This morning I had my interview with Peter Elliott, and asked him questions from my list, but found that he kept the interview going himself. I found I didn’t even need to ask all of my questions as he covered multiple topics within his answers.

I like the way it sounds. The recording is a bit quiet, but there is no noise or anything as we were in an empty, quiet meeting room, so I can just turn the volume up easily. So the clean recording is great, but also his speaking voice is very good. He speaks clearly and I feel his voice and tone matches the building. It’s very relaxed, low, quiet. I can already imagine ways to enhance this and layer over sound effects and such in the finished piece.

I listened to the 15 minute piece and took note of the main topics he was discussing, as well as interesting comments. I found there are some elements of the building I have neglected which he kept mentioning, so I think it would be important to include these, such as the L shaped courtyard, Courtroom 2, and the Dome; which I included a little bit of but probably not enough. From here I will collect some more images, possibly on Monday afternoon. I will then work on my Photoshop documents to make them expansive and to include more elements which will give the piece more visual interest and will allow me to make the piece longer. Hopefully tomorrow I will buy a surface to work on to give me an idea of the dimensions I need to be working in. Something practical, but still large. Then I will try printing these out on Thursday, so if there are any hiccups in printing, I can rectify them on Friday. From there I should be ready for filming on Sunday.

Alongside this, I need to be thinking about shot lists, and planning my shoot so it can be successful and efficient. I will also be beginning to  edit Peter Elliott’s interview from now, so when I have the footage from Sunday, I can get straight into editing that and polishing it all, plus gathering a library of sound effects I can use. I need to pay special attention to this on the day, as the ripping of the paper and the tools and such on the piece are going to play a huge part. I can supplement these with recordings from a H4N later if I need to, but I would like to avoid this and keep the sound diagetic.

Full Interview: https://soundcloud.com/matthewsj-1/peter-elliott-interview

I listened to the interview and wrote down what times each topic occurred at to help me edit:

After contacting the Architecture school I was directed back to Peter Elliott. At first I was defeated by this because I was going in circles, but I realised the email they had provided me with this time was different to the one I had tried. The initial email was just the one on their website, which went to the office, but this one was addressed direct to Peter Elliott. I shot him an email and he replied immediately. So now, it looks like I have an interview subject! Hooray! It’s so great that he could help me out, now I just need to make sure I do a good job to make it worth the effort.

I’ve been drafting some questions for the sound interview, and hope to have it on Friday or even earlier, just so I can get it done this week and begin editing it before I jump onto the collage next week. The important thing I need to focus on now is having good interview questions that cover all the bases. I also need to complete organisation of an interview time/ date/ activation which will fit into my production timeline, but importantly, is least taxing on my subject. I want to do this efficiently, as he would be, essentially, doing this as a favour to me and RMIT.

Filming of the collage is going to take place on the 17th of this month. That is the day when we have the Building to ourselves, and I just need the one room. Hopefully I can spend a few hours in there making sure I get every shot, as the way I am imagining it, there are lots of little shots and I have to move the camera a lot between each one due to continuity. I can’t shoot to edit, I have to edit while I am shooting, unless I get multiple cameras which I don’t need and don’t particularly want either.

Before I have this interview, there appears to be a lull in production, as I am quite prepared, but just need to wait. In this time I will collect sounds I can use over the piece if i need to, and will do some tests of the collage creation, printing, making, materials, etc. I am thinking the best surface for ripping at and building on is MDF. Maybe I will get a big sheet of thin MDF, so that I can use scraping tools etc on it.

Here is my list of questions:

Today in class, Abigail Belfrage  from the Public Records Office came to discuss our ideas with us further and how we can go about finding sources. My project doesn’t really lend itself to a lot of those types of sources, but we discussed things such as parish plans which i could include in my collage. I love this idea and feel it would be a great way to ground the work, and make it even more ‘Melbourne.’ I think this opens the piece up nicely, because it gives a sense of pre-supreme court time also. Originally, the composition began with the supreme court, but this is more focused on the land and space.I found a few of them on the state library database, my favourite one is this one from 1854, around the time the supreme court was first built. 

Some other suggestions were about who I could contact for my interview. The National rust and Australia ICOMOS were suggested. I was about to contact them when Peter Elliott got back to me and agreed to an interview. That is a relief.