The perfect Human is a film by Jorgen Leth made in 1967, the film depicts a man and women in a white room, performing multitude of tasks such as undressing, dancing and eating, all whilst humorous narration, reminiscent of a wild life documentary can be heard.
The set design is incredibly simple and clean, adding to scientific experiment feel of the piece.
The idea for the five obstructions came from Lars Von Trier, a fan of Leth’s work, who met with Leth and then challenged him to remake the film in five different styles, each one consisting of different limitations and rules Leth had to follow.
The entire process of each film was captured including Leth’s meetings with Von Trier and the various methods Leth intended on using to tackle each individual obstruction.
The five obstructions were as so –
1. Leth was made to remake the film in Cuba, unable to use a set and not allowing any shots to be longer then 12 frames, whilst answering the questions posed in the original film.
2. Leth had to remake the film in the worst place in the world, playing the role of the man himself and including the meal, but the woman was to not be included and he wasn’t allowed to reveal where he was, on screen.
To do this he shot in the red light district of Bombay, hiding it behind a translucent screen.
3. According to von Trier, Leth failed task 2, giving him the choice of either remaking the film in any way he wants or to redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again.
Leth chose to remake it in Brussels and used split screen effects.
4. Leth is told to recreate the piece as a cartoon, he enlists the help of Bob Sabiston, who used rotoscoping to animate versions of the shots from the previous films.
5. The final obstruction was that von Trier had already made the film, but it must be credited as Leth’s, as well as him having to perfom a voice over narration written by von Trier but from his own perspective.
My personal favorite of all obstruction was part 4,the animation, i feel it added additional layers to film, injecting it with bold colours and style and increasing the intensity of the narrative dramatically.
Experimental research
I will be using this section of the blog as a method of regularly posting various bits and pieces that have helped me research experimental film, ranging from the explanation of sub-genres, reviewing individual films and talking about artists. Direct Animation - a process in which the artists work directly on film cells, using techniques such as scratching and painting. The process can be used on blank or developed film and all methods can be used in conjunction with one another. Another technique which can be used is using various objects in the dark room to create shapes on the film with beams of light, this is then developed and can played as it is or worked on further.
Techniques in experimental film
Single shot films - A single shot film or scene is where the entire segment plays out with the use of cutting thus meaning being shot in one take.
This can prove difficult to pull off in long scenes and takes careful consideration an planning, especially if there is camera movement.
The title of this technique can be misleading in its simplicity and in actuality the process can be painfully complicated.
Here are some examples i like, many of which are music videos.
The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar (directed by Michel Gondry)
Massive Attack - Protection (directed by Michael Gondry)
Erykah Badu - Window Seat (directed by Coodie and Chike)
Russian Ark (Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov)
Touch of Evil (Directed by Orson Welles)
Hugo (Directed by Martin Scorsese) - An incredible behind the scene's look at the process of capturing a single shot scene.
Goodfellas (Another from Martin Scorsese)
The player (Directed by Robert Altman)
Boogie nights (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
Hard boiled (Directed by John woo)
Old boy (Directed by Park chan-wook)
The Shining (Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Directed by Quentin Tarentino)
Disrupted Narrative notes -
Horizontal and Vertical narrative progression -
A horizontal narrative was linear, being sequential and in the order events would occur.
Where as -
A vertical narrative was non-linear, allowing focus to be drawn to rhythm, tone, mood and atmosphere.
French impressionism (1919 – 1929) - Was regarded as the first avant-garde and compared to poetry, manipulated time and space with the use of dream and flash back sequences, used creative techniques such as POV shots and imposition.
Dada – Deconstructed the subject with in the film, being anti-art and pure of form.
Explored rhythm and patterns.
Surrealism – Opposition of French impressionism, existing during the same period of time.
Erratic, anti-mainstream/bourgeoisie style, comprised of violent, erotic and blasphemous imagery, lacked form and control.
Surrealist film makers were shunned by other artists, the films were also linked to Freudian analysis.
Associational forms – uses archive footage from various categories of media, including adverts, home movies, news, feature films, tv shows etc.
This pre-recorded material is then edited to create a whole new narrative from scratch, non-related to what ever it was previously used for.
These films often lack a plot driven narrative or any dialogue.
Sustained shots – Metaphorical shots often happening in between actions, to represent the feeling of a character or mood. Eg. A calm sea reflecting serenity.
