As I am working the camera, I decided to look at camerawork inspiration that I may or may not follow when it comes to the movement of the camera, framing and so on for making our DFSA advertisement.

Edgar Wright
   


Edgar Wright has to be one of my main inspirations due to the way he directs his films, with the interesting variation of camera shots. One in particular, is his use of fast cuts, which I find fascinating as they come at random times in, for example Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. They immediately attract my attention and are an interesting way of changing the tempo of a scene. Due to the nature of our project, I won't be using fast cut's, however I may look to use this style of camerawork and editing in the future.


'Cult' classics

To broaden my knowledge of film I decided to watch a variation of 'Cult' classic films. The definition of a 'Cult' film is: 

' A film with a cult following, obscure or unpopular with mainstream audiences, and often revolutionary or ironically enjoyed.'

A couple of examples of Cult films I watched are Pulp Fiction (1994) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). 


Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction, Directed by Quentin Tarantino, is a Black Comedy Crime film that involves a Series of less-and-more related but separated short stories of crime and comedy that each result into an unexpected ending including unexpected deaths, sudden twists, black comedy events and horrific conclusions of crime and its following consequences.

What I like about the camerawork in Pulp Fiction is that there are several shots that last painfully long for the audience to watch. For example in this shot: 

This shot is when Samuel Jackson's character is drinking Sprite through a straw. This scene lasts about 10 seconds, but as a viewer, I felt the scene was never-ending which shocked me to see it only actually lasted 10 seconds. The character's stare is also quite un-nerving, building tension as we do not know what is coming next.

The use of shallow focus was also brilliantly used throughout the film, for example the scene where an ex-boxer and his manager meet to talk, the cinematographer, Andrzej Sekuła, decides to use an over-the-shoulder shot, however its framed in a way that makes us focus on the plaster on the back of the managers neck. I feel framing is key within our film, and it may be interesting to play with framing as our film is set in a prison, then in a creative world, which allows me to be experimental with framing due to the nature of the set.


Shawshank Redemption

Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, is an American Drama about two imprisoned men, who bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.



I felt this film was a definite film to watch due to the nature of the film being set around this prison, which is the main set of our studio shoot. There are particular scenes that stood out to me the most. For example the scene where one of the new in-mates is teased by the other in-mates which results in a vigorous beating for the new in-mate. As difficult as this scene is to watch, the camerawork is brilliant when cutting from each different cell. This is mainly due to the lighting also, which plays an important part in Shawshank Redemption. Here's an example of some of the interesting lighting techniques and shot types used within this scene, where Andy (Tim Robbins) walks back to his cell, catching eye contact with Red (Morgan Freeman):

I feel these shots are quite powerful, as no dialogue is used, however through a strong performance by both Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, we get the impression that something bad is going to happen. The themes of isolation and depression are apparent in several shots, for example the shot above, allowing an audience to get the impression that this is the case, and make assumptions rather than being told through dialogue. This may be a useful technique to consider when shooting our prison scene, looking at performance rather than dialogue to explain the situation.

During this introduction, we were introduced to Jim Casey, the Technical Tutor at the university. We were run through the health and safety procedures and shown how to use a variation of machines, such as the Pillar drill, the Jigsaw and the Band saw. These machines are available to us to use for our Studio shoot, when it comes to making props and so forth. Phone's are not allowed to be used in the workshop other than for documentation (Images below).

After we were shown how to use the machinery, we were given a task, which was to cut out a human body shape, however it was simplified into a box and circle shape. This tested what we had learnt from the demonstrations and talks that Jim gave us about each machine. Since I haven't done any wood work since I was at secondary school, it was an interesting return to the machines that I used for my GCSE Design Technology project's.

Overall, I am pleased with what I learnt from the workshop, and it will be useful for our group studio shoot and useful for future projects that may require hand made props.

My slightly wonky work. 

Panoramic Image of the Workshop. 

