".

  As the body of work progresses, we see more of a focus on the position of women and ethnic minorities in society. The collection entitled From an Ethnographic Museum shows statues and carvings spliced with female body parts on plinths and other presentation devices. We are challenged (confronted?) by this work, whilst sensing the disempowerment and lack of control being conveyed. The resulting creations are monstrous but also beautiful. Some parts of the images are delicate and fragile, others immense, solid, androgynous, alien. We are disarmed and unnerved by these visions of women, with totemic heads and carvings for torsos, emerging from the apocalyptic fires of the war, disfigured and damaged, confined, reconstructed but with dignity still. 



In the group discussion, there was a suggestion that the portraits focus on aspects not always revealed in other mediums. Someone made a good comparison with the Marc Quinn Alison Lapper Pregnant statue, featured on the plinth in Trafalgar Square from 2005-7. One of the tutors mooted the idea that it may be possible to say in collage what can be more difficult in paint. We noticed that there is no direct eye contact in these images, the gaze is always looking back or to the side. We also discussed the size of the pictures. There would have been technical restraints on scale but even many of the later works are still no bigger than A4-A3 sized. This makes for a much more intimate viewing. We are drawn in close, to delight in the intricacies of the photomontage.



I did mention, with regard to the piece The Sweet One, that there may have been a fertility motif as the (different-sized) hands were pointing to the womb area bit everyone else pretty much looked at me blankly. There was also a small discussion about why I was wearing eye make-up, which I felt might not end well. Not with my feminist rage and all that… Luckily, the conversation quickly changed tack.



We moved on to study the piece High Finance and discussed the mechanical feel, the human form as part of a machine, robotics, the emasculation of men within a repressive state. One of the tutors, Gerald Deslandes, suggested we should keep Lena Riefenstahl in mind as we assess the work and consider the political context (particularly survival strategies during WW2).



Heading upstairs, we were able to leaf through reproductions of Hoch's scrapbooks. These are hundreds of assembled images, without any annotation or rigid groupings, which provide a great insight into the visual culture at that particular time. This second room represents the artist's work during the war when she was married to a businessman/pianist called Kurt Matthies. There is mention of her effectively hiding out on the outskirts of Berlin where she was not recognised and no one knew of her self-described "lurid past as a Dadaist". This was clearly a dangerous time for artists and some of the imagery in this space shows figures wearing masks and image titles such as Point of View. 



The introductory text to the final room stresses how much Höch revisited and reassessed her work after the war. This was an era of new freedoms and she used this time to explore modes of abstraction and to question her own artistic heritage. There was also change in consumer culture, with material items and art and other forms of entertainment being more readily available for the masses.

The gallery displays a quotation on the wall about twelve years of misery under a barbaric regime and a newfound calmness of the soul. The work reflects this wonderfully - softer and lighter imagery, much less industrial and oppressive. The creations are more abstract and there are fewer discernible human figures. The storytelling is dreamy and figurative - we see striped socks, musical notes, lily pads looking like spaceships, fireworks and dandelions, waves, breezes. The collage elements feel much more part of the natural landscape and the organic world - 'a continuity of life' as Gerald observed.

There are some motifs from her earlier work but as Höch herself says, "every imagination has recurring obsessions". The colours are more vibrant and playful with lots of serene blues and greens alongside dramatic, almost Fauvist, accents. Titles include Moonfish, Spindle's Dream, Poetry Around A Chimney. There is still ambiguity, but more depth, more light, more curves. The work is sensuous - one image actually looks like raspberry ripple ice cream - and seductive. The optimism is inescapable.



There was an interesting discussion amongst the group about the framing and how it raises the status of a work. We wondered how it might have been presented at the time and how this may have differed from contemporary male artists (such as Max Ernst). One of the tutors commented that if you look at Höch’s final Life Portrait, we can see that she doesn't really acknowledge her own borders. The work creeps out of its own space and is overlaid with images within a new context. We also contemplated the high technical quality of the work, compared with modern results from Photoshop. Some of the images are so painterly and abstract, so perfectly rendered, that it is actually hard to identify them as collages.


 

Contextualisation

• 
Everyone agreed that these images are very filmic. There is a strong sense of the 'before and after'. We look at some of the human cut-outs and can imagine stock film animation. These are fragments of ongoing moments. 


• The Höch scrapbooks reminded me of the value of obsessive image collection, which can be so inspirational, especially during those darker times. I have made a note to use my Pinterest boards more effectively to explore textures, colours, subject matter, lighting, specific themes etc and also to use those collections to feed back into my work more.


• There seem to be some similarities in the process of creating collage with film editing - the cutting up, moving and sticking down. New contexts and viewpoints. The alienation of the elements but leading to a new reality. I feel I really should try collage to explore this more. I must garner good glue suggestions! I asked in the gallery what Höch would have used and the consensus was: horse.


• It was interesting to think about the films Höch may have been exposed to - particularly around the late 50s. There seems to be some clear influence from the sci-fi genre, which included War of the Worlds (1953). Höch’s Angel of Peace was also possibly partly inspired by Metropolis (dir Fritz Lang, 1927). Very Berlin! I have not really given much thought in the past to how the new sci-fi books and films would have been so powerful at the time. Scary but seductive. Definitely something to look into in more depth.


• Other artists to check out in more detail:  Kurt Schwitters; Christian Marclay; Elizabeth Price; Louise Bourgeois; Richard Hamilton.
• Look at John Stezaker's work again.

Other thoughts from the day



The Simon Willats room smelt weird - possibly due to the old records and plastic presentation materials. Not sure it was a deliberate attempt to capture Eau de Tower Hamlets but it seemed to fit with the subject matter. I wondered if his has happened before/often where scent is added to a visual exhibit to enhance the senses. Obviously smells are very difficult to capture or simulate - I would be interested to know when new technologies will crack this.



I wasn't really moved by Kader Attia's work. It was themed around the Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob's Ladder. I like his provocation: "The biggest illusion of the Human Mind is probably the one which Man has built himself: the idea that he invents something, when all he does is repair." And I did enjoy climbing up the little wooden stairs to look into the infinity mirror (things like that always remind me of Yoko Ono's art installation which sunk the hook for Lennon). But I found the presentation of the books to be a bit annoying. We can't touch them but neither can we see all of the covers or inside any of them. And the cabinet of curiosities just didn't seem to say anything new or interesting. So, um, yeah, guess what? Apparently, books and objects have historical significance and carry memory and culture with them as our knowledge develops through science, anthropology, politics and physics…

I did see a set of Wim Wenders postcards in the shop with a great title: "Places, strange and quiet". It almost makes me want to do the Landscape course for OCA Level Two...