Month: April 2016

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In this week’s lecture, we were briefed on the interview process.

We were told to ensure that our subject had something to say, and could say it well. However; beyond this, the rules of documentary get hazy.

There are many conflicting opinions regarding best documentary practice. For example, even within the lecture, although we were first told to brief our subject thoroughly prior to the interview, it was later said that giving them no information before the interview was also a useful technique. Ultimately, despite all of the technical tips and tricks that we were offered, for documentaries we were told these wise words of wisdom: believe in serendipity. 

serendipity |ˌsɛr(ə)nˈdɪpɪti|noun
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

This is what makes documentary film the most simultaneously exciting and terrifying film form. It’s impossible to say what you’re going to end up with; if what you set out to film will be what you end up filming, or even if any of it works at all. Granted, there are steps that you can take to plan, but as much as much as you try, it’s a world away from working with actors. These people are real, their experiences are real and you have to be sensitive to that. You have to be perceptive to their changes in emotion, understand and quickly work out how best to speak to them in order for them to share their experiences, stories, and themselves, in a way that is authentic, and not for the camera.

Below is an excerpt from an interview with one of my favourite documentary filmmakers, Sean Dunne, speaking about his use of off-camera interviews in his latest work Cam Girlz. It is an excellent example of ingenuity; adapting to your subject to ensure that they are comfortable, so that the best interview emerges.

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Textual analysis aims to understand and pull apart the meaning of a text and the way in which it was constructed to direct the reader towards a particular meaning.

I decided to go through the below still from Beyonce’s recent Formation music video, as an example of textual analysis, which has been a focus of this week’s classes.

In reading different texts, there are two levels of meaning: denotative and connotative.

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denotes: sinking police car

connotes: ‘sinking’ the police – calling them out for their acts of violence

denotes: water

connotes: transparency

denotes: flooding

connotes: peril, natural disaster

denotes: red, white & blue

connotes: America, the state of America as a collective whole

denotes: woman lying on police car – lifeless

connotes: death sprawl – police brutality

denotes: old, traditional clothing and hair

connotes: another era (one in which racism was alive and well)

denotes: crooked lights

connotes: broken lights, broken police, dysfunctional, crooked

denotes: new orleans police sign

connotes: black, low socio-economic community, new orleans, which has a complex history and present relationship with racism and police brutality

denotes: sinking police vehicle

connotes: institutions, particularly the police, have failed new orleans

denotes: flooding

connotes: hurricane Katrina; a period in which New Orleans incurred an unprecedented death toll due to slow aid response times; a situation widely attributed to racism – overwhelmingly it was the black community that was left after evacuations had ended.

denotes: Beyonce on top of car

connotes: symbolic power in who is on top of the car – also, anyone can be dragged down/impacted, by the police/state if they are a black individual, no matter who they are

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Through a breakdown of the individual elements of just a single frame in this video, the amount that semiotics plays in the construction of meaning becomes clear, as every aspect of the video, every prop, colour, placement, has been carefully planned out to reflect the overall message of the video; one protesting racism, the police brutality that comes with it, and the stereotypes and deep-seated prejudices about black culture that allow it.

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A blog post on blog posts.

In week 5’s lecture, we were told that none of us were putting up enough posts on our blogs. Ironically in a communications course, it wasn’t particularly well communicated to us at the start of the semester that ‘four posts a week’ as we were told, really meant that four posts was the bare minimum we should be doing to pass. Hence, most of us are now furiously trying to catch up and post obscene amounts of material on our blogs.

In this however I am conflicted. While there are a million things I could post about, and I don’t struggle to think of things that I could write about, I am constantly met with two questions:

 a) Does the world needs this information? That is, is this worthwhile? Does it contribute to anything? Is it meaningful or necessary? There’s already so much junk on the internet, I don’t want to contribute to it and dilute well crafted, important, meaningful content, with reams of purposeless, trivial, and unproductive writing.

and

b) Is there quality in this work? By placing the focus on creating a large number of posts, the quality and standard of the posts are inevitably going to drop, as less time can be dedicated to each – quantity over quality.

