Proposal for Explorations Project
My plan is to create a soundscape. The soundscape while abstract in its individual elements will have a story. The concept behind the soundscape will be to create the atmosphere leading up to the beginning of a hostility or war. The scene will open with some natural pastoral sounds. There will then be some sort of speech or garbled sounds creating a sense of discomfort, rabble rousing and uncertainty. There will be some martial elements, marching sounds or perhaps a siren. We will then go through the conflict – white noise and frenzy. Coming out the other side there will be a repeat of the pastoral sounds, though perhaps a little less comfortable accompanied perhaps with a bell tolling.
The majority of the sounds will be found sounds, though I will examine creating some of the clashing sounds in my workshop and will also look at if it is possible to create a babble of sound with my own and other voices talking nonsense. All in all the soundscape should be around 3 minutes, more or less. It’s a little hard to gauge at this stage how much time to give to each stage to build up the atmosphere without dragging it out.
WHOAH – THAT MOVIE ON THE HISTORY OF SOUND ART WAS PRETTY STRANGE!
Whenever I see a new machine or device that interests me, one of the first things that I think is “Could I make one of those?” The Luigi Russolo intonarumori machines were pretty intriguing, and later on in the video Luciano Chessa recreates some of them – so I immediately put that idea on the desk. The sounds/noise (what’s the difference I wonder?) that the machines made were unusual, nice and brutal compared with the rather idyllic pastoral sound pictures typically seen in some of the other videos we’ve seen in class and this was a good contrast and relevant to one of my project ideas – which will be much more strident – looking at the build-up towards a war or conflict. I have an old djembe drum which I could fix a sting to and then figure out some sort of cranking device – let’s see…..
Then along came the good old Theremin. I was pretty familiar with these having been emailing back and forth with an old school chum from 45 years ago who shares an interest in weird musical instruments – after all he plays the traditional French bagpipes – and he had sent me a few videos about a year ago. I in turn sent him a kit to make a hurdy-gurdy. Looking up Theremin kits on Amazon there are a couple of cheap ones out there, but according to the reviews they are pretty crappy and don’t make a great sound, to buy anything half decent you’re looking at $350 – and for the real thing a couple of thousand . I have a lottery ticket – so who knows. In the meantime I’ll close with my bagpipe joke: What’s the definition of a gentleman???? Someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but choses not to..
For fun I’m posting a video of my favorite hurdy-gurdy tunes. One of the best comments posted on YouTube which describes this video was
In reality, I’m sitting at my computer watching this video. In my mind, I’m riding on my horse through a moonlit field where an ancient battle was fought. Though the battle and the war in which it was fought have been lost to memory, I hear the sound of armies marching, drums beating, and the battle cries of warriors as I gallop along. Armies of phantoms abound & the sounds of battle fill the chill night air. I urge my horse to go faster so that we don’t get caught amidst the clashing armies, and though I know they are but ghosts, their cries are terrible..
Then of course – there’s Wintergatan
LAURIE ANDERSON PROJECT POWERPOINT
LAURIE-ANDERSON-ONE-SLIDE-TO-PAGE
CLICK ON THE ABOVE FILE TO HEAR A CALLSIGN EXERCISE FOR CHFR HORNBY ISLAND COMMUNITY RADIO. THE CALL SIGN WAS CREATED USING ADOBE AUDITION SOFTWARE BLENDING A NARRATIVE TRACK, MUSIC AND A COUPLE OF EFFECTS. NOTE THAT THE MORSE CODE IS ACTUALLY SAYING HORNBY ISLAND COMMUNITY RADIO!