Ideas for one minute experimental piece
Due to the challenging specifications of this project it has taken some time to reflect upon ideas that I found interesting and unique and that I could actually create, whilst bound by the constrictions and the lack of budget. I decided to focus on a collection of ideas involving amplifying various human emotions, social interactions and relationships.
Here are some rough explanations of my preferred ideas so far –
1. 6 levels of stress relief – For this piece I envision a subject stood in front of a blank background, either a wall or fence. The shot will be fairly close up, showing a portrait like image of the subject.
The piece will either be shot straight on, in front of the subject, so as to connect the viewer on a personal level, or shot from a slight angle and slightly lower then the subjects eye level. During the course of 60 seconds the subject will be shown smoking a cigarette, throwing it routinely to the ground to light another. Whilst this happens sounds comprised of people shouting, key boards tapping, cars beeping etc. will be played off a cd off screen, or will be heard on location depending where the piece is filmed.
The piece will be representative of everyday stress and struggles and how one little break can make a big difference in the over all way a person can feel, the piece will condense a days or maybe a weeks worth of hassles and nags and filter them through the use of the accelerated speed the cigarettes are smoked.
The piece would also be shot in black and white, partly for artistic quality, as I prefer the way it looks and also as I believe it enhances the mundane connotations of the film, intensifying its normality much as the accelerated rate of smoking does.
2. Rejection - This piece would be somewhat similar to the above idea in theory and execution, with a single subject stood in front of a blank background. The camera will focus on the subjects face with a close up of a disheveled looking man.
Through out the piece hands will slap the man’s face, all of which have different color nail varnish.
The subject will become progressively more flustered and down trodden in appearance, ending with him being slapped out of the frame.
The piece will represent a man down on his luck, a summery of negative experience’s he’s had in relationships.
Notes on surrealism
Some notes on surrealism, taken from the rough draft of our presentation.
Surrealism was an artistic movement born in Paris during the 1920's. The main theme of surrealistic cinema was that there were no themes, the movement sought to be individual, often mocking reality and treating that which was obscene as rational.
Surrealism was thought as the opposition to impressionist cinema, due to its method in madness, often composed of deconstructed narratives and intentions to shock, disregarding tradition, form and everything else familiar in what they considered themselves to be in a revolutionary manner.
One of surrealisms greatest strengths was in the way it could warp reality to a greater extent than theatre ever could, still providing that feeling of integration and emotion that only a human subject can, whilst being susceptible to far greater levels of creative control.
By this we mean techniques only achievable through the medium of film. For example editing to alter the audience's perception of time, or multiple exposures, reminiscent of the transitory period in sleep when one dream becomes another.
The surrealist movement is closely linked with left wing politics. In fact, the split from Dadaism has been characterised as the split of anarchists vs. communism, surrealism being communist.
The surrealist movement and left wing politics were so entwined that Dali, known to be a sympathiser of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco, was considered by his contemporary Breton, along with his associates, to have betrayed and left Surrealism.
Part of the reason communism was relatable to the surrealist film makers were due to the party’s aims of working towards the liberation of man. This view coincides with the aims of the movement in that its initiators were inspired to create experimental forms of poetry to attain personal liberty by removing themselves from the constraints of logical realism.
The Surrealist movement borrowed many concepts from Freudian theory, especially in regards to the power of subconscious creation. Although more relevant to surrealist paintings, the idea of automatic writing inspired artists to create works that defied logic and enable them to create ‘out of this world’ scenes.
It was surrealists’ belief that the art they created were reminiscent of dreams and, if some of Freud’s theories are to be believed, that they were revealing hidden depths of a person’s personality as wells as containing meaningful symbolic representations.
Breton states in the Manifestoes of Surrealism, it is in cinema and particularly in the aesthetic of surrealist films that the "future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory.“
“The mind that plunges into surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.” Andre Breton, Surrealists manifesto, 1924.
There is much scepticism as to whether Surrealism is worthy of its own branch with in film making as this undermines the very individuality each piece sought to conceive.
What defines a genre is repetition or similarities with in the nature, themes and/or form of a select variety of films.
To bind surrealism as a genre could be seen as ironic as each piece strived to be totally different and something new.
How ever a theme with in surrealism is recognisable, or else this debate wouldn’t exist, be it with in subject matter or method. It seems anything slightly out of the ordinary can be coined as surreal but the truth is these films may just host certain scenes paying homage to the complete creativeness that is an original piece of surrealistic work.