The Idea:

The original idea was to do with the different functions of the brain, supported by different visuals and sound, in relation to that part of the brain via a model brain and USB sticks. I found the project to be quite a difficult one to achieve on my own. After Kathleen's feedback, I was approached by Lauren, due to the similarities within our ideas and the idea of merging our ideas came about. I was then approached by Julia because she was fascinated at the science/theory side of the Brain and lastly Thomas, who offered his technical skills and creativity to the project. 

The idea itself has changed since the start quite a lot, however I am happy with the transition. The first idea we had as a group consisted of an interactive piece that had different parts of the brain that could be triggered off my touching the part on a physical model of a brain. This idea has since developed into something quite interesting. 

The idea is to create an interactive installation piece consisting of sensors such as a microphone or a Kinect camera, a screen and a model brain where a heat map of the brain's activities will be projected on to. People will approach the installation, and their movements/sounds will trigger responses on the screen, reflecting on how our brain interprets signals. If a person ones uses one of the senses, such as speaking or only movement, a simplistic shape will appear on the screen to reflect a calm reaction, and the heat map will activate for that sense's area. If the user decides to use both senses, the shapes will react differently and will create a slightly bigger reaction, and the heat map will reflect both senses being used. This invites the user to be playful and learn how to interact with the installation.

What will happen if too many signals are received by the sensors, the screen will suddenly become quite visually disorientating, and might shut down momentarily. This refers to the effects of Sensory Overload, which is a condition that "occurs when one or more of the body's senses experiences over-stimulation from the environment". The artwork on the screen at this point may try to be disruptive to the viewer's normal expectations of the viewing experience, trying to make him/her feel uncomfortable and disoriented, an emotion that people with sensory overload experience. 

My Role:

My role within the project, as director, is to strive for the best end result, giving direction to my group and making the end product what I originally intended it to be about. I will work closely with Thomas in particular, because visually a lot of the work will be done on programs such as Quartz Composer, something i'm not familiar with. I will be working closely with Julia to make sure that are research is all correct and accurate, and working closely with Lauren to make sure the style of the piece is correct to what I want to achieve on the screen. 


Research:

Research wise we have looked at several websites looking deeply into Sensory overload, in particular the visual experience someone has when they are suffering from a sensory overload. We also looked at a visual piece as a source of inspiration. This piece 'Biomimiesis: Hyphae' has an interesting use of style, something we may aspire to. Some of our research has been done during our several group meetings, in person and on Skype. 

Learning agreement: 

When I collected my sounds I realised that I hadn't got enough sounds, in particular background 'nature' sounds, which would add an environmental feel to the piece. I went out and recorded additional sounds for my piece, and was happy with the outcome. 

Since I had lot of audio clips, I decided to name them, for example 'Walking', 'Rattling Bushes' and so forth. I also did this in Pro-Tools, to prevent confusion. 

Narration

For my Narration, I decided to use my voice, speaking normally, however as it approaches the end, the pitch changes to make the piece sound creepier and darker. I also used Adobe Audition for this part, allowing a scary echoey effect as Audition produces this sound the best. During the editing process, I played with changing pitch using the 'Pitch Shift' and 'Vari-Fi' tool (shown below). I found that neither of these made the pitch changing a smooth transition, so I scrapped the idea for pitch change, and kept the last part of the story at a low pitch.


Walking Sounds (Water and Normal) 

For these sounds, I recorded myself walking in Farnham park. In Pro-Tools, I made several tracks, for the left and right speakers, to make it seem like more of an experience for the listener, and to make it feel more like a group of people are present.

Rustling of Bushes

For the rustling of bushes, I went out to Farnham Park and rattled a small bush and using the Rode NTG2 managed to pick up that sound. This piece of sound had the least changes to because it fit the length of the other clips.


Water Flowing

For the water flowing, I used the Fish Pole and the Rode NTG2 and went to a small stream that was in a secluded part of Farnham Park, to get the best sound without background noise. The first attempt managed to pick up Fish Pole noises, so I had to go and re-record those sounds. The second attempt was successful as I used the Roland sound recorder and got more of an up close sound. Again with the 'Water Flowing' sounds, I didn't make to many changes to this other than lowering the volume levels.

