I was away from the first two weeks of semester and so the footage I had to use for this exercise was actually recorded by my classmates, not myself. Putting together this little video was an interesting experience, as it allowed me to basically try and make something abstract out of material with context that I knew little about.
Eventually I decided to go with a sort of ‘jigsaw puzzle’ idea by choosing three shots (recorded by Jake and Kim) and proceeding to cut each shot up into three pieces. Each piece would be a zoomed in section of the shot, and after showing the viewer all three pieces the complete image would be shown again. It was just a fun experiment with showing how there can be many different details within a shot that, once you disconnect them, may not seem inherently connected with one another.
I also explored this theme of disconnectedness with the use of sound. As with the video, I didn’t really know what was going through the recordists’ minds when they were capturing the audio, so this granted me a little more freedom in piecing material together in an abstract fashion. I basically chose what sounded interesting and only after a bit of time editing did I figure out what each sound was: pedestrian crossing, supermarket checkout, tram stop.
All in all, this exercise reinforced how audio and video don’t always have to be literally linked. Different sounds and different images can be mixed and matched for varying effects, even in a form such as documentary. Knowing this will definitely come in handy when we start the production process of our film.