L'Age d'Or / Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8lqkakMJa0
The sea shell and the clergy man / Germaine Dulac – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAo-dwZSrs
Un Chien Andalou / Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRQHeO3B6kg
Ideas for group production
The premise for this piece is to explore human nature and the social confidence of people when put in to a situation out of the ordinary and observed from afar.
Specifically how we judge one another in the blink of an eye, basing an entire opinion on one another in a moment’s observation.
To do this we will take a table and a fresh portion of fish and chips to a busy area of town, such as outside the train station or with in the city center.
We will place the chips on the table and then set up camera at a distance to see if over the space of ten minutes anyone decides to stop and eat any of the chips, despite being surrounded by people.
Most people would view this carefree approach with in society as undesirable and reckless and we want to use this film as an experiment to see if there are still people out there with non-conformist attitudes and traits.
Realistically the chips could be from anywhere and taking one goes against everything we tend to be taught at a young age, it could be seen as stealing, taking what belongs to others, accepting food from strangers, the list goes on and can be looked upon differently from each individual, to some it could be seen as there lucky day, free chips! Or a kind gesture to brighten a gloomy walk to work.
The piece will also focus heavily on the meditative state of the viewer, as the camera is fixed on the chips, what would they do as they walked past? Would they take one and risk social rejection by all those around who don’t agree with this decision? Does it really matter what these people think? What do they think of those on screen who take the chips? Will they find them selves beginning to judge or dislike these people on a sub-conscious level? Or perhaps they find them amusing and like minded? These are the thoughts we intend the audience to have during viewing.
We believe it to be interesting how acknowledging such a mundane and everyday object such as the chips could evoke a reaction and the instant judging of all those around at the time to view, despite not knowing that person on any other level personally.
The capture of this judgment is the real intention of this piece, the chips being irrelevant, just a means to an end, yet they provide such an approachable and homely base to work from, they seemed an ideal subject to work with.
Visually the piece will be comprised mainly by long, static shots to focus on its interrogating nature of those involved, allowing true observation through out.
These shots will be peppered with long shots with very slow movement and zooming, to create an Alter Rhythm effect, hopefully resulting in the lasting attention of the audience.
We aim to always be focused on the chips, but to also capture and examine the expressions of those as they walk by, hopefully using the reactions they display as a window to there thoughts.
Covering Sound for the piece we have two ideas, one is a lot stronger then the other, with the second in place as a back up.
We intend to record sound with in a chip shop during its busiest hours (if given access) capturing the ordering of food as well as its preparation.
We then aim to manipulate and alter these sounds as an unusual yet interesting piece of layered, backing track.
Showing juxtaposition to the subject matter of the film, the sound will showcase a feeling of familiarity and comfort to the viewer, as they associate these sounds with the inside of the chip shop.
The subjects in the film how ever never had this luxury, which in most cases would make them feel less uneasy about taking the chips.
We look forward to seeing if the audience of the film react in a less negative fashion to those witnessing the even first hand as they are tricked in to hearing the sounds of the chip shop.
Inspiration for the piece
whilst we researched various films for this work, we felt very uninspired for quite some time.
We knew we wanted to work with in the barriers of a social experiment, but we didn’t want to be swayed by other works to the point we were just chewing up and spitting out something we had watched before.
The coin really dropped for this idea when we were jotting down titles from the top of ours heads, we started coming with silly puns and branching ideas from them.
Whilst doing so we were people watching and noticed how expressively judgmental people can be with out realizing, giving dirty looks to those picking up money and cigarettes from the floor and that’s where the idea started, we wanted a way to observe others in a non-natural situation and we wanted to use fish and chips, thus Haddock enough.
We did how ever very much enjoy the piece ‘The girl chewing gum” by John smith,
As it wholly based on observation and one long shot, forcing the viewer to soak in all that happens on screen and take notice of each expression and characteristic of the strangers as they go about there daily business with its clever use of narration.
The girl chewing gum -
Length of the piece 5 – 6 minutes.
The length of the piece really depends on how shooting goes on the day, as it is an experiment of sorts we believe it only fair to shoot the one day, we don’t want to use editing as a distraction from what happens to much either, or to manipulate what really happened.
2. Abdication
Similar to the idea above, this film will also be a social experiment as well as a reflective piece.