I’m not sure how I feel about posting endless trivial observations, poorly crafted paragraphs and layouts, just to fulfil a quota. I’d much rather produce slightly less work of higher quality than things that I’m not proud of. It’s important to me to create media that is well-written, aesthetically pleasing and meets my own standards, thus I am trying to find a balance that allows me to maintain a certain standard, whilst meeting the requirements of the course.

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Psychoacoustics: the scientific study of sound perception; the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound.

During this week’s lecture, the use of high-frequency sounds to prevent teens from loitering in malls was mentioned. This got me thinking about other unconventional uses for sound.

I remembered a newspaper article I once read, which spoke of the way in which speakers were set up to play classical music in a particular neighbourhood effected by rampant crime. The implementation of which successfully aided in the reduction of drug dealing within the area, to the surprise and delight of all.

There are many other examples of such applications, and they all work in the same way as in film; influencing the audience to incur a carefully curated emotional, and sometimes physical, response.

An example of such could include a classical music listener’s calm driving, as opposed to the heavy metal, or rock listener’s predilection towards road rage. Or even a visceral reaction, such as the physical recoil that comes as a result of nails being run down a chalkboard.

The psychoacoustic implications of sound are endless, and effect us continuously as we go throughout our daily lives. As a field that is gradually drawing more attention, scientists have started to observe psychoacoustic reactions in Alzheimer patients, and have hence realised it’s bourgeoning potential within the medical profession as a way of enabling patients to function on a more normal level, aiding memory and cognitive function. It has been noted that playing songs significant to an Alzheimer sufferer’s life, particularly from their youth, aids them immensely, bringing them joy, perhaps bringing back memories, and dramatically improving their quality of life.

In contrast to this, sound is also used, and has been for a long time, as part of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ in which sound is used as part of psychological warfare, torture, used to manipulate, or wear down captives in order to draw out information. Sensory deprivation (no sound), sensory bombardment (too much sound), sleep deprivation, evocative sounds such as babies crying or simply music played continuously on a loop, are just some of the many applications of sound in this setting.

Sound is a deeply impactful instrument and means of communication. As a constantly evolving medium, its uses are far reaching, well beyond those demonstrated here, and will continue to find new and diverse applications as the years go by; from film, music, and art, to science and technology, the possibilities of sound are endless.

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soundmark | /saʊnd//mɑːk/ | noun
referring to a community sound which is unique, or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in that community.

Sound is an important medium for establishing context, whether it be in film, tv, or radio, ambient sound is often used as an underlying audio track to reinforce the setting of the media piece. Such tracks are often referred to as soundmarks. Highly indicative of the specific setting, these easily position the audience, through sound, within the context of the work. Ambient sound does a similar thing, however places the audience within a more general setting, for example, a cafe, as opposed to a cafe in paris.

Below are some amateur soundmarks/ambient audio that I’ve recorded throughout the week, which simply capture some of the atmospheric noise in particular places around Melbourne.

Melbourne CBD

Melbourne Zoo

Botanic Gardens

Rally

Emporium Shopping Centre / Cafe

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In the last twenty minutes of this week’s lecture, we were tasked with going out and recording a series of audio clips using the H2N Zoom recorders. The brief stated that in our pairs, one person was to be in the interviewer, and one the interviewee. We were to record one formal interview, and one informal interview. This was to be combined with atmosphere and background sounds, as well as spot sounds. In our project, we chose to focus on the topic of the RMIT City campus.

 

 

Formal Interview: recorded in the RMIT library

This particular location worked very well for a formal interview as recordings produced very little noise; however, due to the nature of the location, the interview was conducted with hushed voices, which detracts from a professional atmosphere. This would have been appropriate if the library were discussed in the interview, however it did not work particularly well in the context of the interview as it was about RMIT City Campus as a whole.

