Listen to the audio you recorded in Tute #1.  Here. Write a paragraph or two about your recording from a technical and/or “poetic” perspective.

Consider:

What these sounds evoke for you.  What associations they have.

Do any of your recordings suggest images?  What might they be?

Do any of your recordings suggest the possibility of other recordings?

it’s difficult for me to judge these sounds on an emotional/associational level because i know what each of them are and where their sound originates. technically of course there could be better recordings. we were just experimenting not just with using the device itself but with gain, volume, movement and the location of the microphone compare to the origin of the sound which we were trying to record.

some of our sounds are a lot more obvious than others, for example, the opening of the microwave, beeping while the buttons are pressed and finished and the sound as it cooks. another obvious sound was the tram going past, although with this one we tried to experiment as well with other vehicles on the street and to see what types of sounds we could generate by either keeping the mic static or moving it to follow the source of the sound to produce different ideas and noises.

from a more poetic perspective, two of my favourites are the waterfall and the treadmill. the waterfall was a steady stream of unchanging noise yet because it was a waterfall it was also constantly changing. it is not immediately obvious to the listener what it was but is also somewhat soothing, as running water generally is. the one i really like is the treadmill. it is not obvious at all what it is and the sound is consistently changing throughout as the treadmill sped up then slowed down and this makes the track interesting because it doesn’t feel static. but what makes it even more complete is the faint beat of a music track you can in the background because the sound was recorded in a gym. not really sure why but i really do enjoy listening to this track and i feel like it has the potential to become part of a series involving the sounds of other equipment in the gym.

Listen to the first 10 minutes of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, “The Idea of North”. Record your impressions in a paragraph or two.

i found this doco very difficult to listen to. for one, it kept crashing so i got it in a very disjointed manner. however, i felt as the the program itself was rather disjointed. the beginning made me almost entirely lose interest as all the voices began speaking over one another. it was impossible to listen to one over another so in the end it just became an indistinguishable babble.

the program became easier to listen to once a definitive narrator took over and some actual ideas were discussed whereas originally i had no idea what was going on. there was the introduction of some background noises to accompany the dialogue which made it seem more natural even if the noises could be a bit loud at points.

unfortunately, the whole thing dropped out completely at the 7 minute mark and nothing i could do would fix it, it just kept crashing, so thats all i could get out of this.

In this week’s lecture, scenes from Scott Ruo’s ‘Four Images’, Brian Hill’s ‘Drinking for England’ and Chantal Akerman’s ‘D’Est’ were screened.  Choose one of these, and consider, in a single paragraph, what might have intrigued, interested, displeased or repelled you.

in the lecture we were shown scenes from Chantal Akerman’s ‘D’Est’. i can’t say i was a huge fan of it. although i guess it would be classified as a documentary, it just didn’t really feel like anything. it was a little unsettling to just watch those people sit with no dialogue or music or anything. what i did like was the first shot of the people walking around the camera. i thought that was interesting because you keep waiting for people to look at the camera or imagine yourself walking by the camera and trying to think of how you would act. this does bring up the question of how real are documentaries because people will always act differently in front of a camera than they would in real life.

In 200 words or less please outline your goals, desires – what you want to get out of this semester. You will review this later in the course. Many will rethink this dramatically by the end of the course – this is a good thing.

most importantly for me this semester i want to make a film i am proud of, something i will want to show people. i want to learn a lot more about documentaries and the different forms. it’s never particularly been something that has interested me at all so i think this will give me an opportunity to make something i normally wouldn’t and it will be a really good experience.

i also think making a dock is an excellent opportunity to learn and discover a different way of filming. not everything can be planned, not everything can be perfect and often the idea can evolve and change along the way which i think is really important and something i’m looking forward to this semester.