Development on Experimental Sound Writing

Following my experimental sound free-writing, I decided to try and develop this scenario and re-write it, but focusing more on what the sounds of the world are like around him.

To do this, I looked up some photos of 40's New York as a kind of reference point:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056415/Stunning-images-1940s-cast-spotlight-New-York-Citys-Radical-Camera.html

Here is my piece:

A light footed man is walking at a leisurely pace, his shoes clacking on the floor from the hard material on the sole. The light squeak suggests new leather, he must be fairly well dressed. The muffled long inhale and relieving exhale as he draws on a cigarette doesn't hide the distant sounds of cars. He passes a building with many people gathered outside, laughing and joking with a dull hum of bright lights from a sign as he passes underneath it. A small sigh as the joy is taken by his greatening distance, and the sudden wind with its high pitched chill.  There is a fumbling of fabric as he attempts to wrap up warm, and his steps quicken. He slows, and an old door squeals as it is opened, with a light ring of a bell to follow. The door thuds closed and he saunters across an even louder surface. A chair scrapes as it is pulled and he slumps onto it, his elbows thud as they hit the wooden edge of a bar. A glass is almost immediately placed before him, followed by the sound of liquid being generously poured in. A long silence followed by a quenched sigh. Relief.

I quite liked this version better, and I can see how I could build up the layers of sound to create my scenario and my surrounding. Now I think I need to build a list of sounds I need and get out there and record some.

Image Glitching Plan and Presentation

After the tests I did on image glitching, I really thought that was the way to go on the whole glitching side of the process. I liked how random the glitches were and really helps me have as little control as I can over what comes out to convey what I want to.

However I still feel like that isn't enough. This is meant to be a series of 5 images, and as much as I like the image glitching on those images is a good idea, I also feel that displaying them all in one go with no extra effort put into my presentation may make my photographs lose some of their meaning. So at first I found a link to a tutorial of how to create a hacked codec of a file to create an image glitch in a modified version of ubuntu run from a disc, which can be found here:

http://nickbriz.com/glitchcodectutorial/files/GlitchCodecTutorial.pdf

However this tutorial is more about glitching video files, and although I could do this with another type of file, it still wouldn't give me the randomizing I want, and I don't have the skills to modify that tutorial myself, nor do I have the time to learn how to do so.

I googled how to randomize images in premiere as I could perhaps use video to display my photographs, however the comments on how good premiere is at handling images as opposed to other applications was not promising, and I was led to another piece of software called ProShow Producer, which is a picture slide show production program that comes with a multitude of features and has some impressive tools such as keyframing and masking, most of which you couldn't find in something like powerpoint. Here is the cheesy promotional video they made for it:

So for now, I am looking at how I could perhaps use this to present my photographs randomly (or at least seemingly randomly) to show my photographs for their true meaning, and from what I have read in forums surrounding what I want to do, it seems that there are a lot of options surrounding my idea.

Optical Illusions Further Film Research

After my film was chosen to be made on Tuesday, myself and the only other person in my group currently, Nick, met and discussed the idea. He seemed to like where I wanted to go with it and we decided to research more optical illusions and see what we could film. After having a look on the internet for optical illusions in the surrounding area that we could perhaps go an film (of which I could find none) I did find one that had been created in the local area that we could perhaps create a version of.

I love the simplicity of this one, and the photographer credited with this idea created a variety of these around the country, including Surrey.

I also came across a youtube channel featuring a wealth of optical illusions, with explanations of how and why they work. I love these because they use a variety of materials which offer a way for us to make our own illusions or at least use these in the re-appropriation part of the piece.

Now this is all well and good, but the aim of my piece is to show how little we see of the world based on how our brain incorrectly perceives it. When we see an optical illusion, it is because our brain is hardwired to try to make sense of the image it sees, finding patterns etc. Which is why an optical illusion appears to make sense, often in many ways, but ends up contradicting itself. 

