The concept of our piece was to go inside the mind of
someone who suffers from paranoia by using tension and unusual sounds and words
to highlight what paranoia really means.
We wanted to create paranoia as an actual sound by distorting our own recordings.
I thought this would actually make the audience know what we were trying to
achieve. By using colours and text
throughout our piece going from calm to a build up of tension to total paranoia
worked hand in hand with our audio and worked to tell a day in the life of
story. We didn’t want the piece to be completely paced especially when the
character is paranoid to represent a real mind and jumbled thoughts when he’s
paranoid.
My influences for this piece come from watching shows such
as Bedlam on Channel 4 and films such as Black Swan and also the pieces watched in seminars. It influenced me to
create what a sense of place means to someone who is vulnerable and
uncomfortable. These examples both had a really distinctive effect on me that
interested me into using this topic and using extremes.
Bedlam specifically focuses on real life people who have
problems such as paranoia so this really helped me to sympathise and get in the
mind set to create sounds that would be accurate and what paranoid people
actually think when they’re vulnerable and nervous.
Black swan uses really distinctive extreme sounds which made
me think about using a specific sound that I think represents paranoia as a
whole. I thought that this would be a really unusual and distinctive
sound. Also, watching pieces in class
such as “Telling Lies” and “Tunnel Vision” really made me go in depth and think
about how the sounds should stand out. By constantly watching and listening to
experimental work I feel I developed my own knowledge.
“Telling Lies” I felt really inspired by this piece in particular as
it showed what the character was really feeling rather than saying which is
similar to my piece as the emotions and words are what he really feels rather than
what is obvious around him. In my piece – how the character reacts in the
coffee shop which is a normal setting for people without paranoia.
I didn’t really have a specific audience as paranoia is
something anyone can have and is a popular disorder people can relate to. I
thought that however, this piece would be suited more to a mature audience e.g.
18+ as paranoia is a subject that can be triggering. I think this would raise awareness to people
without paranoia as someone you see in the street could be panicking and
feeling really paranoid so this piece would work well with a normal mature
audience. I took a simple audience into consideration and
hopefully the piece makes people sympathetic towards paranoia and how other
minds can work. It should really shock and make the audience feel tense as they
listen to the breathing and silence and the distortion. I think that this worked well and when the
audience listened they received the emotions I wanted.
When listening back to the finished audio piece it was very
obvious to me that a lot of things weren’t working. This told me that I needed
to keep playing the audio over out loud as I had missed some crucial factors in
creating a paranoid story. In our first crit we realised some of our sounds
were not playing and this was because the sound levels were not loud enough. I
was disappointed that this happened and made sure for future reference to check
the levels out loud. Another thing that wasn’t successful was often how
repetitive some sounds were I ended up taking these out after the crit. They ended
up being too noticeable and making our story repetitive especially as the character has
phases. This made our piece not have build up which was really important to
us. We made lots of changes to the piece
and I do feel like the piece works well and tells a good story now but upon
reflection we needed more sounds to work with and we really needed to push
ourselves to try new things regarding being experimental. We stayed too safe
when figuring out how to tell the story and I feel that there still isn’t
enough tension or build up in the audio.
The sounds and final edit do sound good and the theme is really
apparent.
The video feedback was really positive and overall, I feel
that the video was the most successful part and only needed a few changes. The
audience really understood what we were trying to achieve which enabled them to
give us really useful feedback. I do think that the audio did slightly let down
the video as there wasn’t enough sound build up and tension to match the words
and colours on screen. Upon reflection, I would definitely try and change some
of the transitions but as this was a first attempt I felt it still worked well
but it wasn’t exactly as visioned.
If I could make the piece again I would give myself more
planning time and think about how to create certain emotions and how to build
up. I would also push myself more to try
new things using software e.g editing the words differently on the video. I
would make sure to have contingency options for anything that could potentially
go wrong and make more time to create the project. I think I stayed too safe as it was my first
project but I have a lot to reflect on for the future.
