I watched Life is a Musical, a project by Media 1 students made last year.

This was an impressive project. Aesthetically and aurally it was really beautiful. Who ever did the filming did an excellent job of composing the shots. They were really balanced and sometimes quite abstract, often not showing everything in the frame. They chose completely ordinary objects and settings for their projec t and the lack of a distinct action, plot or a clear subject really emphasised the beauty of the mundane objects/scenes they were displaying. In this they really captured the poetic nature of the assignment.

The sound was of course an important element of the piece, and it stood out, as neither the sound or visuals out shone the other. Many of the sounds were similar though and that was a shame, the sounds were similar but in different locations and thus the shots were different. I think there was a clear focus on industrialism and the tools that we use everyday in our everyday lives. The microwave, the train, the  escalators etc, but I’m not sure if it was intentional or it was my interpretation.

I really love that they have placed no negative or positive attitudes toward anything, they have merely explored it in a really ambiguous way as to allow the viewer to appreciate the beauty of its simplicity and the simple, ordinary objects, and take their own interpretation from the work.

The connections between the main shot and the links to other shots were possibly too random though, if these weren’t as seemingly random (it was as if little thought had gone into it) they might have formed something of a clearer narrative or an opinion that they wanted to get across. Although I just said that I enjoyed the ambiguity of it all, I do think a narrative or categorical approach even would have made the piece stronger or more engaging. I couldn’t make much of a connection between distinct sounds, it just seemed like they’d grouped different but similar clips together and linked them to each other randomly.

Aesthetically it was stunning though, and as an abstract film it worked well. It might have just been too abstract for me as I like there to be some sort of message or connection that I could take from it. All I got from it was that the ordinary is beautiful, I feel like that’s a really simplistic and obvious message. They could have made it more complex and deeper by contrasting nature’s sounds and industrial sounds etc. If this was what they were trying to do, it was too subtle and wasn’t balanced enough to be effective.