Planning and Script for Sense of Space

EDITING THE SENSE OF SPACE

Editing the sense of space was an extremely efficient task, one which the group did very well. The tram backing tacks were assembled first, adjusting levels if needed. The the dialogue was assembled over this backing track. The levels on the backing track had to be turned down to accommodate the dialogue tracks. There was no real problems during the editing, merely just making sure levels did not go to high essentially, see picture.

SENSE OF SPACE: CHANGE OF DIRECTION

The idea for the project has changed. We have now ditched the fast paced 'Arctic Monkeys' style story as it was thought that this approach was without enough artistic merit and would merely be an exercise in collecting sounds and compiling them. the new idea portrays a character and his world. The piece consists of a backing track of ‘tram noise’ overlaid by the characters dialogue to the audience. The character in question is a pensioner who likes to ride the trams, frequently we assume, in order the get away from things in his everyday life (he alludes to this in dialogue). The man shows a kind of melancholy attitude to the modern world and a penchant for the past. The man himself is only portrayed through his own dialogue, the world, of the trams, is there as backdrop and to compliment the creation of his character.


INFLUENCE: Many of the influences from the initial project have carried over. Mr Scruff's music has been of particular interest. His tracks 'Shanty Town', 'Fish' and 'Ahoy There' specifically. These tracks use a mix of backing track, in this case music, and dialogue snippets to create storeys. These storeys are often quite melancholic and calm sounding, which is something we would like to achieve.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQH3nFmaIFk


Recordist Paul Williams has also been of notable influence. His 1999 collection of recordings, 'Santa Pod', have had a great influence on the idea for the backing track of the track. William's recordings are of a day at the races, drag races to be specific. The what you might describe as pure documentary in that they purely record the sounds of the day at the races. I intend to record the tram backing track in much the same way.

AUDIO PROJECT PLANS

We plan to make a three minute audio track that explores the sense of a city specifically a northern Yorkshire town, morning to night to morning. The track will be planned around a man’s day in the city and all the events he attend and encounters. The track will aim to show the hustle and bustle of city life and punctuate it with things that distinguish it as a Yorkshire town. It will try to get across a collection of events that characterise a modern man’s average day, albeit in an overloading way.  The track will take the structure of:

Morning:  waking up, taking a phone call, getting dressed and dashing out

Town: dashing through the town, past cars, down alleys, being shouted out

Work: Typing, taking phone calls, avoiding the boss

Pub: drinking, laughing playing the fruit machine

Home: getting ready to go out with friends

Taxi: screeching off, laughs

Club: music pumping, ‘suggestive’ dialogue, in the toilet

Taxi and Kebab house, witness a fight, more suggestive talk

Sex scene: quick and leading into;

Morning 2: reapeat of first scene

Sounds typical of the track will be; horns, people shouting (in south Yorkshire accents), footsteps, car noises, phones ringing and dustbins and bottles rattling.

The track may be accompanied by a backing track, most likely percussion, however will try to create a beat and rhythm using the recorded sounds, using a simple 4/4 beat. Sound will take the structure of a crescendo using the sex scene as a climax.

Influences include D.A. Pennebaker’s ‘Daybreak Express’, music artist Mr Scruff, writer Jack Kerouac and Jacques Demy’s Lola, The Arctic Monkeys, and recordist Paul Williams. 

EDITING THESILENT, MOVING IMAGE, PAIRS PORTRAIT OF PLACE.

Between these two shots, the first and second, we had to add a fade. At the start of the film we were trying to achieve a classic 'story telling' effect with the composition, action and editing of them film, however, the straight cut between a flat location and a slanted one lost continuity, but adding a fade, a technique associated with a moving on of time, the two shots worked very well next to each other and produced the effect needed.






The crescendo effect in the film, with shot length getting shorter and shorter posed a problem as there was effectively two crescendos, one for the 'ripping' of nature and one for the 'consummation' by nature. This stilted and jarred the film and made it not flow correctly so we re-edited both sequences into one. This posed problems for naturally longer shots that would by definition come towards the end of the crescendo. We decided the put these longer shots right at the beginning of the sequence and have them as marker of the ''truth' to come'. Although this slightly altered their individual meanings as shots, we felt it was of neutral effect to the grand meaning of the film as a whole.

The crescendo had to be worked on extensively as the timing was crucial to the 'claustrophobic', consumed effect we were after. We developed a pattern in which 'denial' shots would eventually and evenly fade out into more and more 'acceptance' shots. After much work we feel we hit on formula that worked in accordance with our aims.

The 'tree eye' posed a problem as in the initial edit it was overused and it was felt it was becoming meaningless by way of repetition. Many shots of the tree eye have been cut out of the final cut in order to give it it's desired effect as a strong motif of the film.


In the sequence below, with the character looking up onto the tree, it was intercut with the 'tree eye'. This did flow correctly as it was mixing a static shot and a moving one. The eye was taken out of the sequence and placed at either end of the it. We felt this flowed much better and still delivered our desired effect but in fluent and articulate way.