Squelching Mud

For the Squelching Mud sound, I got my friend Julia to step on a wet patch of grass, which seemed to produce a horrible noise that I needed. I used the Roland sound recorder for this sound as it allowed me to get more up close with the microphones built in. With this sound I done a slight Pitch Shift, to make the sound darker and more disturbing.

Bass 

For the bass sounds, I used the Marantz recorder with the Rode NTG2 and placed the microphone closely to my bass amplifier and recorded low notes on the E string of my bass guitar. I then manipulated the sound using the 'EQ 7 Band' and increased the lowest frequencies to allow a really low bassy sound to be produced that I couldn't quite pick up on the microphone/amp itself.















Final Outcome



Overall I am pleased with what has been produced from all the recording I did, and I learnt a lot about Pro Tools and will continue to use this program in the future, for any future sound projects/film project's. The program itself isn't too difficult to get used to, and the tools you can use give for endless possibilities. If I was to improve my piece I would've recorded more environmental sounds and I would've experimented more with some of the other tools such as 'Flanger' to create more interesting sounds.

                               

For the project, I was approached by Julia, who was interested in my idea because of the scientific side of the project, and how we can explore that in a visually interesting way. I was also approached by Lauren, who's idea to do with Anxiety could fit in with my idea of the brain and memory. In addition to Julia and Lauren, Thomas approached me and offered his technical skills to the project, so that we could get a visually pleasing piece.

The rough outline of our idea is this:

. A visual piece looking at the brain and what part triggers different things i.e. emotions, freedom, passion etc which will be displayed through an interesting use of visual elements, possibly projected onto a screen/ 2 screens.

. The idea is to have a physical model of the brain, which will have microphone sensors (In development by Thomas) so that when you touch a part of the brain or talk into it, it will play a certain clip, related to that particular part of the brain.

Research

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Structure1.html

When looking into the human brain, I came across an interesting website that put the parts of the brain into different categories: 

'.Frontal Lobe- associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving

Parietal Lobe- associated with movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli

Occipital Lobe- associated with visual processing

Temporal Lobe- associated with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech'

I found this interesting as these definitions allow for an interesting array of visual elements and looking at this definition will help me think more about what I want to be shown on the screen. 

http://thediagonal.com/tag/brain/

I find looking at creative, artistic pieces of the brain inspiring. I liked this piece as it talks about how we have one side of the brain that's scientific and logistical, which is the technical side of our piece, and one side is the passionate, creative, free side which can be connected to the artistic, visual side of our project.

As a group, we looked at a visual piece called ''Biomimesis: Hyphae' by a Polish artist called Szymon Kaliski. This piece was visual interesting and this could be something to look into when we do our piece. 

As a group, Thomas showed us an interesting program called 'Quartz Composer' that allowed the user to manipulate a camera or a space and change what you see on the screen, for example he changed the screen so that there were multiple versions of ourselves. The program itself Thomas seems to have a good grasp on, so we may be using the program in the future for our project.

Presentations:

Lucy- Interesting piece, good use of sound and video to tell a story. Interesting use of Geo-Tagging, something I havent looked at so much myself

Charlie- Good narrative that was supported by an interesting use of photographs. Could've made it seem more post-apocalyptic, through the imagery.

Tom- Professional-looking piece with good use of visuals (Shots of rubbish) and a strong message behind it.

Lauren- Photography with cartoon incorporated within it. Could've had more Psychogeographical elements. The drawing inspired the photography and created a story about each location.

Katherine- A journey from home to uni, focusing on details through the use of photography. There was a nice style to the images (very close up, shallow focus)

Leanna- Photography piece of the journey of a road that she's travelled down for a long time, focusing on details that she's never seen before.

Ulyssys- Interesting use of stop frame animation of his journey from a train station to his house. I found the sound an interesting addition to the imagery.

Shahid- Interesting use of light writing and imagery of people and places. Interesting use of simple, rough notes of how he was feeling at the time.