So optical illusions are the tool, but the film needs something more to really run home the message. I was toying with the idea of hiding something in various points in the video, things the audience won't notice because they are focusing on the video. I feel like this would be something to give the audience a better understanding of the film by the end, and I've seen it work really well in other videos before. For example, the gorilla video and another video I saw many years ago:

It's just an idea, but I do think there needs to be another dimension to the film.

Experimental Sound Free Writing

As I have decided to make my experimental sound piece about a lonely place and trying to put the audience in that place. To do this I thought it would be handy to imagine that place and write about it to gain an idea of the sounds associated with that place. I did a little free writing exercise on that just to get the ball rolling which I will then refine and use as a basis for my idea.

Below is a basic list of ideas I thought I gathered from my little free writing piece, and it's something I can build and reflect on as I decide what sounds I'm going to need to make this piece a reality. I might also go out early morning over the weekend and record some sounds of the quiet just to get an idea of the sounds that a quiet, lonely place might entail in a physical reality as well as in my head.

Timings

Following Simon's advice about my project I had a little think about timings for my project and drew up some rough pictures in 3 stages of my project, so that I have some loose timings to work from when I do my rough cut of my multi-screen piece. (Please note that this is definitely NOT how my film will look)

If I follow this rough guide then it should make my life a little easier when it comes to creating a rough cut, so now I need to build my archive of footage and images to use so I can get cracking on this project.

Loneliness in Sound

As a result of knowing the back story behind the painting and having looked at what life was like at the time the painting was created, I decided to focus more on silence in sound and loneliness.

Edward Hopper said himself that the painting was subconsciously representing the loneliness of the city, and I think that is especially the case at that time in America's history. So, I took a listen to John Cage's 4'33" as I knew that it was an orchestrated piece consisting only of silence. I understand that he was attempting to get the audience to listen to their surroundings, and make them aware of the sounds around them. Silence in this way shows to be very effective.

In film also, silence is very effective. Most recently 'Gravity' uses the art of silence to replicate the lack of sound heard in space, only using sounds for dialogue, and when a character comes into contact with an object. Here is an article talking more about it:

https://suite101.com/a/john-cage-433-theories-of-sound-and-silence-a69123

For my piece I want to try and replicate the feeling that Edward Hopper was trying to create when he painted 'Nighthawks' and that is a lonely place. To do this, I want to try and think of a character to carry the piece and write out a descriptive piece of what they see, and what's around them to try and make out what kind of sounds are around them. My aim is to try and create an image of a place in the mind of the audience, but also to try and create a feeling around that place of loneliness, but not complete silence.

Further After Effects Training

Last Friday, Simon felt that we needed to be taught how to handle 3 screens in one composition to help us with our multi-screen piece.

To do this we made a ball bounce, learning how to make objects change position and change speed as they move across the screen using easing in and outs. Then we applied this same affect across three separate screens, later bringing those three separate comps into one large comp in order to time them properly and make sure they are precise. It's much easier than doing the guess work in separate comps otherwise and will save a hell of a lot of time later in our projects.

This was the result:

Reflections Film Idea

Concept

An observation of optical illusions and how they lie to us reveals how little we actually perceive correctly in our day to day life.

This films lacks narrative, and focuses solely on our perception of the world around us by the re-creation of various optical illusions, and revealing how they lie to us or rather how our brain lies to us.

The concept originally came from my exploration of why we remember, which led to scientific theory behind false memories that people may have and from that, how we actually perceive the world around us. It would seem that we have a selective perception, and we rely on our memory and our imagination to fill in the gaps of our perception, and so it's very easy for us to miss important details. 

Videos such as the one above demonstrate this idea very well, with about 50% of people being fooled by it.

Structure

The film will be shot using a variation of split screen, and mirroring to show the illusion, and also different perspectives of it that will reveal the lie of it.

The variety of optical illusions used will include;

• How you can look very large next to something bigger than you from far away (the moon, landmarks etc.)
• When a mirror looks like it goes on forever.
• When reflections on water seemingly reflect something perfectly.
• When a 2D object is made to look 3D
• The effect of looking through a kaleidoscope.
• Distorted vision, such as looking into a spoon/through a magnifying glass

The simplicity of the optical illusions means that it won't take too much time to set up, and will still be effective. However, revealing the optical illusions through a split screen is the most important part of the film, as it brings across the meaning of the film.