ITS A BRIGHT SPRING DAY IN THE VILLAGE. THE BIRDS ARE SINGING THE BEES ARE BUZZING, BUT FOR SOME REASON THERE’S AN OMINOUS FEELING OF SOMETHING IMPENDING IN THE AIR. THE FEELING GROWS STRONGER AND STRONGER. THE VILLAGERS GROW RESTLESS AND GATHER IN THE SQUARE TO LISTEN TO THE ELDERS. THE ELDERS ARE ANGRY AND HARSH WORDS ARE EXCHANGED. THE VILLAGERS HEAR THE ELDERS AND SPLIT INTO TWO FACTIONS. ALL TOO SOON THE SOUND OF MARCHING SHATTERS THE AIR. BATTLE BREAKS OUT. DESPITE ALL WARNINGS ONE OF THE YOUTHS CRIES THE CRY WHICH SHOULD NEVER BE SPOKEN. WITH THE BONDS BROKEN THE VILLAGE IS UNMADE. MANY DAYS LATER A LONELY TRAVELLER WALKS THROUGH THE SMOKING RUINS OF THE VILLAGE AND STOPS IN THE SQUARE. SHE LISTENS HARD AND ON THE BREEZE SHE SENESES RATHER THAN HEARS THE ECHOES OF THE LOST PEOPLE AS A BELL TOLLS AND THE FEELING FADES TO BLACK
Its hard to describe how much fun it was making this. From the outset I wanted to tell a story. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to say and was happy to get the thumbs up from Sarah on my proposal. I collected many of the sounds from the freesounds.org site, but there were quite a few things that I wanted which weren’t available there. I found quite a lot on YouTube and risked countless viruses by using a YouTube to MP3 convertor to separate the audio from the YouTube track. At first in order to be able to see all the tracks at once I put a couple of different sounds on a single track but I found that if you adjusted the volume on one sound it applied to the whole track – so I had to revise that. I ended up with 15 different tracks which took a bit of juggling. In my critique with Sarah she pointed out that I had left too long an empty space between the explosion and the end – and that the end was a bit thin with the tolling bell. I’m so glad she did because it gave me a chance to re-evaluate the ending and let me add a hurdy-gurdy track and also use a single resonating bell at the end. It also allowed me to find an image that worked well with the story. (sorry Sarah – it’s not abstract but its a story after all!). For fun I experimented with using premier pro to make it into a video just using still clips and a scrolling narrative, but wasn’t happy with the result as the images I was using were low resolution and i had no idea what I was doing! here’s what that looked likme….
RETROSPECTIVE
Really enjoyed the class critiques of the audio projects and also seeing what the video class have been up to. Picked up a few ideas from the critique of the sound work – but its hard to go back and make changes once you’ve pretty much decided that the project is done…I’ll never make a great author or artist – I don’t have the patience to keep going back to perfect my work – I’ll have to keep developing a “Raw” style! A little sorry to see that there are somewhat tighter constraints on the video project than there were on the sound project
ASSIGNMENT – 2 IMAGE SEQUENCES
SEQUENCE ONE – TIME PASSES
In sequence one there is an overall narrative relating to the passing of time. The first two images are black and white removing color helps us focus on other elements of the composition. In the first image of the dark tunnel the eye is drawn to the light at the end of the tunnel propelling the viewer to see what is at the end of the tunnel. In the second image we see the woman surfacing. The sense of motion is continued in the second image as the woman is progressing towards the light. The placing of the subject in the lower third of the image accentuates the distance to be travelled. Abruptly we change to a color image of the blossom. The blossom is emblematic of spring and a new start, and the lack of any sense of motion is intended to convey a period of stability during the passing of time. Image four is all about emotion. The drooped shoulders of the soccer player tell us that he is leaving reluctantly with a heavy heart. The journey that was started when we emerged from the tunnel is coming to an end. The overhead shot in image five separates us from our protagonist and once again we are moving, this time away rather than towards. In our final shot I photoshopped the original color image to return to black and white with the lines of the track disappearing to a vanishing point – repeating but reversing the theme of the dot of light at the end of the tunnel in image one.
SEQUENCE 2 – CHAOS AND BALANCE
In sequence two I am trying (though it’s always a hard task for me!) to move away from a strict narrative and instead explore how images can be used to both show emotion and also through their composition influence us both through the subject and composition. We start in image one with raw anger. The black and white color palate strips away distraction and the extreme close up of the eyes helps us focus on the energy expressed. The link to image two is the corrosive nature of anger emblemized through the rust. The image has no obvious pattern or form but tons of texture and has an element of chaos to it. The transition to image three is through the fact that both images show materials that have been degraded with the flaking paint and the broken windows. However we definitely see that there is more structure with the horizontal and vertical grid lines. The placement of the broken pane using the rule of thirds further helps normalize the image. Moving away from chaos the verticality of the trees in image four takes up from the linear form started in image three, and despite the fact that the vertical lines are not manufactured or truly straight that sense is still there. When the tiger emerges from the jungle in image five it’s as if we are fine tuning the focus from looking at the aspen trees and getting closer to our subject. The bamboo frames the subject and this is one case where having the subject centered works well as the image has symmetry, it continues the vertical theme but also gives us a concentric framing as we see the tiger approaching head on. I mage six is all about geometry. We have moved a long way from chaos and nature into a man made and organized world. The color palate is simple and the composition is geometric. For some reason artists have found that triangles are pleasing to the eye and very adaptable – dating all the way back to Rembrandt. The inorganic triangular shapes have a slight element of menace to them when compared with the triangles that we often see in nude paintings where the effect is much softer and more inviting. Them crazy triangles! Finally in image six we have some form of resolution (even though it wasn’t planned to be a linear process) We have symmetry and balance through the placement of the the kayak and the marker post. The composition and the soft colors should soothe the mind and are in contrast to the pain in the first image. The relatively larger size of the final image adds significance when compared to the others in the sequence.