SILENT, MOVING IMAGE, PAIRS PORTRAIT OF PLACE; Introduction and Concept

We will be making a 3 minute film shot and set in Edale. The film will be experimental in nature and use ideas and theories of formalist inclination, those such as Eisenstein's theory of Montage and Arnheim's musings will prove very influential.

The film will be based around the concept of man entering nature and realising that he is, at most basic, just part of nature himself too, he will resist this idea, but then eventually come to terms with this and accept it.

Edale

Lynne Ramsey's 'Gasman'

To say what Lynne Ramsey's 1997 short film Gasman is about would be to miss the point. Whether or not the father figure in the film is the father of the 'other' daughter character is irrelevant, nor is social realism an aspect considered by Ramsey in this particular film; it's not the lyrics that matter, it's the way they're sung. Ramsey's film aims to recreate that feeling of childhood, perhaps specifically that period tilting between infancy and adolescence; the film even shows the beginning's of the slide into full blown adolescence or 'coming of age' of sorts. The film tries to give an account, all the more real and convincing for being rooted in a specific event, of how we as children not only perceive things and react to them but, perhaps most importantly, how, as adults, we remember them. We are given our indicator, the language the film will speak, of this very early on through the almost POV shot of the toy car having sugar poured into it; an expression not only of the way a child sees, but of the mind of a child and the logic within it.  The camera is positioned at eye level with the children, for views of domestic life we can all remember as adults; 'the feel of the kitchen floor on our legs', ' the colour the lights gave off in the living room', 'the way dad polished his shoes'. Not only shot composition and lighting but sound is also a major factor in delivering that 'memory' feeling. The film eventually becomes subjective to the character of Lynne, perhaps most obvious when certain sounds are drowned out or heightened in the disco upon seeing the girl on her father's lap. The use of this technique is systematic of the language the film has set out, but, can grasp the viewer even tighter if they are able to connect with those feeling's of childish ignorance and lack of comprehension. Songs playing in the background of the kitchen and disco play clearly all the way through their respective scenes as though being hummed back from memory and also denote the time the film is set in, the seventies, essentially, the past. These styles are continued all the way through the film and is important to perceiving the film correctly, which is based on a childhood experience from Ramsey's life. Feeling a kinship with the way the film, or Ramsey, remembers these events from it's/her past is perhaps what the film/Ramsey is striving for the most. Whether or not the film is successful is perhaps most specific to who is watching it, Ramsey only aims to recreate her personal experience on the screen in a way that will communicate with other's recollections, memories and perceptions of their own past. For me, the film was very successful.

John Smith's 'Blight'

I've heard John Smith's 1996 film 'Blight' called a protest film. Protesting against the building of the M11 road into London. Having seen the film today and with the benefit of a few hours of soaking in time, I think that description may be reductive of what really is a piece of art of much wider breadth than that achievable within a political film. Smith's experimental film seems to be more considered than a one sided protest, although one sided it most definitely feels. The director seems to want us to meditate on the wider aspects of the destruction of people's houses in order to further a country's industrialisation. We are shown houses being knocked to the ground along with items that once may have had some pride of place within those houses. We are told in voiceovers of people's sadness that they are having to leave their homes and, most importantly, their memories. Elderly people recount how long they have stayed in their houses. Noises of the chainsaws and hammers destroy those memories so rooted in the souls of the buildings. Repetition is a very strong factor with the sound, being used to force us to re-evaluate what we are hearing every time we do so. However, I feel the stand-out image in the film for me is Smith's use of a shot of leaves on a tree. Smith seems to want us to, through a metaphor for innocence and nature, meditate on how we as human beings have arrived at this situation, industrialisation, bitter fighting over homes and, through use of the spider metaphor, a cycle of dog eat dog mentality in a fast moving cynical and unsentimental world.
Upon first viewing I was not keen on the film, I thought it was too one sided, sentimental and not objective enough. A little of that remains inside me, however I now think that the film has a far more poignant anti-industrialisation 'message'. This meaning is made by Smith's editing of his footage and recordings into something that could almost apply to any situation like this anywhere in the world, or at least the western world. The film for me is very successful in it's 'message' simply because of the grander scale it takes of the issues it so obviously covers. Blight becomes that more poignant because of it's ability to make the audience take a step back to see and confront an almost universal issue. Smith's use of jarring cuts, flash-frames of colour and abrupt sound only go further to intensify an issue that is already a complex and sensitive human matter, demanding the attention of the audience. For the people of the housing estate, the route Smith has taken with his style and structure must feel spot on, akin to their harsh emotional pains and sense of not being able to grasp the situation. For me however there is something that Smith does that stands out from the rest; the grande design or concept of Blight. It is Smith's blending of his own ideas and those of the people of the estate that creates the grander meaning the film delivers. This blending derives from the use of 'factual footage', of the houses and interviews, and the director's use of techniques such as the jarring cuts, repetition, flash-frames and use of 'miscellaneous' shots (the leaves and the 'Exorcist' poster) which avoid abstraction and gather meaning by being surrounded by the grounded 'factual footage'. This combining of formalism, semiotics and realism is, to my mind, what makes the film truly powerful.

Photography.

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” Ingmar Bergman