This week I had another epiphany. While searching archive.org under a new search term that Blair thought of, I came across the missing piece for the found footage documentary’s uncomfortable, disconcerting soundtrack; this PSA from 1951 entitled “Duck and Cover”
I immediately went to work chopping and looping the 45 seconds of audio, cutting in the bigoted statements from politicians and the sounds of ocean waves and boat creaks creating a layered soundscape I knew would fit perfectly with the found footage I had already sourced.
We showed the layered audio piece to the class as well as the footage I’d already roughly pieced together and they thought that it would work well to convey the message we are trying to convey through this found footage documentary.
We also showed a rough cut of the footage Samantha and I had taken earlier in the week around the State Library and China Town, trying to show the many positive, neutral and negative layers of Melbourne. Blair did a great job editing together a rough cut of the footage as she had with the Palm Sunday March footage she and Samantha took earlier in the process. The class liked the footage but felt they needed to hear the finished audio as well to get a clearer picture of the whole documentary, which I definitely agree with.
On Tuesday this week Samantha and I interviewed another person, with questions more in line to our documentaries current state. Samantha did the same today with another person, and now I’m beginning to feel that the first person’s audio needs to be re-recorded or discarded. This shot footage documentary is taking quite the toll on our group. If we don’t figure out this audio soon…