EXPLORING CAMERA SHOTS AND ANGLES
INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO ART
HERE WE SEE CELLSIT CHARLOTTE MOORMAN IN NAM JUNE PAIK’S PIECE TV CELLO. THE INTERFACE BETWEEN SOUND, MUSIC AND ART IS ONE THAT FASCINATES ME. I LOVE THE INTERCONNECTIVITY BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL OBJECT AND THE AUDIO – THE FACT THAT THE IMAGE THAT PLAYS ON THE TV SCREENS IS ALMOST A PERPETUAL FEEDBACK LOOP. THE PICKUPS ON THE INSTRUMENT INFLUENCE THE IMAGE THAT IS SHOWN ON THE INSTRUMENT – WOW. AND WE CAN GO ONE STEP FURTHER IN THAT IF WE WATCH A VIDEO OF THE TV CELLO BEING PLAYED IS THAT VIDEO IN ITSELF ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF VIDEO ART? – IT COULD CERTAINLY BE MADE TO BE. THEN WE GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE OF WHETHER ANY VIDEO OF ANY PERFORMANCE ART COULD ALSO TO SOME EXTENT BE THOUGHT AS OF VIDEO ART, PARTICULARLY IF THE VIDEOGRAPHER INCLUDES CREATIVE ELEMENTS WHEN MAKING THE FILM…
ABOVE IS AN IMAGE FROM POUR YOUR BODY OUT BY PIPILOTTI RIST. THE HUGE VIDEO SCREENS INTERSECT AND CONTINUOUSLY SHOW VIDEO FOOTAGE WHICH IS 16 MINUTES IN DURATION. THE ACCOMPANYING SOUNDTRACK HOWEVER IS 10 MMINUTES LONG SO THEY BECOME CONTINUOUSLY OUT OF SYNCH. THE STATED PURPOSE IS THAT THE AUDIENCE WILL NEVER HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE. FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE I DONT QUITE GET THAT. IT BREAKS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE AUDIO AND THE VIDEO. THE RANDOM NATURE OF THE SOUNDTRACK PREVENTS THERE FROM BEING ANY COHESION. FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE THE JOY OF VIDEO ART IS THE OPPORTUNITY TO COMBINE VISUAL AND AURAL EXPERIENCES MAKING THE OVERALL EFFECT GREATER THAN THE SUM OF TWO PARTS – BUT A CHACUN SON GOUT……
VIDEO PROJECT
Above is a screen shot from my final video project. All in all I was fairly pleased with the way it turned out. I worked hard on matching the audio rhythm with the video and in the main it was successful. It is surprisingly time consuming to fine tune the edits and if I could possibly have spent more time on transitions and few other details, but at a certain point you get fatigued with the process. Ideally it would be good to set it aside for a short period then come back to it with fresh eyes. But still considering the learning curve for premier pro software I’m happy to let it go…..perhaps after FIN 201 it will all become more familiar.
SOME TECHNICAL EXERCISES
This is the green screen project. The examples of past student work were so good I feel a bit daunted about creating my own green screen – hopefully the tips from the exercise will help. Have a couple of ideas and went to the studio with Sara on Tuesday – glad I did as space was limited at home and it would have limited what I could do for the mini project
This tech exercise was a bit taxing and I was really glad that Sara’s video was there as well as the typed instructions. It’s quite hard to convey instructions just by text as there are many ways to misinterpret the text alone. Particularly moving the timeline along for some of the animations – the video helped with that enormously. I’m glad we have some extra time with the green screen mini project as there were quite a few techniques in the split screen that might also be useful for that project. I felt tempted to add some sound to the exercise – the video is crying out for it!
FIRST PROJECT OF 2021 – USING GREEN SCREEN
This one was quite a challenge. I had a couple of ideas that I was keen to try – one was reciting a poem and green-screening out my face so just my mouth and eyes were showing and then juxta positioning it onto a statue, the next was tightrope walking over an abyss. Had fun with Sara working in the studio, but ultimately the apertures I had made in the cloth were larger than I wanted for the eyes and mouth and the tightrope hand-held video was too shaky. So back to the drawing board at home at my trusty ping pong ball….Particularly enjoyed the sound portion of the project.