The word abdication means to relinquish or escape and in this film we wish to express the idea of how hard it can be to escape from the stress of society with out judgment from others.
To show this were going to place a chair in a crowded area of town, an actor is going to sit on this chair in a meditative state, expressionless, ignorant to the surroundings and completely content.
The actor will remain totally still and will not acknowledge anything said or done to them.
As with the situation in the above idea this is something people are not used to seeing in a crowded space, potentially causing a variety of subconscious feelings about the subject, do the public believe they look stupid or relaxed? Will they wish to be in there position or not? Will they ignore the subject or try and interact with them? Everyone strives for relaxation in this age of stress, from taking holidays to outlandish places and spa trips, to simpler home comforts such as a hot bath and relaxing music.
We wish for our subject to be a physical representation of this feeling and to see how the general public will pick up on this and react to it.
We are also interested in the reaction the audience has of the subject and how they will perceive them.
The audience of the film will be part of a totally different experience to that of the general public as they will be made to listen to our sound track, a huge part of our piece and what will either make it or break it.
The majority of our sound track is going to be recorded on location in Edale in fields and woods.
We wish to capture tree’s rustling, wind, birds tweeting, water trickling, and all the natural, relaxing sound you can hear out of the city.
This will represent the foundations of the subjects mind, beginning with a variety of sounds, drones and a mixing pot of familiar urban noises, which will slowly transcend through to the natural sounds we captured, this will be reflective of the state of serenity our subject finally reaches through cutting out the rest of society.
Inspiration for the piece came from our trip to the site gallery, where we viewed the work of Pilvi Takala, specifically the piece ‘The Trainee’ .
In the piece Takala acts as a trainee in an office, instead of commiting to the work expected she absently mindedly takes refuge in the office, ranging from the desk to the elevator, contemplating and acting blissfully unaware of her surroundings, all the while secretly filming the reactions of others.
An excerpt of the piece -
The full piece - http://www.pilvitakala.com/thetrainee01.html
Another of Takala's films that has influenced me is 'Real Snow white', the film depicts Takala convincingly dressed as Snow white, she then tries to enter disney land as the character, she receives much attention from other visitors who assume she works for the park, as she tries to enter the park how ever, she is stopped by security who presume she is up to no good.
Another piece expressing how judgemental society can be, when such an innocent character can so ill received, for absolutely no reason.
An excerpt from the piece -
Real Snow White from Hard//Hoofd on Vimeo.
Soundscape research - for our piece Abdication, we will be focusing heavily on the sound to really push the meaning of the film to the fore front.
We will be using a heavily mixed sound track made up of from a combination of captured sounds, ranging from the organic to more mechanical.
We researched several sound scape artists to help us with ideas for this piece.
Chris Watson - Sheffield's own Chris Watson is world renowned for his sound recording work, specifically that which he captures in nature and the wilderness, sculpting the audio in to a film like narrative.
As well as creating soundscape albums, Watson has worked extensively with TV and radio, including work with David Attenborough, Bill Oddie and BBC radio 4.
Another sound recordist i also listened to was Andrew Skeoch, who's work i found just through trawling through the internet.
Vjing and Video Art
I touched on vjing last year for research on the experimental film we made 'portrait of a place' and its still something i draw a lot of inspiration from and find very interesting.
I am still in the process of learning to Vj live but i have made films in the style of vjing for night clubs, being composed of archive footage and various effects with quick, montage like cuts.
The job of the Vj is to actually edit images in a similar method to how a dj mixes music,using combinations of images or effects to compose a live piece of visual art often accompinied by live music or djs.
The visuals are often mixed to match the ryhtem of the music and create a hypnotizing out come.
Whilst vjing is a live process it is still influential in experimental works and many acclaimed Vjs are also well versed in creating abstract film pieces and music videos.
One of my favorite Vj's goes by the name of Lambency, an artist who uses a combination of old film clips, bold colours and an old megadrive games console with a warped circuit board that creates glitchy visuals.
I got in touch with Lambency via email to see if could give me any pointers on Vj'ing, to which he replied.
Hi Robbie,
Thanks for the nice comments! The program I use for performance is Resolume. I am still using v2.4 upgrading to v4 half price sale on for the next couple of days. but the new version is quite different so I will probably use both. http://resolume.com/download/
For cutting up old footage I use virtual dub (pc only)
http://www.virtualdub.org/
it is one of my favorite pieces of video software and its free.
for compositing stuff I use After Effects i.e. stuff I can't do in real time in the VJ software.