Joel- Use of photography and road names/signs to tell a story.

Sahir- Interesting visual piece, through the use of panoramic pictures. Sound could've been added to support the imagery.

Chloe- Great visual piece that was several video pieces cut up.

My Final Piece reactions:

Leah felt the concept was simple, yet effective and people liked the concept and layout of the piece.

Our group (B) members consist of me, Chloe, Katherine, Charlie, Hannah, Laura, Hannah, Nick, Tori, Leanna, Diallo and Sahir. During this first brief in-class group meeting, we decided on doing a DFSA advertisement for the course, as it allows us to all get involved equally rather than a campaign for something one person might be passionate about, but no one else is, which was apparent in our meeting, as some were passionate about completely different things. The idea of a man in a padded cell, not being allowed to be 'Creative', so he breaks free from his straight jacket, and breaks into a virtual world' that is dream-like and free.

In our second meeting, we tweaked the narrative, for example the wall breaking has been changed to written work from books sticked on the wall gradually being ripped down by the actor, resulting in a crack which shows virtual elements such as floating boxes with previous DFSA work in them. After this, we then decided on some of our roles and what we would be doing pre-production wise. I am the camera operator, which means I should be working on the shot list.

Laura Thomas- Producer

Nicholas Lennon- Editor

Diallo Williams- Camera Operator

Hannah Park- Director

The others are yet to decide their roles (Chloe working on Storyboards, Leanna working on budgeting) 

We decided to each put in £10 for various things, such as props, refreshments for the cast/crew on shoot days. We've decided on what pre-production work we'll be doing each, for example Nick will be working on the script.


Inspiration: 

Laura suggested Kasabian's music video 'Eez-eh', which has an interesting zoom shot where the camera pulls out and shows the set and the crew, which to the audience surprise, shows hundreds of people. 

Treatment: 

'Working title- DFSA Cell advert
Duration – 90 seconds
Target audience – 6^th form/ college students, Males/Females aged 16-18  

Synopsis- We open in a prison cell type room resembling that of a mental asylum. There is a distinct lack of colour in the room everything being grey or the colour is toned down. The décor of the room hints at this being an unforgiving no creative place heavy. There is no sense of personality or flare around the furniture is basic with textbooks and a few old VHS tapes placed around the room. 
You hear a door being opened and the character being thrown into the cell and the door shuts behind them. The character is wearing a straight jacket. You hear a voice stating “you can’t come out come out until you learn to be less creative”

Not liking the cell in the few seconds they have been in there the character brakes out of the straight jacket and begins to peel away at the wallpaper. As they do this they see a glimpse of light coming through the torn paper. They promotes them to break through the wall where they fall into room full of boxes witch are displaying work from digital film and screen arts. The camera pans up and you see the whole thing is just a set to advertise the course
Suggested elements:

·       Camera movement- Zoom out, close ups.
·       Editing- Split screen, transitions.
·       Location- Cell block, futuristic room
·       Props- Table, bed, books, tape, boxes
·       Costume- straight jacket, white trousers  

Personnel requirements-·       Cast-  Male/female student
·       Crew- Director, 1 ad, camera operator, boom holder, hair/make up, line/grip

Rational- This is an interesting and unique way to show case the best of digital film and screen arts work and promote the course to potential students without creating a traditional show reel.  

Feasibility- Props brake- Have spare propsFaulty equipment- Check equipment before the start of filming.
Technical resources- camera, memory card, microphone, computer, final cut.'

After originally planning on going on a walk in a J direction and forming a narrative around it, I decided to change my idea and went out on the street and recorded a variation of walking shots of my footsteps, blended with a mixture of pictures of road names/signs that I came across that I found interesting/helpful on my journey in the 'J' shape. I let the road signs lead me in the direction that I wanted to go, which was a J shape. There isn't so much of a narrative to the story, but a message through the imagery, suggesting that text, like road names, can guide us on different journey's, however it can also restrict us going a certain path that we may have been destined to go on. I also played on the idea of chance, allowing my intuitions and the use of road names and house names, to lead me on my journey.

