Audio Exercise
After toying around with the audio equipment in class, Michael, Reza and I went off to record some sounds. I had some experience with audio, but not in a very technical way. I record ambient sounds all the time on my phone using Voice Memos. I don’t care about the quality, the more lo-fi the better. The ones I deem worthy are often sampled into music that I make. It took some time to get a basic understanding of the equipment in class; in fact I’m still not sure if I know what I’m *really* doing.

As I’m so accustomed to recording lo-fi, I didn’t even consider the quality of the recording when doing the exercise. This is a problem; diegetic film sound is not the same as music, and therefore should not be treated as such. I wasn’t sure what my ‘expertise’ was, and I knew that I wouldn’t decide during class time, so I aimed to record as many different sounds as possible to be safe.

We ended up recording sounds such as:
– Poking a stick through a box
– Running a stick down a metal staircase
– Leaves rustling
– The conversations of us 3

I decided that that night, I would sample the sounds in Logic and try and make something with them. And I did. I opted for a rhythmic repetitive beat rather than trying to add music to it. It came out okay, but my appreciation for the possibilities of sampling was enhanced.

Audio & Visual Exercise
In the days between the two exercises, I decided that my expertise video would be about the process of beatmaking. I hadn’t visualised it, and I hoped this exercise would help me do so.

Cheyenne and Arfi joined Michael, Reza and I. We shot the following:
– Reza knocking at a door (twice)
– Michael walking through a bush
– Reza doing some kind of flip
– Tradies marching at some union protest

The shoot was fine, no problems on the set, but I knew the content of the footage was not something that would relate to my idea. So I needed to figure out a way of how I could use this in an interesting and true way for my idea.