Resolume uses freeframes (FF) for effects
http://freeframe.sourceforge.net/
From Resolume 3 onwards they changed to using FF1.5 gpu based but most of the FF effects out there are FF1 cpu based so that's why I am still using Resolume 2
Some kind of camera is useful for making your own footage when I first started I only had a point and shoot that could record 10fps but I made some very cool stuff whit it you don't need to spend a lot.
Vjing setup well once you get to the stage of doing paid or important gigs you really need two laptops and a vision mixer because all video software crashes you have to have a backup you can switch to.
I use Roland V4 vision mixer but its only SD this mixer is great but I now often get the chance to use higher resolution a HD mixer would be good. I will probably get this at some point
http://sparklive.net/ if I get enough paying gigs
I also use a Korg NanoKontrol for controlling effects and playback speed of clips.
Oh yeeah one other thing
and this is really important
video codecs if you want to do any video scraching type stuff like you want to use a codec that saves every frame separably much less work for the computer to decode.
A good choice for Resolume 3 and after is the DXV codec they supply esp useful for high res video but does not work with Resolume 2 so I use the excellent cineform free upto 1080p if you install the gopro's Cineform Studio
http://gopro.com/support/cineform-studio-software-support/
I would recommend making all your content one of these codecs because there is nothing like a dogey codec to bring your software to its knees. plus if you change machines you only have to remember one codec to install.
Video size I make my content 640x480 because I use a SD mixer I probably jump to 1024x768 if/when I get newer mixer.
hope this helps
Feel free to ask questions.
Cheers,
Sam
Here are some examples of his work -
Video art -
Video art could tick many boxes of experimental film, with content seemingly spanning various categories, although it is thought of as being separate from experimental film.
In a nut shell, video art does not follow the trends and conventions known in modern, theatrical cinema or that of it sub-genres, such as avant-garde, surrealism etc.
Its seeks to define itself, exploring the boundaries of the medium or attacking the viewers comprehension of film as a whole.
Here are some examples from notable video artists -
Wolf Vostell - Born 1932 in Germany, Vostell was not only a renowned painter and sculpter but also became a pioneer of video art and installation work during the 1960's.
Vostell was also involved in the Fluxus movement, an international network of anti-artists, also known as neo-dadaism.
Domingo Sarrey - Sarrey was born in Spain, 1948 and was another pioneer of european video art and installation pieces, being the first artist to exzibit a multi-vision piece using six projectors.
He also collaborated with Wolf Vostell during the 60's.
Juan Downey - Downey was born in Chile, 1940 and was another early adapter of video art, although his work spanned through many styles and forms.
He once wrote “The universe is not an assemblage of independent parts, but an overlapping, interrelated system of energy. All my work relates to this vision.”
From this he allowed viewers of his works to actively participate in the process of pieces and also based much work on the idea of invisible energy.
Vito Acconci - Acconci was born in new york, 1940 also known for installation, His piece Seedbed (1971) was famously controversial, Acconci had a ramp installed the size of the gallery that contained, to which he lay hidden underneath, whilst visitors walked along the ramp, he vocalized sexual fantasies about them through a loud speaker, all the while masturbating.
The piece was supposed to represent the public being involved in the creative process by sparking the situation at hand, but in my opinion i find the piece perverse.
Joan Jonas - Jonas was also born in New York (1936) and began her carear with in art as a sculpter, later moving to video and performance art.
Much of work was seen as feministic and for an extended period of time her films only included on actor, her own alter-ego named 'organic honey'.
William Wegman - Wegman was born 1942 in Massachusetts, originally a photographer he began experimenting with film through his dogs, one of which was aptly named 'man ray'.
he made a series of shorts including the dogs for the children's series, Sesame street.
Abdication Assessment
The name of our piece was Abdication, a word meaning relinquishment of responsibility or in other words, escapism.
We wanted to visually express the feeling of escapism felt by most in modern day society, an urge to relax and be rid of the day to day stress caused by the work place, relationships and the fast paced, go getting lives were all expected to synchronise are selves in to, in this generation.
We wanted to convey this feeling on screen by placing an actor in a crowded area of town.
The actor remains motionless through out the film, in a meditative, trance like state, completely and blissfully unobservant and unaware of his surroundings, despite the back and forth scuttling of people around him.
