Evaluation

Sound Project

When me and Conor first got the brief for sound we were quite interested in what the boundaries were of what we could achieve. We thought about what sounds around us interest us and what sounds we can make ourselves. Neither of us had ever made any work like this before and so we were initially unsure about how to approach it. After looking at artists such as Lauren Lesko and György Ligeti we saw that sound work really does vary and we could make of the brief what we could.

Both of us wanted to have some kind of narrative to our sound piece. I was interested in how we could represent indoor and outdoor sounds and maybe creating imaginary spaces where it is both at the same time. We thought about how we could represent a presence by using footsteps, breathing, and a heart beast perhaps? How could we show curiosity and exploration?

Originally we planned to have the character for our sound piece starting in a wooden structure such as a shed and from there the person would go on to travel through some woods and maybe through water as well. We also toyed with the idea of someone being chased in our work but left that in the end. We decided to have the sound of opening doors to signify a change of space, and that we were going to have at least three spaces; a forest/park, under water, and the city or some kind of stones building.

Conor and I booked out a Zoom after deciding what noises to record and went around Sheffield city centre and well as Eccestall road to obtain these sounds. Recording in the city was difficult at times because it’s hard to pinpoint a particular sound you want without getting all the other sounds of town in the recording as well. Another issue is the wind, it can be very windy in some areas of Sheffield and this made some of the recordings distorted. We recorded all the environments we planned to and also some extra ones we hadn’t.

Conor and I edited the recorded sound on Pro Tools, it was odd making a sound track for the first time  but I think we did quite well considering. We plugged the Zoom into the computer and transferred the sound files to the desktop, from there we opened Pro Tools and imported the files and made them into a clip list. After listening to all the files again and naming them all we began to discuss how to plan out and arrange our work into a narrative. We started with the sound of a door opening and closing then added the sound of someone walking up the stairs, then we faded in the sound of someone playing an accordion outside. This was our first instance of mixing indoor and outdoor sound. Then the character moved to a park where we added the sounds of footsteps and rustling bushes. The transition to the next environment was a bit different; you heard the sound of someone walking nearer and nearer a fountain then the sound of being underwater as if they had gone in. One of the sounds Conor recorded was the sound of him making whale-like noises under water, we used these sounds in the water section of our piece and added reverb to them so it sounded like some kind of mysterious creature.  

The critique for the sound project took place on the fifteenth of November. People liked the sounds for water in our work and the sense of different places but felt that the middle section wasn’t as strong as the other two. One person said they liked the use of reverb and the use of the door sounds. Another person said the echoed drops worked nicely.

After taking this into consideration we went back to our sound project and added more sounds to layer up and further develop the spaces we were trying to create through sound. We recorded more sounds such as whispering and dragging a penny along a guitar string and added these where appropriate in our work. I think the second edit of our sounds piece is better than the first. We have learnt how to use more effects such as equalising high and low frequencies and time lapse which we have now used in our final piece.

I feel that we have achieved creating a sense of journey and of separate places and environments but if I were to do it again I would record more sounds and make a story board and plan out the narrative more.

Experimental Film Project

Me and Conor were very excited when we were given this brief, there is so much freedom in experimental film so both of us were fall of ideas. We both wanted to make something edgy and maybe a bit sinister. I wanted to film mainly in a park or forest, I thought about using the children’s play park in Endcliff park, using the swings and monkey bars and such like.  I thought about filming leaves in the wind and filming in the dark in torch light. Conor was interested in using chemicals and showing violence in our work.

For the sounds to our film we planned to build on the sounds we had for our sound work and use more sounds such as metal on metal sounds and whispering.

We booked out a Canon XF100 and a tripod and (origianally) filmed in two separate locations, Endcliff Park and my house. At Endcliff park Conor filmed me with a hockey stick doing various odd things such as skipping around, wondering aimlessly, playing next to the river, playing on exercise equipment and walking over stepping stones. I then filmed Conor, running in the woods, jumping over logs and hitting tress. At my house we mainly filmed Conor, he smashed a pumpkin to pieces and smeared red food colouring all over his face then washed it off.

On the second day of filming we went to the park at night when it was dark, we filmed both of us interacting with the children’s play area. We filmed in torch light which was difficult but gave the uneasy effect we desired for our film. We edited this film work on Final Cut Pro and made it very chopped up and used effects such as making the image negative, speeding or slowing down clips, adjusting brightness and contrast as well as changing the colour balance and saturation.

I was very happy with how we edited this work and it was working really well however we did the encounter some problems. When it was time to put the first and second half of the film together we couldn’t re-connect the media files of the first part of the film because we couldn’t find the original footage files of the server or on our hard drives. This was very upsetting and meant that we had to re-film the first part of our film. However because it was so late on in the semester we didn’t have chance to re-film what we originally filmed so we filmed at my house and Conor’s what we could and made the most of it.

The technical difficulties that we had with the editing of our experimental film then resulted in us running low on time to do the sound edit so the sound wasn’t as refined as we would have hoped.

If I were to do this again I would check where I saved all my files and make sure I did it properly so I wouldn’t lose work again. I would also leave more time to do the sound edit as it is an important part of the film.

For the sound project me and Conor both recorded and edited and I think we worked well together and shared work equally. For the experimental film project Conor was cinematographer, I was directed and we both worked on editing and sound.