Monthly Archives: August 2018

We’ve finished! First things first, we had to change one of the locations. My initial choice was too difficult to get to and shoot within the timeframe we had, so I shifted it to another place on my first brainstorm we did in class, Alexandra Gardens.

As it stands, I think it the recipe we made worked well, though it wasn’t fantastic. The audio recording seemed to be a bit tacked on, and in practice it wasn’t conducive to getting many good audio files. Perhaps that was just because I wasn’t imaginative enough when trying to write down the list of things I would hear while watching the video, or perhaps the steps themselves need some tweaking. I’m leaning towards the latter though, because the list of visual elements that stood out to me while watching couldn’t have come any faster.

So what worked well in the shooting? , the specificity of the list is really effective. It’s a very detailed step by step procedure that made it incredibly easy to follow, and replicate. That was important, because I wanted to ensure that the footage captured at both locations was as similar as possible, which we definitely achieved. There was a really good number of wide shots and close ups to vary it up, and the videos edited together really well because of this I feel.

What didn’t work? Well as I said, the audio could have been more comprehensive. Perhaps if we had a more thorough exploratory phase for the audio recordings. Maybe rather than thinking things up, if we just recorded everything we can hear while sitting in the space. Perhaps that would have been more conducive to gathering the recordings. I also think we probably should have grabbed a tripod, because occasionally there was a bit of shake in the shoot.

As for the actual edit room, we sort of stumbled into an idea that I think worked really well. We decided to bring the two places together by editing them into each other. We wanted to put the two spaces inside of one another by layer the videos on top of each other and editing parts out so that the bookstore appeared to be in the park and vice versa. I think, limited editing skills withstanding, that the actual concept really is something that could be interesting to further explore in my next assessments. It creates a rather surreal experience for the audience while watching, especially in the shot with the shelf and the city as a background. It really looks like thats the view from the window of the bookshop which I think is a really strong effect as it isn’t really noticeable. Audio wise, I actually really like the music that was playing all the way through. Its just the song that was playing while I was shooting in the bookshop, but I think it really blends the two spaces together. Having the music from the shop playing and the audio from the park playing right the way through definitely helped to merge the spaces into one, coherent, surreal location.

In order to maintain consistency across all shots for this project, and to ensure we collected enough footage, we created a “recipe” of what to shoot/record. In the first draft, Hannah noticed that it was incredibly visuals focussed, with no mention of what to do when recording audio clips. I thought this showed a real bias in my filmmaking preferences that I hadn’t thought about, but is now obvious to me considering how I always think about film. I tend to notice striking visuals, interesting camera angles etc. This is probably because cinematography and direction are what Im most interested in career-wise, however I still definitely need to work on incorporating audio into my planning of projects in the future.

The first part of the recipe is straightforward… Namely, what I need to have physically with me on location. We decided to use the same camera for our videos which will hopefully keep it consistent.

The method is where it became very visually driven. Originally, steps 10-12 were not on the list, which would have made for purely visual recordings. Hopefully we have added enough audio in that will enable us to get some great sound recordings as

well, as initially it would have limited us to basically just using the sound we captured while shooting video.

In terms of actually editing whatever we get after our shoot, I am thinking that we will still stick with our contrasting elements idea, though we think its probably best to just wait and see what kind of footage we get, and what kind of ideas jump out at us in the editing room.

This Post is just an Idea of the kind of overlay we could use in our project, if we decide on having voiceovers. I think having this play over the top of visuals of the football oval/surrounding parks could create an interesting experience. The audience would be seeing the physical space I have chosen, while hearing me talk about my emotional connection to it, rather than just describe the place.

It would be interesting to see what the audience notices when certain things within the shot (and some extraneous things mentioned perhaps not even in the shots) are touched on and given emotional significance.

I miss the rush. Before I even go outside. The adrenaline. The later in the season the better. There isn’t really a comparable feeling in everyday life. Its cold out there, I could be terrible, what if they’re better, what if I get injured. So many thoughts race by, but the only one that lingers is “what if we lose”. Nothing feels worse. Is it strange to be driven by that? I love winning, but I hate losing more. Once I’m on the field, it all just falls away. The crowd is there, but you don’t really hear them. You still feel the adrenaline,  but you aren’t thinking about winning or losing anymore. Not really. You’re just playing, and that’s what I miss. For an hour or two every week, nothing else matters. It just consumes you. The only thing that you think about, is getting to the next stoppage. Keep running. Run harder. Don’t drop this. Good lead. Great hit up. The moment you’re in is all you focus on. Your lungs feel like they’re going to burst but that doesn’t matter, because you need to keep going. If we won, it made my week. I’d feel great. If we lose, it hurts. If it was close, it takes days to get over it. If we lost a final, it took weeks.

In class today, we had to do an audiovisual project combining photos with the spoken word. For our project, I like the idea of overlaying visuals from one place with audio from the other. That would work well if we do end up focussing on the idea of disjointed, dissonant audio and visuals discussed in my first blog.

Even if we don’t end up overlaying opposite audio and video, I think the spoken word could add an interesting layer to this project. Having a voiceover address what isn’t visible in the shot is a really intriguing way of making a more involved experience. The Audience hears things they can’t see being described by the voiceover, and that makes them imagine what else is in the location that isn’t in that shot. I think it might be a good way to add depth to whatever we end up shooting at our locations.

We also focussed on how text impacts the visual elements when they aren’t really related, or at least, when the text doesn’t describe the picture directly. One such example was Blind Spot by Teju Cole. One particular image stood out to me; Capri. A photo of the Mediterranean sea littered with boats sits on one page, a quote from the Iliad and some descriptors of the “fleet” sits on the other. What initially stood out to me as a calm, relaxing image of Yachts, shifted into a chaotic, rapid, almost military-like image because of Teju’s text. It doesn’t really describe the image, it just shapes what the audience notices. The reference to the Iliad, the term of an “apparition of a shining fleet” and the quote “We know about these beautiful waters that have death in them” all helped shape and change what I initially saw. This furthers the point that text can be a very useful tool when trying to influence the noticing of the audience, which I think could be used for our contrasting audio-visual experience.

References:

Cole, T. (2017). Blind Spot. New York: Random House, Capri.

I hadn’t even selected my location yet but I had a sense of what I wanted to do in the final edit. I’m honestly not sure how it would work/play out, but I have an idea of juxtaposing the sound and the images throughout the video. At first glance of the assignment, I just wanted to have footage from one location, and then  audio from the other. Trying to match these contrasting senses would have been interesting in the edit room. But upon reading the assignment, we need to at least attempt to use basically everything we capture. So a revised plan might be to use video from both location, but split the audio from the visuals and cross them over. Whenever one location is being visually shown, the sounds from the other is being played underneath. I think this could create a sense of dissonance  in the audience which might be interesting to play with. I think this would work especially well if the locations chosen are very contrasting. For example, one of the locations I’m thinking about choosing is an outdoor park. Playing sounds from an inner city urban area with trams/cars/people etc over visuals of a calm, quiet park might create an interesting juxtaposition for the audience. This would definitely be fun to play with, trying to create a disjointed experience, and leave what makes each sound up to the audience’s imagination. Having them paint the picture of what kind of place the sounds are making and how it differs from what they are visually experiencing would be an intriguing audio-visual project. This particular format would also give us a pretty straight forward formula to follow while in the editing process, which I think could really speed up the work we have to do.