VIS4037 - Narrative : Collaborative Module (Week 4 - March 2019)

  • Eugene Ekuban

Sound & Movement. In your groups, you are required to create a 15-30 second piece of sound and movement using that weeks' sound as the inspiration for your work. Each week you will present your work back to the whole group, starting with a short synopsis and the keywords that help define the overall feel of your piece. You may resample, edit, repeat, retime, layer or add effects or other sounds to the clip but, whether literal or abstract, creative is paramount

Initial responses
For the final week instead of getting a sound, we were faced with a new challenge we were given a word and with that, we had to react and create both and audio and visual responses. After a couple of days brainstorming, I came to an idea and shared it with the group once happy, I created a short brief.

Informal brief: Protection - Security - Insurance - Safety; considering protection from the perspective of surveillance and prevention. Taking inspiration from shows like Person of interest and statements that suggest the government is constantly watching us for our “protection”.
We can be can portray this by filming stills and panning shots - similar to security cameras. Portrait shots of someone using someone using a laptop and being watched through their webcams. We could use sounds of people talking about the subject in interviews or news reports in the introduction (overlaid once the message has been established) then introduce lots of voices over the top of each other but not too loud - enough to increase the pace/intensity of the video, with some a heartbeat or footsteps or clock sound underneath the talking for dramatic effect.

Narrative

The original storyline involved was just to demonstrate the scale of government surveillance from a micro-to-macro level. To capture the scope I envisioned shots of the Birmingham skyline, then downsized to CCTV-like footage from raised points of view in public spaces, right down to webcam footage on personal devices.


Video

Composition: When it came to collecting the footage we went for a mass of quality videos so we could freely chop and change and flick between multiple options. The composition was a very collaborative part every one brought their files and edits together on the day. Being that I had the audio file I created a team Premier Pro project inviting the other group members and placed markers where the video had to react to the audio. Most had been uploaded to drive so I downloaded some of our footage from the car parks and in the bullring and began creating an opening scene. After marking up the audio and about 10 seconds of video I waited till we met again and that is where we came together to create the full sequence with CCTV effects.

Execution: When we gathered next I shared a plan of action - we created a list for locations to film, and from that created a chronological plan of travel so that we were effective with our time whilst shooting. We did come across some difficulties whilst filming, for example batteries dying quickly and members of the people requesting to have footage deleted, but Manny and I went for a second shot and on the whole it was largely successful.
Audio

Upon following the Adobe get started tutorial I felt comfortable enough to begin working on the audio file. I remember being particularly interested in the few specific effects he used and explained; these included the studio reverb and pitch shifter. I began by just playing around with other effects in addition then when I had an idea of their properties I used them accordingly. I also used the fade in and out feature a lot, trying to overlay with a third sound when transitioning. My aim with the sound produced was to create a narrative that we could then shot visuals to complement, so really the content I sourced and used would direct our filming over the next few days. There was a mixture of file types sampled in this mixdown, it ranged for stock sounds like keyboard taps to clips from news reports, to theme tunes of popular Netflix shows, I really enjoyed the innocent freedom of trying a new art.