Informal interview: roving recording, walking around the RMIT campus

This interview produced surprisingly clean audio due to the amount of construction that was occurring around us whilst recording. This can most likely be attributed to the recording pattern of the mic, which is designed to pick up ambient noise, whilst retaining focus upon the directed subject. The issue with this recording was that as we were walking, the mic was moving closer, then farther, away from the subject, meaning that the audio went between being loud and quiet, depending on how close the mic was. In future I will try to ensure I keep the microphone at a steady distance from the subject. I was also fixing up gain levels on the mic as we were walking in order to deal with the changing environment, which is why you can hear a noticeable dip in the audio levels midway through the informal interview. Thankfully, much of these issues were able to be corrected, or lessened, in Adobe Audition, which was also used to even out differences in loudness between recordings using the match loudness.

Atmosphere / Background: general street noise / traffic

A fair amount of the atmosphere / background noise was simply traffic noise, which works to reinforce the sense that the informal interview took place outside on the street, walking around campus. When layered, as is noticeable at the beginning of the audio piece, these atmospheric sounds go a long way to establish context within the audio piece, without the need for visuals.

Spot sounds: tram, elevator arrival, doors opening

For the spot sounds, we tried to get as close to our subject, and point the mic directly towards it, in order to achieve the cleanest audio. Due to the nature of the spot sounds we chose to record (moving tram, packed elevator), it was difficult to get close to the source of the sound, however the spot sounds were still quite clean and useable within the piece. We also tried to record a spot sound of walking up stairs, however the audio was plagued with construction noise, which competed with the sound of footsteps to such an extent it ended up being completely unusable.

 

The Edit

The main issue that I found in editing this, was that I couldn’t find a way to integrate the informal interview and the formal interview using the recordings I had without it being jarring. I feel as though this is where ambient audio or music could have been used to create an integrating link between the two pieces.

I am also not particularly pleased with the ending of the piece, as it is rather abrupt, and I feel would have worked a lot better if we had a summarising statement or concluding piece to end upon.

I also played around a little with different audio effects, reducing audio – a tricky process which made the informal interview sound strange, as though it was under water, and which I eventually let alone – playing with different layerings and music tracks. However; I ended up using very little of this in the final piece, as at this stage, while I am still not particularly proficient in sound editing, I like to keep things sounding more authentic, with less effects as, as it’s highly possible that I could make the audio over the top if I edited much more.

I would really like to find time to thoroughly go through all the features of Adobe Audition, and work through how to use the program efficiently and effectively, as I find that it’s far less intuitive that Premiere Pro (however maybe this is due to the fact that I am not an inherently audial person). As audio makes up such a vital component in film, in controlling mood and film tone especially, this is crucial to improving my film practice overall.

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After looking over this week’s readings (Leeuwen, and Roberts-Breslin), and discussing them with others, it became wildly apparent that sound is something that is not only highly unnoticed, but something which the majority of people are disinterested in.

In spite of this, sound is crucial to understanding most films; not only does it convey narrative, but further, a film’s audio goes a long way to set the tone, mood, pace, and context of a film, whilst it also drives characterisation, controls and manipulates emotion and reaction in the audience, and allows for clear offscreen action.

Part of the reason that people are so unenthused by audio is because it takes a back seat to visuals. As stated by Roberts-Breslin in the reading, ‘there are volumes of critical writing on the aesthetics and cultural impact of movies and television, but in comparison, little has been written on radio.’

Is this because humans are inherently visual beings?

Is it because we have been trained to view film first and foremost as a visual medium?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I understand the importance of sound, because of what happens when you take it away.

Below I have embedded a video from David Terry Fine, entitled Can You Read My Lips?, which demonstrates our reliance upon the medium of sound to comprehend meaning, as well as the intensely complex relationship between the auditory and the visual worlds.