So with project brief 4 submitted and finished, I think this is probably the strongest of the three works I’ve handed in so far. Obviously as a whole having a group creating one piece rather than the other two projects which were individual, it would be expected to be that way. But even just my contribution to this piece is better than anything I had done previously in my opinion in terms of the editing aspects. I’m much more comfortable editing audio, even though I’d never used audition, I do have some experience in editing music and creating music in FL studio and a little in audacity. Some of the principles were similar which helped a lot.
What Worked?
From a broad standpoint, I think the overall structure worked really well. We were originally just sort of going to do various scenes with no link other than the thematic “attention” and social media/multitasking. However, what originally begun organically as an easier way to bridge two of the scenes, became the entire format of the whole project. It became a “day in the life” sort of piece where every scene had a sort of chronological order and a physical relation to each other. I think that this gave the piece a much more coherent feel, and each scene flowed well from one to the next.
Another broad part that worked really well was the bookends in my opinion. Have it begin and end both in the car in similar ways pulled it together and made the piece feel congruent in my opinion. I think having the second car scene also made the audience comfortable. They heard that same sounds of getting into the car and starting up the engine and thought, oh we’ve heard this before we know whats coming. Then there was music the second time, which would slightly alter what they were expecting. Before they have time to properly think through what was different the phone rand and everything got tuned out, then of course the ending snaps them out from focusing on the phone. I think its a powerful way to end the project.
What Could have been Better?
Firstly, I think some of the links could have been a little better. Specifically the narrated pieces. Perhaps its because it is my voice, but I just don’t think that they worked. I felt like it pulled the listener out of the moment slightly, and it gave it somewhat of a formal feel which was a little at odds with the rest of the piece from my perspective. I think finding a way to merge the scenes more coherently such as the time lapses or physically bringing the audience on a journey from one location to the next as we did in the other “linking” segments would have worked better had we had enough time to do so/been able to think of a better way to link.
More generally, I think I the piece could have done with one more scene. Its hard to explain exactly why, but the pacing feels a little off to me. We originally wanted to have a third car scene in the middle of the project, but felt that there wasn’t enough content in between the three car scenes and that if there were three car scenes, it would have been too centred around those and the others seemed a bit peripheral. If we had another strong scene to add in, we could have also had the car scene and I think that would have made the piece flow a little better.
What themes from class did it touch on?
I think the big things that we drew from the classes were two fold. Firstly the technical aspects. None of us really had a whole lot of experience in working on these projects. I had worked on music before, but making songs and making soundscapes are completely different animals. All the work we did in the lectures really enabled us to use audition to a standard I was proud of. I’m very happy with how the piece turned out from a technical stand point.
The other big thing that I drew on when throwing out ideas in the group and formulating the structure was the piece we listened to in class about transgender people in Thailand. Not so much content wise, but structurally. That piece gave me the idea to have separate scenes and jump from one thing to the next centred around one theme. That idea basically evolved into (with input from the rest of the group) what we finished up with.
What are the Affordances of working with Audio?
I think its a little easier to get the audience to be involved in the action. Having a pair of headphones on, you are sort of automatically in surround sound/first person in regards to whats happening. The sounds are all around you and its quite easy to get the audience to feel as though they are there if you use the right tracks. Its more difficult if you want a hyper realistic feeling, but thats not what we were going for, so in terms of a slight abstract feel and just trying to get the audience to “feel” the space we were creating, I felt like it was a simpler task to do that with audio rather than video.
Its also just a lot easier to get recordings. You don’t need to go to lots of different locations to do all your lines. You can just record all your background noises, and then try to get the rest in one or two sittings in a studio. With video you need to get all the lines right on location so it looks good. With sound however that isn’t required.
What Have I Learned?
Well I think technically I’m a lot better than where I started from. If I’m required to make an audio piece in the future I’ll be very comfortable if I’m given the appropriate time to do so.
Im also really interested in podcasting, and I think this was a great first step into that world. I sort of thought of podcasting as a strictly dialogue driven medium, but this project has completely broken that misconception and now I feel like I can do some really interesting, different things in a podcast studio/edit room.