The actor is representative of society’s urge to relax, completely switched off from the world despite the hustle and bustle going on all around him, (especially so in the case of this film as it was shot during a busy day at the Christmas market) to further engage the audience to understand this feeling we spliced the footage of the actor himself with the images he is viewing in his own head, contrasting, peaceful shots of nature shot in various woods and parks in Sheffield, relaxing and natural, devoid of society’s chaos and stress.
Alongside this the entire sound track to the film is comprised of the sounds of nature, made up rustling leaves and wind, birds chirping, squirrels frolicking about in bush’s, ice cracking, streams flowing and recordings from a mic submerged in various pools of water ranging from streams and springs, to ponds and puddles.
All the above was used to juxtapose the loud, chattering racket that is town on a busy day.
Another area we intended to cover in the piece was how the public/society would view the actor, considering the piece has no set and we tried to hide the camera out the way the best we could during shooting, this led to some strange reactions from passers by,
We wanted to explore these reactions, society as a whole is an incredibly judgemental thing and whilst most people would confess to wanting to escape the every day stress, would they recognise some one doing this in public and if so, would they empathise with the feeling or dismiss the actor for being strange.
To do this we decided to try and focus on studying the reactions of those walking by our actor, who unlike our audience have no idea what’s running through his mind and what he can hear, to them he most probably looks very peculiar and almost petrified in his reluctance to not acknowledge anything around him.
The target audience for our piece is anyone who feels stressed or integrated in to modern society, so age wise this could be anyone 16+ really, its all dependant on the individual how the film will effect them, will they understand it and appreciate what our actor is trying to achieve or will find them selves feeling more in common with the public label him as some one who appears to quite possibly have mental problems.
The piece was primarily inspired by the observation of the general public, other wise known as people watching.
Me and Zach sat in various locations around town and picked up on the way people go about daily tasks and the multitude of reactions they have towards each when they cross paths.
Some people acknowledge one another, smiling or greeting despite being strangers, others seems to have tunnel vision, there mind set on the goal at hand and totally ignore everyone around them, some are rude to one another.
Despite the difference in reactions one thing was certain, the majority of these people looked stressed and its certainly no secret how much people long to go on holiday, have time off or look forward to blowing off steam or putting there feet up at the weekend, that’s just the way it is.
We decided we wanted to show how the public would react to some one achieving this level of relaxation, in plain sight.
Inspiration coming from other pieces of work include most importantly for us ‘The Trainee’ by Pilvi Takala, which we seen at the site gallery.
What we taken from the piece wasn’t the subject matter at hand, but an admiration of technique, the piece was a social experiment relying on the reaction of others who had no idea they were involved, we wanted to replicate this.
A second, huge source of inspiration was Chris Watson, the world renowned sound artist, all of his works with nature were great for ideas of how to capture relaxing, familiar and grounding sounds, exactly what we need to combat the audio of the city.
We also went to the talk with Chris at the university, which gave us the idea of using two clip mics as stereo mics and hiding them with in shrubs, bushs etc. to capture animals with out disturbing them.
We had great difficulty realising nearly every part of this project, not due to the obstructions we had to take in to account or the subject matter itself, but down to many personal and technical problems, on both mine and Zach’s behalf.
This assessment is not the correct place for me to list everything that happened, but neither of us were very involved in the project for a long time, resulting in missing many important lessons and not gathering relevant knowledge or level of research we needed.
I did try to obtain an extension for the piece, but due the work load from other modules and also needing an extension for those it was not possible.
The piece as a whole ended up being incredibly rushed, shoddily produced and did not have the amount of time or creativity invested that it deserved.
We ended up creating a piece that was ill conceived, purely due to the fact that when it came to it we just did not have enough time to produce a new idea from scratch with the amount of research we had done.
Admittedly, my contribution to the piece was no where near perfect, but I thought of all ideas myself, booked all equipment myself, got in touch with the actor and chose the locations myself.
I edited both the film and sound on my own, recorded the majority of the sounds used and on one occasion filmed on my own, this was through no fault of Zachs how ever as he was planning to leave the course and even though he did help record the sound and filmed the two thirds of the film, it was very difficult on my part to get him motivated or involved to help out.
The piece as a whole turned out completely different to what I had envisioned I would be making at the beginning of the term, it lacked substance and style and to say I am disappointed with it would be an under statement.
