Creative media project evaluation

At the beginning of this module I decided to pair up with Danny Wild. We had known each other quite well from last year at uni and we know our strengths and weaknesses quite well. Creatively we are compatible, and neither of us is afraid to say if we aren't keen on an idea. Danny is typically more of an editor, and I am pore of a production person, both in camera and sound. Because of this we decided to assign these roles to us, however there were times that we would swap roles to give each other more of a chance to have a go on the other side. We both took on the role of director.

After the first session we decided to meet up and attempt to start brainstorming for our sound piece. During the brainstorm we were also starting to choose ideas that we knew would work with film, we didn’t just use the sound piece to influence our final idea for the experimental film, some of our final product was influenced by some of the other ideas we had on this initial brain storming session. However the majority of the influence was still from our sound piece. We should have just focused purely on the sound piece at the time. If we had done that we might have ended up with a more purely experimental film idea. After we had done our brain storm we couldn't choose outright so we just eliminated them one by one by attempting to find flaws in each idea. E.g. we wanted to get the atmosphere of a football ground, but we realised for filming we wouldn't be able to get permissions to film, and the sound will be very difficult to get clean, level recordings. After we justified getting rid of most of the ideas we were left with four. And we carried on this process being much more ruthless and we eventually ended up with our final idea.

Our final idea was to attempt to replicate the rising feeling of stress in a day to day office environment along with its peak, and followed by calm, relaxing come down. We were both happy with this idea so we did our list of what recordings we needed to get, and then did our audio timeline. I feel in the long run all of this planning helped us be much more efficient in our production as we didn't have any time to mess about. After all of the production planning we went and hired out our Marantz and rifle mike to do our recording. We were also prepared with our Para shoot to help protect us financially if anything went wrong.

On the day of actual recording we started at my house in order to get all of the sounds we needed for our first three scenes, we were going to do a separate day for our recordings in Grindleford. Once Danny arrived at mine we started pretty much straight away, got all of the recordings without any problems and I made sure that all of the recordings were saved onto my computer and hard drive so that we wouldn't lose anything if one of the devices failed. After this we did our Para shoot and rehired out the equipment for the week after for Grindleford. Overall a great day recording.

In the mean time we did a rough draft of the edit of the first three scenes (waking up, the office, and the journey to the train station) we were happy with all of the recordings we had, they were all clean and what we wanted to use. We liked the idea of layering up the recordings over each other, we tried it for the first scene and it all worked well along with the strong alarm in the background shadowed by the other sounds gave it a very stressful feel. At this time we weren't paying much attention to the levels or effects, we just wanted to get a rough cut of what would be where before we started to do any finer touch ups.

The following week we went to Grindleford after collecting our recording gear, but we had made the mistake of waiting until around midday to leave, by the time we got to Grindleford it was rapidly getting dark. Regardless we decided to carry on and get what recordings we could as we didn't to want to have to reorganise another day to go. Walking through the woods we got some good atmosphere tracks, along with the sound of a stream, and a larger waterfall. After only a half hour our batteries had run out as they were only half full when we got them, but hadn't realised until we got off the train, we could have been better prepared here, but luckily we still had several good tracks to work with. It was also a shame that we were running out of light as we wanted to use this opportunity to do a location scout as we wanted to use this location in the experimental film. overall a disappointing day recording.

Regardless of the previous day we decided to attempt to finish our draft edit for our tutorial a few days later. We only needed four separate recordings for the last scene so it turns out we got lucky that we didn't need anything apart from maybe some breathing. So I hired out the Marantz for half an hour and did that in a quiet room. With the Grindleford atmosphere track over it you can't tell that it was recorded in the uni. We finally got the draft finished for the tutorial, and we were happy with what we had created, but I kept in my mind that we needed some fresh ears to listen to our piece to point out any flaws.

After the rough edit me and Danny decided to do some planning for our experimental film, we already had an idea on how we wanted to portray our sound in the experimental film, so we storyboarded it, I got the actress sorted along with the equipment hire and the Para shoot. And we both did the storyboarding and shot list along with suggested editing notes. We felt like we were ready to shoot, but we decided to hold fire until the tutorial to see what Debbie's suggestions would be.

After the tutorial Debbie gave us some really useful notes and suggestions such as sorting out the levels on certain areas we hadn't noticed. I feel it was particularly useful on the comment on the voice in the second scene, the performance wasn't convincing, and the levels were too high and it stuck out of the mix. In the end we actually completely got rid of that voice and just stuck with what we had; we feel that the subtlety of the keyboard, along with the office atmosphere track will be enough in conjunction with the phone ringing periodically. We also threw in a traffic section in between each scene to use as a transition period; this gives the listener more of a sense of space, as if they were following the actress. She also looked over our plans for our experimental film, we pitched the idea and told her that we would be experimenting in terms of our editing, and want to play with the idea of the build-up of stress, and reflect that in the editing pace. To focus on the editing a lot of the cinematography will be the same to keep the focus on the editing. Debbie made the suggestion of making a structure for the edit and sticking to it. We decided that we would include the structure for the stressful parts, but during the peaceful section we are going to break away from that, to emphasise all of the differences in feeling. We noted this down for ourselves for when we edit. We are now ready to do our experimental film productions, overall I feel this tutorial was a big help to us.