The inspiration for doing this film in this way comes from an exploration of how other films have handled this similar theme:
I came across a Honda advert that used optical illusions for a commercial use, also revealing the illusion.

I also came across a film from 1972 which deals with optical illusion in a digital, and hypnotic sense called Matrix III by John Whitney.

Overall my style looks to reflect the collage and collective style of Christian Marclay’s ‘Telephones’, but more upbeat with a use of split screen to demonstrate multiple perspectives on the same event.

[Updated] After kind suggestions from the comments below, I have had a look at the kind of pacing and visual style I want to have. Someone I knew at college made a film for his foundation in Arts & Media, and I really see the film holding this kind of style and pacing, and the use of mirroring gives it a kind of dynamic I want to get across in my film:

Also, with sound I was considering using vocals from clips discussing the theory behind perception and memory, as I know there are a lot out there overlapping one another in the background. However, I'm aware there's a danger it could become quite uneasy in doing so, so I might have to think about how I go about that quite carefully.

Field Recording

Our first recording lesson in experimental sound was very interesting. We learnt a lot about amplitudes, and the different types of microphones and their outputs. The main points I learnt from that part of the lesson were:

• The difference between cardioid, hyper cardioid, omni-directional, and bi-directional.
• That halfing the distance means doubling the gain when recording sound (Similar to the inverse square law)
• The different types of microphones that I will be using for my project, and what they are best suited for.

 In the second part of the lesson we went out in pairs to do some location recording of sounds that we found interesting. I found the exercise really interesting as it made you more aware of how the world around you sounds. Myself and Thomas went to a record shop and Waitrose to records some sounds:




This first one was the recording of the record shop. Tom flicked through some records and CD's, while I recorded him and a music video was playing in the background. I liked this, although I learnt that air was being pushed out to the mic and made a harsh sound as it did so, so I should have placed the mic further away.




This second one was in Waitrose, and I much preferred this one to the last as it gave a real sense of place because the sounds were exactly what you expected them to be. It was obvious the shop was busy, but the recording wasn't taken so loudly that it was over bearing.

Overall I really enjoyed the exercise, it showed me how technical taking a specific sound recording was and so it will help me make decisions based on what I learnt, when I come to do my own experimental sound piece.

Time Art Treatment

Proposal

This multi-screen piece is a foreshadowed view of the problems we face as human beings as we continue to try and overcome what happens naturally e.g. landslides, tsunamis, with the aim of demonstrating how our human approach to tackling nature is an inevitably impossible task.

                       

I will collect clips and images like the one above, demonstrating how nature destroys the world we have built to live in, and our solutions to these problems across our history.


With these I will then create some animated stills for increased effect and to give some of the images more ‘life’ but mostly edit them together as a collage of these ideas. There will be a good mix of older events and newer ones, to demonstrate how continuous our battle with nature is.

These two collage minute loops will sit on either side of my three screen piece and will be accurately timed to correspond with one another.

The middle screen will be an exploration of the extremities we could come to if we continue to deny, and work against natural events. Using Matte Painting  in After Effects, I aim to show the problems we have now, but on a grander and exaggerated scale.

Inspiration

I am interested in how nature works, and originally began my research looking at people who use nature as part of their art work such as Andy Goldsworthy:

            

His work very much works with the natural processes we see everyday, such as rivers running and the changing of seasons.

However, I was also very much aware of how humans have impacted on the natural world, and a large sense of human arrogance which involves the opinion that we rule the planet. I simply did not agree with that, and saw how that was shown in erosion of our architecture through time.

I looked at erosion rates of monuments around the world such as the Great Pyramids of Giza, and the Colosseum in Rome, both of which are things I have seen with my own eyes and have a great understanding of.

