At the start of the project when I joined forces with my team mate Oliver Guy, we decided to look at the brief in a different way that we thought everyone else would do. We can only describe our final piece as pure abstraction. It displays no narrative, no personal views or no structural film system, it’s simply an experimental video. We said from the start that we didn’t want to think about any ideas including scripts or actors, nor did we want to go down the ‘cliche’ route of going to some amazing location and getting a load of focus pulls and pans (No offense to the ones in my group, their videos are brilliant!). Our original idea was to involve a drum kit in some way, as we are both keen drummers, we felt that we would be comfortable shooting with one. As our ideas developed though brainstorming sessions and tutorials, we felt that this idea was a bridge too far, so we decided on another idea which turned out to be the best one yet. Morning sounds are sounds that we ignore because we are so used to hearing them every day. Alarm clocks, toilets flushing, kettles boiling etc. Our idea was to record morning sounds and edit them like a song. We pulled our inspiration from a producer well known for his use of abstract recording in his songs called Dakent.
Once we developed the audio idea, I started to think of ways that we could portray the song through visuals. We decided that when the time came, we would film all of the objects that we used to create the sounds, and edit them sort of like a music video so that they keep in time with the audio. Split screens were the best option because the sounds were eventually edited with multiple sounds happening at the same time. Each split screen would move to the same rhythm as the audio, this was essential to how the final video would turn out. I found my inspiration for the video from a music video by The Chemical Brothers called ‘Star Guitar’ which was created by Michel Gondry, I used this video in my research blog. The video itself is designed to flow with the track, a lot like mine. I have never seen a video with split screens that move in rhythm to a sound piece and I struggled to find one through researching. I wanted to make a video like one that i’ve never seen before.
I don’t think that there is any intended audience for this video. It’s appropriate for all ages, it has no dialogue, no narrative, no explicit content. I wanted the video to be seen as enjoyable and addictive. The feedback we received following our presentation proved that it was a fun and addictive video because of the same things that were said by the majority of the group. Someone said that they felt like they were waiting throughout the whole video for something big to happen which never came, this is why he said he was on the edge of his seat throughout the duration.
I am very happy with how this video has turned out. I didn’t expect it to turn out this good, it totally exceeded my expectations. I think one of the key points that makes this video work so well, is the fact that the audio and visuals are on the same wavelength. They both flow smoothly without any interruptions, with enough breaks and changes in the rhythm to keep it interesting to the audience. We were happy not to change anything about it after our feedback session in front of our seminar group, the general feedback received was pleasantly surprising in the sense that the entire group had only positive things to say about it. While writing my notes from the feedback, I ticked next to what I had already written if someone else mentioned it again. The points with the most ticks next to them were ‘Good use of split images’, ‘Light hearted feeling’ and ‘good sense of place’, as well as numerous compliments on some of the shots that we had taken. I’m overwhelmed that everyone appreciated the split images as this was one of the main ideas that drove this project forward, the feedback allowed me to change the second half of the video so that it would feature split screen images like the first half, but not as many images appearing at once. I liked the ‘light hearted feeling’ comments and I know where they were coming from because most of the other videos we had watched on the day had a more serious approach to them. From the very beginning we said that we wanted our video to stand out, and i’m glad that during the feedback session, everyone knows that it did. Before our ‘mock’ presentation, I said that I wanted to see peoples eyes darting around the screen, trying to concentrate on matching the visuals to the audio. Someone pointed out that they felt that they had to work hard to concentrate on what was going on, this is proof that we kept the audience engaged and interested in our piece.
Looking at this video as a member of the audience, I am immediately dragged in by both the audio and the visuals. Everything flows in time with everything, however it is not easy on the eye. Even I had to work hard to concentrate on everything that was going on in each panel, which kept me glued to the screen throughout the entire video.
There isn’t much that I would do differently if I were to do this project again. There is one thing I would have liked more time to improve on and that is only fining out each of the split screen panels. I think that one of the panels is slightly bigger than the rest, so when there is a black gap above it, it can be noticed. I think it can only be noticed by myself though, I found it very difficult editing all of the size preferences for each panel, but I managed to get away with it in the end. Editing the 3 split screen panels was much easier then editing the 6 split screen panels. I could concentrate more on my eye for detail and I managed to fine tune the footage preferences up to the standard that I wanted them to be at.
Me and Oliver decided from the very start that we would divide the audio and visuals into 2 main sections. I focused on the video editing whereas he focused on the audio editing. To make sure that we spread our contribution, I recorded the sound pieces for the audio file and he recorded the video footage for the visual file. I think that this was a fair split, video editing is my strong point and I think I would have had too much to worry about if I was balancing an audio edit with a visual edit. In the end I am glad that Oliver edited the sound because he did an absolutely fantastic job at it, I couldn’t have asked of more from him. He stepped up and delivered a really impressive audio track to a much higher standard than what I imagined. This pushed me to edit the visuals to an even higher standard than I thought I would get it to, which both worked in each others favor.
I encountered various different problems that had an effect on how I worked. Firstly I chose to edit from home using Final Cut Pro X, the software that I have been used to using for the last 2 years. My Mac is quite old so I had to divide the edit up into 3 separate projects (Sequences) so that my mac would not slow down or freeze. Despite this I did have a few edits that I had to take my time on because of the speed of my Mac. Rendering is different on FCPX, for example it allows you to watch a clip with an effect on without rendering, i’ve been trying hard not to do this because it often drops frames. I had a problem that my footage window would turn for a frames length because it had dropped important frames. I countered this issue by deleting the render cache and re-rendering each project.
The main thing that I have learnt in this project is that I can work really well as part of a pair. I think that more people in the group would have made this project a lot more difficult. I improved my team working ability massively working in a pair. I think that the fact that I was trusted with the sound recording and visual editing benefited me because I had to step up and get the work done to a high quality so I wouldn’t let my team mate down.
I developed new creative and technical skills during this project including fine new editing techniques and also new filming and photography methods. I had to teach myself basic photography so that I could make a time lapse for the start of the video. I hired a remote control timer from Connect 2 which would plug into my camera and make it take a photo whenever I set the timer to do so, this took me a few tries before I finally got it right. The final time lapse came out really well and I was very happy with the quality of it. I also had never before edited split screen panels so this was a good opportunity to learn about more advanced editing techniques. I found that the best way that I taught myself new techniques was through YouTube tutorial videos, and by trial and error.
I feel that as a team we worked really well together. We both displayed very strong communication skills by talking about ideas and progress every day throughout the project, and also meeting up for editing and recording sessions. Both of us contributed as equally as we could. We knew that both the audio and visual editing processes would be difficult. This is why we split them up, he had the solid idea of turing the captured audio into a song, and I had the idea to edit the footage as split screen panels. I think I would have gone on Pro Tools and changed parts of the song, he would not have been happy, same with me and the visual editing.
Overall I am extremely happy with how well we worked together and this seriously benefited our work which has exceeded both of our expectations. We contributed towards it equally, each stamping our own mark on in our own different ways. I am so proud of myself and Oliver for producing such a quality and ‘different’ piece of work, which I know stands out from other work in the class because of how different it is.
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