The planning process was difficult as it was hard to find both me and zach in the same room together this term, as I mentioned above we both under went several degrees of personal issues during this term and whilst It shouldn’t be a viable excuse, neither of us had our heart in the project until we had to bite the bullet and create something from what we had done.
From a technical point of view we used a Canon D7 to shoot with, a great camera which creates a beautiful image, I feel this really helped our piece as what we lacked in narrative we really needed to make up for visually, to retain some form of style.
We shot at the Christmas market whilst it was in town, the botanical gardens, Endcliffe park and Ecclesall woods using a combination of hand held filming and mount the camera on a tripod.
Another set back was the weather, it was raining a lot during shooting and got dark extremely early, really limiting where and when we could shoot, an obvious method of combatting thing would have been to shoot earlier on in the year, something we should of done, but due to the reasons stated earlier, this obviously couldn’t of been the case.
Capturing sound was the most interesting part of the project for us and the thing we invested the most time in to with out a doubt.
we used a combination of a Audio Technica AT8015, a Audio Technica AT835ST, two Lapel Microphones, a Marantz PMD 661, a Aquarian Audio H2A Hydrophone
and a Rode NT-4.
Recording the sounds was very trail and error for us as we something both us didn’t have much experience doing last year, more so with the Hydrophone and Stereo mic.
We experimented with the hydrophone massively, recording in duck ponds, ice covered puddles, streams, a spring and used it as a contact microphone, playing inside crevices between rocks, inside logs and bush’s.
It was a big disappointment to us that the majority of these didn’t produce very interesting sounds and those that did, often produced harsh noises, not ticking the box of relaxation and escapism what so ever.
On the brighter side the clarity of what we captured using the stereo mic and clip mics I found impressive.
We recorded sounds in the Botanical gardens, Endcliffe park, grave yards, my back garden, Grindleford and various random locations, if we had the equipment on us and we thought we could capture something, we tried.
We used the stereo mic in the usual way, just setting up in various bits of woods or in bush’s, let it sit for several minutes each time and let nature take its course.
Similarly with the clip mics, we attached them to various leaves and branchs on plants or bushes then bided time whilst the animals and our surroundings did everything else for us.
Through these methods we captured a variety of birds calls and squirrels running around through leaves and climbing bushes.
We also picked up the sound of streams and wind in the background, which we had recorded previously alone, but they were a lot softer and mellow sounding when captured behind the sound of the animals as opposed to singularly.
Mixing the sound was difficult as we were very hard pressed for time by this point and a lot of what we had captured had minor niggles we couldn’t fix, that we didn’t notice at the time of recording, or just couldn’t hear until we listened on proper speakers, this resulted in using some sounds more then once.
Cutting the visuals was fairly simple, we used nearly all shots including the actor and picked the best from the bunch we had from filming in nature, my biggest regret from this was not having enough, stunning footage, we only took sound recording equipment to Grindleford stupidly, a location where we could of captured hours of beautiful footage.
Upon completion of the piece I would describe it as weak, it lacks narrative, visual and audio styling, nearly every component of it needs mounds of work and to top it off I don’t think it represents what we set out to achieve.
The two instances in the film the general public do react to our actor look like sloppy mistakes and as if we didn’t have enough footage to cut them out.
The pacing is off and it is unclear what is happening, saying that when I watch from an audience’s perspective, I am able to understand that he is blocking out what is around him and that when it switches to the footage off nature, that is where he would rather be and that is what he is envisioning, but I still believe its difficult to comprehend why exactly he is doing this and what we trying to represent.
If I do could the piece again I would, completely from scratch, I would scrap all idea’s we had for this project and come up with something entirely fresh.
Obviously I encountered many issues regarding why the film was so rushed and uninspired, but even still, I feel like much could have been improved.
If I could do the module again under different circumstances then I believe things would of went miles better, but life is life and things happen and you have to take this in to consideration, that is one of the major points I can take from this project, planning and research are vital, you cant just go and film something last minute on the scraps of an idea and expect it to be successful, its takes consideration.
On the plus side I have drastically increased my knowledge in capturing and utilizing sounds and have become very interested in field recording, something I look forward to investing some time in to.
It is a huge regret of mine that things events unfurled as they did during this project as I believe I had been able to put in the time and effort I would of found myself very comfortable with experimental film, it was an area I wanted to really further my knowledge in, especially the visual side, hopefully I will get another chance in the future.
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