   

I had found a couple of triptychs which shared a similar theme to the one I was exploring:

This first one had an interesting use of juxtaposition between rural, beautiful locations and the dark, grey urban world that a lot of us live in. It gave a sense of large space that nature occupies, in conjunction with the often claustrophobic environment associated with modern life.

The second one is a collage across three screens that explores industry surrounding the sea over time. It has a mix of modern and old clips, referencing war and achievements in new technologies. It shows a real admiration for this industry, which goes back to very early in human history, especially across Europe.

Tests

As Matte Painting is a main part of my piece, I looked up a tutorial on set extension and Matte Painting on Video Copilot as I didn’t have much experience in it:

I can see how it would be fairly easy to apply this effect to my project as long as I can source good images and footage to use.

Another tutorial I did as part of a class exercise was animating a still:

This tutorial I found useful as I continued my research, this is also easy to apply to my project and use it to add some effects to my collage images to make them more realistic, and more believable. Also, I could use them in part with my Matte Painting if I wanted to.

Schedule

The first week (commencing Mon 17th Feb) will be spent sourcing my images and footage, organising them accordingly and reviewing them, making decisions on which ones to use.

The next week I’ll start work on the collages, looking at the footage and making decisions on whether to use the technique of animating a still in After Effects. I will spend most of the week in After Effects I imagine, but I hope to have a rough cut put together in premiere, ready for my matte painting work.

After that, I will spend time on my matte painting, referencing the work I have done the previous week to make sure they work together. I will also be referencing matte painting tutorials to aid me.

I expect the last couple of weeks to be matching up the timing of the three screens in after effects and premiere, getting a tight cut on them and making sure all the effects work properly, reviewing their effectiveness as I go.

Requirements

• Adobe After Effects
• Adobe Premiere
• Matte Painting Tutorials: http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/matte-painting-destruction--psd-13214 http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/set_extensions/ http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/alien_surface/
• Animating a Still Tutorial: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/animating_a_still/

Leading the Eye Mk II

My post about leading the audience's eyes in a film last week still remains a strong part of my idea for my film, but after my tutorial with Leah today I realized a few problems with my film; when I pitch it the film will no longer be a surprise to the audience who will be assessing it, and also I feel as if the sequence in which I film this will be quite technically complicated.

While this is a good thing, I thought I'd take a look at a few other areas to explore how I could really demonstrate the points I want to show. I did a few searches about leading the eye in film and I came across optical illusions. It surprises me I hadn't been led to this through my research previously as it is so relevant to my topic.

Although this one is very creepy, it is interesting. I wanted to see how this was done and the science behind optical illusions when I came across this video of optical illusions in film-making with a very brief explanation into why this happens:

I then went and had a look at a few others online.

Re-Anactment Film

A few weeks ago I was given the task to make a re-enactment of an event in history that has been mediated by film. Now, from what I understand of re-enactments is that they can be so much more than just a retelling of the story.

I wanted to do something that showed a different perspective than perhaps people at the time had before, so I decided to do something in living memory. Also, I wanted to do something positive as I am fed up of being a negative creative.

The most important thing for me here was the sound. I've always had a consideration for how sound can affect an audience so I focus on that a lot in my projects. As there was no dialogue, and the visuals themselves were fairly disorientating my film relied quite heavily on the audio for clarification of the perspective we were viewing the event from.

Matte Painting.

Following my tutorial with Simon on Friday, I agreed to look at more personal and relevant matters surrounding nature and human beings. He mentioned matte painting, which I had a little experience of and it gave me an idea of perhaps I could create an image of what could happen if we continue to ignore nature and think we can overcome it. I thought perhaps that I could use examples of what is happening currently and take it to an extreme to make a point. To do this, I did a tutorial from video copilot in matte painting for set extension.

Here is the original footage:

And here is the final outcome:

After doing this tutorial I can see the amount of time it takes to do an effect like this, and it was actually less complicated than I thought it would be. It gives me a bit of reassurance on the timing front, and also I like the effect it gives. It's not quite photo real, but if you work at it rather than do a quick tutorial like I did, then it should look pretty good.

