Evaluation

For the practice project module we were given a brief to create a sound scape for 'a sense of place'. The sound scape should stand alone as well as accompanying a three minute experimental film. We were to record sounds using a Marantz recorder and film using a Sony Z1.
Me and my partner Bethany decided we wanted the sense of place to be a forest. We started brainstorming sounds that one usually hears in a forest. We decided that we wanted the sounds to have a eerie sort of feel to them as that’s the theme we wanted throughout our film.
We had a walk around Sheffield and found a small forest on the outskirts which seemed suitable to record sounds at.
We booked out a Marantz and went to record the sounds we thought we'd need such as; wind, twigs snapping, branches snapping, footsteps, heavy breathing and so forth. We decided to record at around 3am as there's less risk of noise pollution. The recording session didn't really go to plan, we didn't get many sounds as it was really quiet, the majority of sound we picked up was the wind and at some points it came across far too loud.
We decided to give it another go and went recording earlier in the evening at around 4pm. We got some good recordings of leaves crunching, footsteps, branches and twigs snapping and wind. We also decided to incorporate sounds of rushing water and wind chimes. From here we decided to start editing the sounds in soundtrack pro. We put together a rough cut of the soundtrack using the sounds we recorded.
We knew we needed more sounds to create a sound piece which could stand alone. We had a tutorial with Debbie and she listened to what we had put together. When listening to my sound piece in the tutorial I felt uncomfortable and displeased with it. Debbie said she thought the piece had potential and advised me to watch 'Aspect' by Emily Richardson. I enjoyed this film but I couldn't see myself making a film like it. I researched different films and pieces and read poetry which related to forests but I didn't feel like I could connect to anything. Creatively I was stunt for ideas and so was my partner, this is when we decided to abandon our idea and start new with something we both felt we could put good ideas and creativity into.
We decided to go back to the drawing board and think of ideas which we knew we could work with. From a young age ive always been interested in poetry from various writers and eras.   Howl by Allen Ginsberg (1955) was one of the main inspirations for our new idea. We looked at quotes from the poem such as ''I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness'' and this line was the starting point for us. We decided we wanted the sense of place to be 'The mind of an insane person'. I've always been interested in dark pessimistic films, art, poetry and music so it seemed like a perfect idea. Something I knew I could put a lot of imagination and creativeness into. I sought my inspirations from films such as Steve Pipers Televisual man(2004). I liked the sounds used in the film, I thought they created a dark and eerie tone. A huge inspiration was Shane Meadows' This is England 88 episode 3. There is a scene which shows Protagonist 'Lol' having her stomach pumped because she's overdosed on tablets. We see her life flash before her, childhood memories, trauma from the present day and scenes from a hospital and church. Ive also taken inspiration from Donnie Darko, the film has a rabbit creature which appears throughout. We wanted a creepy character to embody her split and tormented mind so we decided to use a rabbit mask to create a disturbing tone. We made a list of sounds we wanted to record:
 cku
heartbeats
hospital equipment
traffic
white noise
monologue
heavy breathing
laughing
splutter/ coughing
distorted crying (desperate, painful)
clocks ticking
We began to record sounds as soon as we knew what we needed. We decided to record the city centre of Sheffield at around two o'clock in the morning with the Marantz. We decided to go at this time as we thought we would get a better range of sounds than during the day. We luckily found a drunk man who was shouting a lot of strange things so we decided this could work within our piece. We also came across a group of club goers who were chatting amongst themselves so we recorded those aswel as other sounds such as traffic and ambulances. We recorded the hospital sounds from the museum of science and industry as we didnt know where else to get the sounds from. When we had recorded all the sounds needed we imported them to final cut pro and began to distort them using bit crusher and reverbing. I think reverb gave our sounds a more 'in the mind' feel as it made them sound echoed.
Looking at my work critically I feel ive captured the sense of place through the use of sound and mise en scene. Our approaches to the film were pure abstraction and personal view. We thought about, shape, colour and tone for some parts of the film. We used out of focus lights zooming in and out to create a pulsing set of images- this, I feel worked well with the heartbeat sound. Personal view was  an approach we took as the film is set from the point of view of the protagonist- it's her mind, every sound and visual we hear and see are what she is or has experienced. If I could change my project or start all over again I would definitely plan more in depth and leave myself enough time. Being honest I didn't plan proficiently and this led to me panicking a lot during the last week as I still had a lot to do. I still needed to get shots from certain locations and edit it all together. I think this is a learning curve as I know I will one hundred percent plan in depth next time it comes to making a film. I also wish I would have got more shots, when reviewing the footage on the camera I thought we had more than enough but when we got in the editing suite we realised that we needed a lot more. On the other hand this could work in out favour as we re-used shots which show flash back memories and it's gets us away from having a narrative which is something we didn't want.
Overall I think me and Bethany worked great as a team. We have the same interests and views on the film so I found it really easy to tell her if I didn't like something. Being twins it gives us an advantage as we are always together allowing us to have more time to think of ideas. We didn't really assign one another jobs roles we just decided to work together on most of the project. Bethany did most of the editing and I did the majority of camera work since she acted in the film. I'm glad we changed our idea as I think this one worked out for the best. All in all I like my film as I think it shows a lot of my film making style.

Props

We decided to use a prop throughout the film; a rabbit mask.
We feel like it adds a creepy element to the film, slightly disturbing and it shows her mental state. We see our protagonist change into the rabbit in various shots.