The first day of production was fairly easy as we got all of our shots indoors in the evening; we only needed 18 shots for 2 scenes as we are playing with repetition in the edit. No problems, the equipment worked fine for us, and we worked well with the storyboard and noted down any more ideas for our edit whilst we worked. The second day was a lot more hectic; we had to make sure we came prepared for long walks uphill in the freezing cold with food. We got our third scene shot fairly quickly in the morning before midday. By the time we got to Grindleford we only had about 8 shots left, and a couple of other shots we chose to get because they looked so beautiful. Even though we had very few shots to get the locations were a couple of miles apart and we had to get them done well before sunset so we could climb down safely. Again there were no issue with the equipment in the cold; we had plenty of spare batteries this time round. Aside from being freezing cold there were no issues our actress was very good, she followed our directions perfectly in terms of acting, and was also on hand to help provide us with some help getting clean sound, as she is a professional sound recordist for her job. After this we started our film edit the day after.

We edited one scene at a time and then repeated it several times, becoming shorter and shorter until each shot is only a couple of frames long, I feel this worked to get the viewer stressed with our character. We had to get some new recordings to match up to the sound, and we had to relocate some of the files we used previously in the edit which was a pain as we couldn't remember which folder they were saved in for a while. But otherwise no other real problems. We showed this film in a short tutorial and all the audience came back with positive feedback, only minor things we needed to change, such as levels, and putting in the sounds of breathing in the original sound piece. There was a suggestion made to mix up the physical structure of the film, we changed a bit at the end and put it at the beginning, just to tick the box for the tutor's feedback, but I don't agree that it makes the film any better or gives it any benefit whatsoever. Unfortunately this is put right in the start of our final edit but if I had the time to re burn it I would take it out as it a much better experimental film without it.

In terms of this module I was fairly happy with the content in the sessions, I would have liked more theory sessions instead of just the one on experimental film and one on sound pieces to help us provide a deeper meaning to what makes and experimental film. There was also too little in terms of professional practice, it was mentioned once, I would have liked at least another session, I felt like it could have gone into much more detail. As a result of me not feeling the theory stuff was detailed enough I often missed sessions in order to film, plan, edit, or do other work that I felt that benefited me. As for the blog I felt that was a very good idea for us to keep everybody else up to date as it keeps everything on record and you can use other people for inspiration.

Overall I was disappointed in the main assessment of this module, I feel like you are supposed to learn the rules before you can break them, and I don’t feel this module did that, and I think a lot of the other students feel the same way. However I still feel I provided a strong sense of space sound piece, along with myself learning in production and pre-production along the way and I learnt through my experiences in the experimental film. I am happy with my final sound piece, and my final experimental film, bar the very first pointless shot. I look forward to next semester where we will be producing much more practical films.

Experimental Film - Production

With this film we did the production over two days and in several locations. The first was a very short day due to our actress not being able to get to the location until after dark. Because of this we relied entirely on tungsten light, which doesn't look as good on my camera than daylight, but with this we just decided to go with it due to the short amount of time we have to film. During the first location we filmed all of the house and office scenes bar one. This part went fairly smoothly, we got clean sound recordings as some of the actions don't match the soundtrack entirely.

The second day of shooting was much more complicated, we had four different locations, the city, train station, forest of Grindleford, and "surprise view", on top of this we had to make time for the final house shot which, for continuity reasons, required daylight. To make sure we had enough light by the time we got to "surprise view" we had left my house by nine in the morning, we had finished the city and train station filming by midday without any problems, things started to get more difficult when we reached Grindleford. The temperature when we got there was two degrees, which when working with metal tripods and boom poles can cause problems with very cold hands. We had to walk a couple of miles uphill and through woodland to reach our locations, they looked amazing, and look even better in the edit, but it was very cold, and we were starting to lose light by the time we got to our final location. It was fairly dangerous climbing down in the dark and cold, but luckily nothing went wrong on the way down.

In terms of technical problems there was only one with the dodgy boom pole messing up sound on some of the wider shots, and it was the first time using one properly, luckily the actress we had is a full time professional sound recordist so she was able to help us get around the problem. There wasn't any problem for the camera at all, we had spare batteries and SD cards for my 550D. Overall a great day filming, and well worth braving the cold for the amazing footage and recordings we got.

Tutorial Feedback

The other day me and Danny took our draft edit of our sound piece and our main experimental film idea, along with storyboard, equipment lists, and editing notes to Debbie to get constructive criticism so we can improve.

The main piece of feedback for the sound piece was that is needed some of the levels sorting out to make the piece more balanced, along with this suggestions were made to include the link of a journey between the scenes by using short traffic sequences to link them up. As well as this stronger atmosphere tracks were suggested, so we wouldn't be left with any pure silence in the piece which would ruin the mood.

The main feedback based on our storyboard was that we consider what we are experimenting with and just change that one this, this way the audience will see the main aspect of the film is editing. So after this feedback we re-storyboarded and used a series of very similar camera shot in terms of composure, exposure etc, and only change the editing style, to show that is what we are experimenting with.