FOUR MORE TECHNICAL EXERCISES
The purpose of this exercise was to learn how to correct underexposed and overexposed videos. We also edited an evening clip to make it appear closer to a nighttime clip – probably a useful technique as it can be hard to shoot good video in low light conditions. It just goes to show how much work there is in post production. In our digital photography class we learned that it was possible to edit a really bad RAW image and make it very passable. This puts an emphasis more on the creative element of the composition and to some extent makes up for less than perfect technical capture – though the better the technical the least post production.
An interesting exercise using blend modes to overlay video. Some good lessons regarding keyframing opacity and color which I was able to use in my green screen project. I couldn’t resist adding sound to the video as two tracks feature music – I hope I don’t make Sara mad!!! I particularly liked duplicating the singer in the last clip.
What a struggle this one was – drove me mad. I think my version of premier pro or the source file was corrupted. Couldn’t get the effects to work but sorted it through with Sara in the end. I like the first clip, the second clip it’s a bit hard to see the impact the editing had on the original if you don’t see both
Another nightmare to start off with. When outlining the kettle the mask wouldn’t complete. Started from scratch umpteen times. Finally sorted it out with Sara. I like the retro color for the kettle – I was born in a generation when that sort of shade was very much the norm in the 1960s and then had a resurgence in the 1990s. The mask and tracking features have huge potential
Oh what fun. I had no idea when I signed up for NIC that I would be making split screen videos. Lots of technical challenges with this one – but eventually found the answers – thank you Dr Google. It took about 15 minutes to export as there was so much going on. One of the tough parts was figuring out how to un-nest videos – I had added an adjustment layer nested a complex sequence then didn’t like the adjustment layer in the end. Double click on the adjustment layer to remove the layer and BOOM everything else disappeared – several times! Like black and white – think I will use it a bit more. My ambition now is to make a video of Bob Dylan’s song Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. I love the story and would love to take it on…..one day perhaps?
A COUPLE OF AUDIO TECH EXERCISES
who would believe that a couple of simple tech exercises would cause so much grief. These exercises explored two different ways of synchronising sounds – through a snap and through matching waves. the instructions were clear and explicit but one small mis0read on my part had me trying to merge the files in my timeline rather than the project panel. IT DOESNT WORK! When Sara finally troubleshot we me we got it figured but I spent 5 days tearing my hair out thinking that there was a bug in my software,, deleting software, reinstalling etc. etc. You live and learn I hope.
STORYBOARDS FOR FINAL VIDEO PROJECT
it’s sad in some ways to be posting these storyboards as they indicate that we are coming towards the end of the FIN201 Class. It was part of the requirements for the final project that we post two storyboards on two options for the final project – though from the outset I had my heart set on just one option. The first storyboard is a project that I would have been very happy to make immediately after completing the final soundscape for FIN 200. I enjoyed making the soundscape and had toyed with the concept of making a video to accompany the sound track (see previous blog post). HOWEVER for many years (at least 15) I have wanted to make a video of a music track – not a music video but a narrative video – which would tell the story behind the music. My dream had always been Bob Dylan’s Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts – but its a 9 minute track and would involve a big production , with actors and sets – maybe someday still? I have settled on Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here – a favorite song with a strong potential narrative – not an obvious narrative but one with subtlety. So I offer you first the alternate story board (which might also be made one day)
ITS A BRIGHT SPRING DAY IN THE VILLAGE. THE BIRDS ARE SINGING THE BEES ARE BUZZING, BUT FOR SOME REASON THERE’S AN OMINOUS FEELING OF SOMETHING IMPENDING IN THE AIR. THE FEELING GROWS STRONGER AND STRONGER. THE VILLAGERS GROW RESTLESS AND GATHER IN THE SQUARE TO LISTEN TO THE ELDERS. THE ELDERS ARE ANGRY AND HARSH WORDS ARE EXCHANGED. THE VILLAGERS HEAR THE ELDERS AND SPLIT INTO TWO FACTIONS. ALL TOO SOON THE SOUND OF MARCHING SHATTERS THE AIR. BATTLE BREAKS OUT. DESPITE ALL WARNINGS ONE OF THE YOUTHS CRIES THE CRY WHICH SHOULD NEVER BE SPOKEN. WITH THE BONDS BROKEN THE VILLAGE IS UNMADE. MANY DAYS LATER A LONELY TRAVELLER WALKS THROUGH THE SMOKING RUINS OF THE VILLAGE AND STOPS IN THE SQUARE. SHE LISTENS HARD AND ON THE BREEZE SHE SENESES RATHER THAN HEARS THE ECHOES OF THE LOST PEOPLE AS A BELL TOLLS AND THE FEELING FADES TO BLACK