Shots of the important locations:

Here is the final Piece. Generally I am happy with the video and picture element, as the video's of the footsteps overlapping suggests a never-ending motion of my journey, which is complimented by the imagery of the road signs.

During this lesson, we looked at the basics, such as starting a project. We then moved on to look as some important tools in Pro-tools, such as Reverb, Delay, EQ and so on.

Settings used for our projects. 

File > Import > Audio is how to import a piece of sound.

I learnt that its important to look at the sound file description such as length, type, bit depth and so forth. The file can either be converted to a certain type or added straight to the project timeline. 

Timeline of my project, with a piece of sound imported. 

These tools control how to control a clip, such as splicing it up, moving it along and so forth. If you click the top bar above the icons, it will select them all and allow you to use a mixture of the tools. 

Once clips have been imported, we can go to audio suite and choose the Compressor tool. This allows us to change the levels of the sound. 

Track names can be changed and the drop down menu allows you to see the view of the clip, such as a view of the volume or wavelength. 

When exporting, you select Bounce to > Disk and choose the setting you require. 

Today we had our tutorial with Rosie to talk about our ideas. When listening to feedback, Rosie pointed out that I need to do more research on the brain, looking at it from a Neuro-scientific point of view.

When talking to Rosie, I thought of an interesting idea where there would be a physical model of a brain, with USB's coming out of it, which represent the different parts of the brain and their job. I want to make/work with a student at the uni studying Art and Design, to make a physical model of the brain, with text written on it to represent what each part does.

These are the notes I made from Rosie's lecture.

'Cultural Geography and Mapping'- Yuwei Lin

. Maps are 'Political statements'- tools to demonstrate power and boundaries

. 'Geograph.org.uk'

. Maps can capture memories and emotions, representing these through paintings etc. Where you've been thats makes you feel certain emotions

. Geocaching- 'High-tech treasure hunt'- tracking an item across different locations

. Maps can be 'Social' and 'Interactive'- Group of people mapping locations (Amateur vs professional)

. 'Openstreetmap.org'- more detailed mapping, created and edited by 'Open street mappers'

. Mapping objects or subjects- Identity, the self.

. CCTV- looking at locations and looking at the self

. Humanitarian mapping- Countries that have lost accurate mapping (natural disasters)

GPS, Telepresence and Internet in Art

. Surveillance- knowing where someone is on the earth

Ian Mott- 

Sound Mapping 1998- Talking about the technology

How music connect people to a certain place- using radio signals and microphones to pick up sound

Technology progressing improving mapping- changing in size to handheld (mobile phones)

Rabeca

Archive of instrument playing (the rubeca) and where its played across the world

'Chinese Whispers' 

. A booth telling stories to the public- phone playing pre-recorded messages

. Internet being used for people to come together and share stories

Masaki Fujihata- 

Voice of Aliveness

. Collection of voices/shouts, 'Meta monument' built of collective memory

. Bike riding a specific path and GPS/Camera work is recorded and transformed into a certain shape

Teri Bueb- 

Trace

. Environmental sound piece through headphones.

. Using sound to visualise and map the location

.Recordings of memorials- Death, Loss and transformation.

. Can be stories, music, compositions.

Drift

. Wandering the coastline, discovering interactive sound through movement.

Telepresence and Streaming

Paul Sermon- 

. Using interactive video and green screen technology.

Telegarden

. Using the internet and a garden, that brings people together and allows people to grow plants

Aram Bartholl

Coding- turning code into art

After the lesson with Leah, I went and done some more research into Psychogeography because I found Psychogeography quite difficult to understand. Through the DFSA Facebook page, I came across this website: http://www.mookychick.co.uk/health/spirituality/psychogeography.php, which helped me understand the term. The page simplified the meaning and gave some interesting examples. It made me think more about the project and how I could approach it. 

I decided I want to use one of my initials, J, and record the route using video and sound. I may use some photography, but the piece will mostly be phone quality recordings to make the piece seem more natural than staged. Im thinking of making the story fictitious.