I think next I'll research lots of examples of the kind of natural events I am talking about that involve destruction of human property and such to see how I can use this in my piece.

Life in 1942.

In my previous post I highlighted that I wanted to find out more about America in 1942 to gain context on the Edward Hopper painting. 

1942 was a dramatic year for America, with lots of things changing due to entering the war in Europe after Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Rations of gas and food were introduced, as well as war bonds, which encouraged American citizens to buy bonds of money to raise more for the war effort.

Hopper already said (as I have mentioned in a previous post) that he felt he was trying to paint the loneliness of a big city, and this may be heavily influenced by the changes at the time. I also feel that looking at the painting shows the emptiness of the city, which may represent the many people that suddenly disappeared from the homeland to join the war effort abroad. Of course, the life at home changed as people were expected to help the war effort on the home front, with an emphasis put on farming and manufacturing weapons and vehicles. 

It seems to me that 1942 was a troubling, and exciting year for Americans at home, and this may have had an effect on the production of this painting. The idea of loneliness in a big place is interesting to me, and I could start exploring that core theme further in sound.

Research Noir

From what I can sense of Nighthawks, it has a very film noir feel to it with what the people are wearing, the setting and the way the light falls. I wanted to see whether that had already been some noir pieces inspired by this painting, but all I could find was a very surreal adaptation of one of his other paintings:

Although it wasn't directly related to my topic, I thought it was useful to post anyway.

Upon researching more about Edward Hopper inspired pieces I remembered the cover from 'in the wee small hours' by Frank Sinatra. This shared a similar style to the Hopper painting, despite being released some time after the creation of Nighthawks.

There is also some speculation that Nighthawks may have gained some inspiration from 'The Night Cafe' by Vincent Van Gogh, based on the exhibition of this painting in conjunction with some of Hopper's own work and its exhibition in a gallery in New York, January 1942. However there is little evidence as of yet that I can find to support that.

Next I think I'd like to look at the time the painting was painted at, to see what life was like in America at that point and gain a bit more understanding of the context of the painting itself.

Restoration Processes.

In advance of my tutorial with Simon tomorrow I tried to build up my ideas further to something a bit more conceptual. My base idea in my last post was ok, but it needed a lot of work. I started looking at some multi-screen work based around the topics I wanted to explore within time and I came across these:

This one was quite similar to the ideas and themes I was looking at in the sense that it focuses on nature and modern industrial society in conjunction with one another. It starts of by showing beautiful footage of nature and juxtaposing it with industrial footage, and supported by sound clips regarding climate change. It gets its point across very simply, and I found it quite effective.

This second piece focuses more on elements of sea ventures across time. It includes periods of happiness, and war, destruction, and construction as well. It is clear that it focuses mainly on the sea and is a very engaging and interesting piece.

By this point I have an idea of what I could do to develop my piece further. My piece wants to mainly look at architecture and natural processes which lead to the eventual destruction of the things that humans construct over time, despite our attempts to preserve this. However I didn't want to present this in a confrontational way, rather as an observation. As such, I want to try and give a sense of natural cycles within the piece as well. I feel it will make my work flow and loop quite smoothly. To do this, I had a look at my starting point landscape, which is the desert if I am to start with the pyramids.

http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

Looking at the link above you'll see evidence of greenery growing in the desert due to increased rainfall. It happens in a natural process, eventually it looks like it will become a rainforest type area, then possibly changing to Savannah and back to desert. I was very interested by this and thought I could incorporate this into my piece. However, I also wanted to of course demonstrate humanity in all of this too, since this all stems from a distaste of human arrogance.

So after all of this, I have come up with a development of my idea explained below:

Left

Begins the piece with desert and pyramids (animated still)

Pyramids dissolve/turn into dust (particle effect)

Dust travels off-screen

Desert changes to rainforest/greenery

Middle

Black for a couple of seconds, then a person walks on and starts hammering a piece of stone with a tool (you can only see hands)

As dust particles pass across, the person changes (changing eras)

At the end of the piece, the person also dissolves in the same way as the monuments do

Right

Starts as just a landscape, then a monument forms as dust particles come over to that side.