And next the storyboard for my planned project
VIDEO ARTIST PRESENTATION POWERPOINT
eve-ppt eve-ppt-2STOP MOTION PROJECT
Wow this one was a barrel of fun. As ever it was a slow burner getting things started and then the idea of an arcade came into my head. I started off with pacman – using cut-out ghosts and whiting out the grid whenever pacman ate the little dots – just like the arcade game. Moved the ghosts and pacman a dot at a time with little tweezers. It was a real pain in the a*** setting up the phone to be vertically above the grid and also ensuring that the images I was collecting were what I wanted as it is hard to see the phone screen when its clamped in a tripod. I used the stop motion software on the iPhone but couldn’t get the headphones to work as a trigger so I invested 10 bucks in a Bluetooth trigger that would work with the phone. Shot the frames and tried a couple of different uploads to get the images into Premiere Pro. Figured out the importing every image was the best way to go – but then what was the point in using the stop motion software? Also the phone got a whole load of extraneous white space so I went through a major exercise of cropping every single image by hand to just get the area I wanted. I learned my lesson for the pinball sequence. Instead of the phone I set up my DSLR to shoot the stop motion – I can activate the shutter through my phone. Way better image quality too and you can see what you are shooting. also found a way of batch cropping the images in Irfan view after some internet searches. I had my two video sequences and then had a review with Sara about how to package the whole video. We agreed that a transition between one video to the next might be fun – but I had all my stop motion in the can and would never be able to get exactly the same angle and light again. So for the transition I imported the stills into a word document and superimposed both pacman and the pinball black dot onto them and took a screen shot. Then moved them digitally – more lime animation than stop motion. It would have taken forever to get the same flow as the pinball video with tiny increments and loads of editing in word – so I used about 30 frames for the transition. Worked pretty well. For the audio I used a bit of found sound but also recorded a ball rolling down a board for the pinball and my own voice for the pacman sound effects and hitting a wrench against some cans for the pinball. Tried hard to make sure that the sound was reasonably in sequence with the video (just like the foley artists!). Struggled a bit with the titles at first – the text wasn’t behaving itself – but have definitely established the orange ball from previous videos as my signature.
STOP MOTION TECH EXERCISE
The exercise was reasonably straightforward and for once the Premiere Pro software behaved itself. I had trouble initially getting to see the old video under the black video with the text but figured out setting the opacity to zero would work. Ideal music would have been the fossils dance by Saint Saens from Carnival of the Animals, but I found a nice piece of scratchy beat instead
This one was quite a marathon. Had many technical problems on the way. Could not advance a frame at a time by using control page up for some reason. Also was unable to grab the ends of the clips to trim them – found a workaround for both of this Finally when rendering to Quicktime there was a lag between the audio and the effects – managed to render into AVI format instead before posting to YouTube – but the AVI file is huge as its not compressed.
well my friends fin 201 is drawing to a close. it has been fun from start to finish. the final project helped me realize something I had been hoping to do for a long time, and also allows the prospect of keeping this work up with a few ideas that came into my head while making it. it was not without technical difficulties, particularly synchronizing the 4 video tracks with 3 sound tracks and despite several hours of trying I was unable to completely eliminate a “pop” in the audio track. I’m still happy however and hoping that I can find another creative class in the fall term this year.
tech exercise audio edits
This one was a challenge. Copying from Audition to Premiere pro produced several error messages. I had tried to post this exercise several times before using YouTube but the video was blocked because apparently the music in the background is copyrighted! Managed to do it in the end through Kaltura and my media.
FIX AUDIO TECH EXERCISE
Sadly this is the LAST POST of FIN 201 (cue bugler). What an adventure it has been. It is fitting I guess that the last tech exercise should have also given me a bit of technical trouble and this time I wasn’t able to fix it. The audio edits went well in Audible and I was able to export to premiere pro, but for some reason i was unable to export from Premiere Pro to MP4. C’est la vie. I include a screenshot confirming that I was able to get that far but was thwarted at the last hurdle.
Thanks Sara for a great learning experience through FIN 200 and FIN 201 – Hope to see you in the Fall.