In the sound phase my primary role was editing the recorded
sounds. I worked using Soundtrack Pro rather than Pro Tools as I was more
confident using this software, however I think I should have pushed myself to
use new software and learn as I create. I also encountered problems with exporting the
sound and getting it to burn on to a disc but I also felt I didn’t leave enough
time for errors such as these. I rushed too much towards the end and this had
an effect on the piece when playing it to an audience. We went back to this and
made sure to take planning into more detailed consideration. Editing went well and
I used some advanced techniques and taught myself how to use the recordings in
a new way to create atmosphere. What I did on soundtrack was put audio on
different layers (atmosphere, distortion and ambience.) This helped me know what
sounds were where. Here our screengrab.
As you can see,I used the distortion effect on Soundtrack
Pro and applied it to a clip of recorded ambient sound. I originally wanted to
reduce the noise on this clip but after some trial and error with the clip and
the noise reduction taking too much of the sound out I heard this through using
distortion. By twisting the knobs on this effect to different levels and
playing it back you can see how I created the static empty sound that represents
paranoia in my piece. This improved my
piece and added strange effects that worked well. However, I feel that I should have rectified the problem with
the noise reduction.
The sound was clear and crisp and you could clearly hear the
sounds and after boosting the sound levels they sounded really distinctive. I
wanted the sounds of the public places to be clear and loud but not take
anything away from the sounds of panic I layered on top of those sounds. Here
you can see how I changed the sound levels in my edit as I wanted them to
notice each sound.
When editing the video I found this to be the easiest part
of the process. We knew what we wanted to do and both took on different parts
of the video. Here are 2 examples of the
different emotions in our piece and how we created them:
As you can see, by using different fonts and colours on our
piece it really separates the emotion and helps the audio tell the story and
stand out more. It helps our audio have tension and understanding.
We created these by using solid colour blocks on Final Cut
Pro and adding moving text to each word.
We also added cross fades on the peaceful scenes to get them to flow calmly
into each other and then used block colour black when he was paranoid to show
anger.
I feel that the overall theme of the piece worked well sound
wise after each sound had been edited.
The video was a lot better and just made the audio piece feel so much
smoother.
The piece did turn out completely different to what I
imagined as my idea was perhaps a little too excessive and out of reach for a 3
minute piece. The video is roughly what
I imagined as I did find it really difficult to get the text to transition
differently so I used the same transitions throughout. This is repetitive but
for something I have never done I was quite impressed. I really liked editing
on the video and feel that I could really express my idea more using
abstraction. I also do believe my piece is abstract.
I think that my contribution overall was strong and I did
feel like I put a lot of effort and creativity into the piece. I really knew what I wanted to achieve and tried really hard to make it a strong first
piece of work. Regardless of the
problems we had the piece has really worked off.
I have learnt a lot throughout this project especially in a
creative manner. I have picked up some specific skills both technical and
creative:
-
Extending my current knowledge of Final Cut Pro
& Soundtrack Pro.
By using this software and by
simply using trial and error I taught myself a variety of new techniques such
as moving text, distorting,and noise reduction. I
approached the software in a completely new way and really pushed myself to try
and find out how to do new techniques and even finding out by myself. How to create an abstract piece of work:
I was always too focused on
making my stories include a linear narrative with footage and simple sounds. I
have learnt how to express myself more within my work and let my creativity
come out more. I feel in this piece I really wanted to have a strong input and
make my work stand out creatively.
The importance of research.
I realised quickly how important it is to fully research
ideas and really know how to achieve certain results. By keeping a blog I feel that
my work has been more focused and accurate because I can refer back to my
research. I also made sure to watch pieces of work in my own time and analyse
them to gain inspiration for my work.
Teamwork & communication
The importance of teamwork and communication in this project
was also crucial and I feel like I have become better at working as part of a
team just as you do in industry. Working
with a partner who has different ideas can be difficult but we worked really
well together and stuck to our plans well and kept in communication.
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