The monument then also dissolves and travels back towards the landscape on the left.

The landscape changes similarly to how it does on the left with natural processes.

-
That's essentially my idea. I've had a look at a couple of tutorials to see how I could achieve this, which I will post as well.

Leading the Eye

I've had a thought about what my film could be. After looking at how other creatures see the world, and what we miss when we see images, I think I could demonstrate this in a similar way to how the video with the gorilla does.

My idea is to record a situation, either a POV handheld scenario or filming a character and at first play it in real time. Then play it again in a split screen with that same situation slowed right down almost to a frame still, and have it slowly playing next to it. The idea here is that we will have hidden details in the original film that you may have missed in the real time version. The idea of this is to show you what you miss when you watch something, or indeed go through something in life. I want the audience to realize that what the eye actually sees and remembers in truth is very little. We rely very heavily on our expectations of what is likely to happen and just our plain imagination to fill the gaps in our memory, and as a result we see very little.

I think it's an interesting idea that could work very well and I may do some small tests and a bit more research into this technique to develop my idea a little more.

Development.

After having a think about my architecture/ nature idea, I needed to put something down on paper to try and develop this idea into something visual. Something Simon said in my tutorial on Friday made me consider having a symmetrical, rhythmic feel to my piece. This is what I have come up with so far:

Although it is hard to see and poorly drawn, let me explain my basic idea. My original idea was to have the pyramids on the left, slowly crumbling over time. I then had to consider the other two screens in this idea. I came up with the idea of perhaps using the dust of the eroded pyramid to travel across the middle to the right screen and build another monument. I could do this several times, however I wouldn't like it to become too repetitive so I have some thinking to do. Also, I would need to incorporate the middle screen somehow as well. As a basic idea I think it's got something in it, however it needs work.

Eroding History.

My idea of combining nature reclaiming with architecture begins with looking at erosion. I've already mentioned how the great pyramids of Giza have eroded significantly over the years, but I also started looking at how other buildings have done in terms of erosion.

The Colosseum was something I immediately thought of as, having been there myself, I noticed a lot of erosion while I was there. There are holes all over the walls of it where it has been subject to weathering over a long period of time. As the link below explains, cold temperatures in the winter cause damage to the building, and cause parts of it to crumble away. Also, with climate change, the increased amount of rain is damaging the ancient buildings in Rome.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_type_of_weathering_is_changing_the_Colosseum?#slide=1

Similarly in Egypt, the sand storms that occur in the desert are slowly eroding the pyramids and temples away. Also, because many of the temples and tombs are made from limestone, when it becomes extremely hot, the stone becomes more brittle and more vulnerable to breaking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15243118

If you follow the link above you'll see a story a little closer to home. Big Ben is starting to be tested by time as it had begun to lean ever so slightly. One theory of this is that the clay foundation is beginning to dry out, and so not as stable anymore. It currently leans at 1/16th of the lean demonstrated by the tower at Pisa.

This is all natural erosion I'm talking here, not even to mention the thousands upon thousands of tourists that are destroying these places bit by bit every year. It just goes to show that everything will eventually disappear. Even with restoration, erosion and change is a natural thing.

 

Cheesy Documentaries.

                                   

Following my ramble on Friday about the Egyptians and other ancient societies building temples and tombs with the idea that they will last forever, I watched a documentary about the discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb from the perspective of Howard Carter. Although it was very American and very overacted, something the actor playing Carter said really interested me:

They built with eternity in mind

I already knew this to an extent, but this documentary really put that into perspective for me. The mere fact that it took them so long to find his tomb, and the many that they have yet to find, such as the infamous Cleopatra, really goes to show how much thought was put into their construction.

Here's the video series if you want to watch it (split into 9 parts):

It's given me an idea of what I can do for my piece of work, but I think I need to go away and look at some more information on my subject matter, and try to find some after effects tutorials to support this.