After this feedback we took on board everything with our sound piece and put it in the final edit, and with the film we re-storyboarded it to fit the experimental brief. This was a useful tutorial as it helped me to realise things that I might not have otherwise noticed in both pieces.

Finishing the draft edit

Now that we have all of the sound recordings from both the city and Grindleford we are able to finish the final part of our editing. We started the edit after we did our sound recordings in the house and city, so we were able to finish the first three scenes, and leave it open to finish the final scene.

When we began the edit the other day we decided to try and see if we could transfer the previous project from final cut pro into soundtrack pro to fix the error that we came across the other day. After we tried that it still didn't work, so we went to the technicians to make them aware of the issue, unfortunately they didn't have an answer to make it work, and just recommended to carry it on in final cut pro.

When we started the work we isolated the parts of the clips we wanted to use, repeated them and made the scene smooth so it flowed without any flaws, we felt that in contrast to the peaked stressful feeling in the previous scenes we completely contrasted that with a slower paced, less chaotic, more quiet final scene. Overall we were happy with this piece, however we exported it so we could easily change any other scenes if the tutorial we have suggests so.

Rural recordings - Production

This Post is about when me and my partner Danny went and took a train to a place called Grindleford in north Derbyshire. We started recording in the actual train station whilst waiting for the train. We got sounds of people talking, mobile phones going off, footsteps, the overhead announcements, the general train station atmosphere to use as a base track. For the base track we kept the levels to a very similar level to what the actual human hearing could hear to get a more natural sound for the atmosphere track.

When we actually got to Grindleford we had to walk a short distance towards the forest, and we had pretty much lost all light by then, but as we weren't actually filming anything we decided to carry on for as long as safely possible with no light. we got plenty of atmosphere tracks in the forest, close detail recordings of a stream and a louder river, after that we decided to attempt and climb through the forest and get to the top of a nearby peak. Unfortunately we came across a location that we wanted to get a recording of the atmosphere of, we turned the Marantz on and it ran out of battery, it had turned out with the batteries getting cold it just drained them, but luckily we could work with what recordings we had gained.

With the recordings that we have got from this session we can finally finish a rough edit to use for the tutorial in a couple of days. Then we can address any issues that come up then and will have finished the sound piece.

Chris Watson lecture

Chris Watson is a wildlife sound recorder and designer that often gets hired to do wildlife programmes such as any David Attenborough documentary, or anything similar. As well as recording and sound designing he archives all of his recordings and companies approach him to buy the rights so some of his recordings to use in their programmes. In this lecture he is talking about some of his previous projects and certain types of sound recording, and how to achieve them. As well as this he mentioned some good practices to keep that are directly relate-able to industry standard techniques.

The main point that was emphasised by him was to use an atmosphere track with a low dynamic range so it doesn't distract the audience from what they are supposed to be focusing on, but it still fills in any gaps that might leave a strong silence. To get this atmosphere track you just record the silence for a couple of minutes, and it has to be at a similar level to how we might naturally hear it, this gives a much more natural feeling than any spaces that might contain black silence.

The best way to get a successful stereo recording of an atmosphere is to use two radio mics attached on either end of a wire coat hanger and bend it so the two mics are at an angle facing each other, depending of the scale of how wide apart they are, and the materials in the room that bounce the sound off each other it will provide different acoustics, so it is important to experiment with the scale, positioning, and direction of the mics.

There was so much more in this lecture that I have been able to talk able and have already put into practice, for me, in terms of sound has been one of the best experiences of the year so far, i would hope that we get other professionals of a similar level to come in and talk about other aspects of filmmaking (e.g. cinematography, producing, directing, editing, writing). If we were to have experienced all of these talks i beleive that is the best way for us to make our choices for next year - hear it from the pros.

Urban recordings - Editing

With editing me and Danny decided to stick to our audio timeline and work scene by scene and then stitch it all together after each scene has been completed. However the first thing we did was listen to all the footage and label and if necessary clean up the recording, this makes it a lot easier for the cutting and layering together of the clip to give us our basic recording in soundtrack pro. However almost straight away we came across a fatal problem. When we went to save our first copy of our rough cut, soundtrack pro just crashed on us and gave us an error code. After a few other attempts to make sure this error wasn't just a one off issue we looked up the error code on Google and it came up with a bug that was listen with the most recent mac OS update that causes soundtrack pro to crash when you click save or export.

So because of this issue we had to find a way around this to provide a sound piece for our draft pitching tomorrow. So we thought and realised that final cut pro is very closely linked to soundtrack pro, and it allows very basic sound editing, e.g. pitch, levels, pan, cutting, and various controllable SFX. So we thought for the time being to allow us to get a draft together to last until this bug is fixed in soundtrack pro this will do for us to pitch our idea. When it is fixed we will transfer it all into soundtrack pro for us to do our final edit.

Apart from this problem the editing was smooth and successful. This will be satisfactory for us to pitch our draft version of the project and suggest our influences for our experimental film.