Recce

Arundel

For our experimental piece we wanted a location with an edgy, grungy vibe. We found a suitable place in Arundel. There was a group of run down houses with graffiti on the walls, broken sinks and toilet cubicles. The location fitted in perfectly with the 'sense of place' which is the mind of someone who's having a mental breakdown due to drugs and personal life eventually leading to an overdose. I was really pleased to find this location. We decided that when we film here we will use a fish eye lens to create the sense that it's a memory flashback.

Hospital

A friend of mine studies Occupational Therapy at the Collegiate campus and when telling her I wanted to film at a hospital she suggested I use the Robert Winston building's mock ward. I emailed the technitians of the building and they gave me filming permission. It looks just like a real hospital so it will ideal to film the scenes post overdose there.



Devonshire green skate park

We decided to film here because again it reinforced the grungy 'look' we want. With it's graffiti, and urban feel it's a perfect place to shoot some of our scenes.

29/11/2012

Today me and Beth went to record our sounds. We decided to record voices of the public in the town centre at 3am. We thought that the jumbled voices could work as 'voices in head'. Luckily we found a man who was slightly intoxicated and extremely happy to let us record his incoherent ramblings. When I listened to these sounds in soundtrack pro I was delighted with them, I used reverb and bitcrusher to distort the voices and give them an echo like effect.

A list of sounds needed:

• distorted voices
• heartbeats
• hospital equipment
• traffic
• white noise
• monologue
• heavy breathing
• laughing
• splutter/ coughing
• distorted crying (desperate, painful)
• clocks ticking

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.

JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

After wasting many hours in a cold wet forest waiting for sounds which never came, me and Beth decided to abandon our idea for the experimental. We listened to our sound piece in a tutorial with Debbie and although she stated it could have potential we ourselves just didn't know how far we could take the idea and make it into a film.
Panic arose and we started to get angsty that we were never going to think of a new idea. My new idea came to mind one lonely Saturday evening. Flicking through TV channels I came across a film I had seen about a year or so ago called 'Away Days.' The film is about football hooliganism in the thatcher era. One particular scene caught my attention a different way to what it usually would, with the sound piece still very much on my mind I began to listen and was interested in the theme of the scene. This scene shows the deuteragonist having a drugs trip. This got me to thinking what happens in the mind whilst the body is experiencing something so powerful taking over your body physically and mentally.
So our new sense of place is to be 'THE MIND'. Now I know it's not a 'literal' place but Debbie said our place could even be made up. I see the mind as a very powerful place, it's a place that holds your inner most secret thoughts and feelings, a place where all your memories are stored. I always connect sound with the mind, I don't know why exactly but I feel like sound is a major part of it. Narrations on your life, stream of consciousness even.
I want my sound and film to be based around the idea of the mind whilst loosing it's inhibitions and control. So I choose to present the latter at the time of a drugs overdose. I don't want to obviously state the protagonist has taken a bucket load of tablets or heroin or any other lethal substances. I want the audience themselves to understand that the protagonists mind is loosing control and something may psychically be happening to de-construct and lay out part of the human mind.

18/11/12
Today me and Bethany mixed together a range of samples we had collected using logic. We begin recording our own sounds on early morning Wednesday. We plan to record at around 3am as to reduce the risk of noise pollution from traffic and so forth. Once we have recorded the sounds we will layer them with the samples and create a 3 minute soundtrack exploring a journey through eerie woods.

Soundscape; sense of place.

Our first assignment is to create a 3 minute sound scape with the theme of 'sense of place'.
After weeks of brainstorming and looking for inspiration me and my partner Bethany have decided we want to use the sounds within a desolate forest.

When walking through a forest I found there are so many amazing sounds to explore. From the wind moving the branches, leaves and plants to animals, crunching footsteps, breaking of twigs and earth, falling branches, streams, rivers and echoes.
I want my piece to be sinister, eerie and dark so we decided to go for a personal view/ pure abstraction.
The film and sound will be from the point of view of the protagonist who has come to the forest to seek refuge from personal demons only to find his/her demons come to a surface in the forest.

Pipilotti Rist

Im really interested in the work of Pipilotti Rist.

Ive been watching her films a lot recently and she's always got me thinking and exploring different matters and thoughts when watching her video and audio installations. 

I LOVE her recurring use of vibrant colour and kaleidoscopic views.

'Sip my ocean' is my favourite piece by her, never has a film caught my attention so much, I literally couldnt peel my eyes away from my computer screen - I only wish id seen it at one of her exhibitions where it is projected using two screens to create a mirror like view.

The film rips us from our current whereabouts transports us into an underwater journey where we see objects such as tea cups, tvs, women in bikinis and a beautiful sea bed of corals and so forth.

A cover of Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' is played throughout the film. Pipilotti herself is the artist of the cover.

SIP MY OCEAN

At the moment I've found myself heavily interested in silent films. I was introduced to silent films at a young age- not by choice but by force from my grandparents who loved to sit and watch them. I love how silent films rely on music and actors over exaggerating their expressions to convey emotions, moods and tension.

Still from Nosferatu 1922

The music used in silent films are crucial as it sets the general atmosphere in the scenes without use of dialogue.

My favourite silent film is F.W Murnau's Nosferatu which is a 1922 German expressionist horror film.

Nosferatu contains many iconic images which often pop up in modern films today. The most famous scene being Orlok's shadow whilst he walks down the stairs.

Murnau uses lighting to convey the different atmospheres, for example the lighting appears to be darker at Count Orlok's castle and the over use of shadow is used to create tension and suspense and also enlarge Orlok's silhouette which deems the other characters inferior.

I think Murnau was well ahead of his time regarding his film making style. His use of lighting, sound and  mise-en-scene makes him one of the most important figures of the German expressionist movement.