Listen to the audio you recorded in Tute #1. 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?

Audio Recordings

When Mardy and I ventured out to record audio, we decided to focus on capturing the sounds of mundane practices, such as catching the elevator where through the awkward silence you hear all the sounds in the small space and the city noise of crossing the road in day traffic. In technical terms, we just started to record whenever we saw necessary, choosing to capture the sounds of space before and after the major audio we sought to get. In some cases we choose to isolate sound by putting the microphone close to things, such as the pigeons at the State Library, who decided not to co-operated and make pigeon noises when we did this. Otherwise we wanted to capture the sounds as heard through the headphones, where some are louder and more prominent than others within their environments.

From a poetic perspective it was all about appreciating these sounds that we have come to take for granted, therefore making you not only more aware of sound, but form an appreciation of each individual sounds importance to the environments we experience. The audio of the elevator evokes the feeling of being there in that claustrophobic space, as though we tend to block the sound out the orientation of place still occurs. The rapid beeping of the pedestrian walk sign indicating go and the slow beep designating you to stop, have deep associations in our understanding of doing within situations. It’s hard to try and understand what images these sounds might suggest as you know personally where they are recorded from, so when you think of expressing the sound in a pictorial manner you generally think of your encounter with the sounds. In order to express them through images our sounds may have to be disassociated from their pre-established environments therefore allowing them to be used for rhythmic qualities, or their associations can be played on to disorientate the viewer. The sound of the elevator has the ability to suggest the possibility of a conversation, something that many of us have to withstand when travelling between floors; and the road crossing suggest the sound of car motors, sounds which further establish these spaces.

Listen to the first 10 minutes of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, “The Idea of North.”

Record your impressions in a paragraph or two.

Glenn Gould’s radio documentary “The Idea of North” (1967) begins with a woman’s voice describing a lake with a distinctive Canadian accent. A man’s voice then starts to overlap, the word “North” used as a linking thread between both their sentences. This overlapping continues to happen throughout the start, where one voice talks for a while and then is overpowered by another individuals speech – with each new voice becoming more interesting than the last, allowing you to focus on the different tonal qualities of the participants to differentiate them. Another woman talks towards then end of this section about peacefulness of a sun setting, this imagery juxtaposed with the constant flow of voices. This contends the listeners’ ability to concentrate, where the piece is not about guiding the audience but about placing the audience in the middle of the haphazard soundscape.

When I first heard the beginning it was easy to get confused as it jumped from one story to the next, and you can’t really grasp exactly what the people are talking about especially as you’ve been given no background or context for what is being said. The technique is like a domino effect of sound, where each sound moves onto the next but the previous still sits under creating a confusion as you don’t know what to focus on; which reminded me of a busy coffee shops rambling of everyone’s conversations where the only thing you hear is what’s relevant to you. Gould does this by making the most pivotal parts of the subject’s speech the loudest when they relate to his idea of the North most. I was a little unsure of the technique at the beginning; however after reading that Gould was inspired from listening to the radio stations shifting back and forth across the dial, I can see how this overlapping of voices and accents helps to paint a picture through sound.

At approximately three minutes Gould introduces himself and tells us the program is called “The Idea of North,” as the collection of voices turns into mumbling in the background. He talks about always remaining an outsider from the north, and therefore we hear him at a louder volume to the North’s inhabitants. As the topic of the north train ride begins distinctive train sounds, like the screeching breaks on the track, can be heard and the documentary beginning with the train crossing signal. People’s voices are then heard, with the background sounds of yelling on the train platform and train horns, which sometimes contest the subject’s voices. Towards the end of the clip the train starts to get louder until eventually the first man’s voice fades out being overpowered. We then hear a man with a British accent juxtaposed against the melodic Canadian accent, with the interior sound of space in the train heard underneath. He says that the North is a land of very narrow, thin margins – thin margin of transition; Gould portrays this idea of loneliness and isolation in the way that each person’s audio is isolated like the geographical space of the north, though they come together to create the community that drives this place as a whole.

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 scenes from Brian Hill’s ‘Drinking for England’ it was hard to fathom what was going on as we were shown a series of scenes with no prior knowledge of how the documentary came to this point. Just why was the guy singing in front of the roller door? Perhaps to show the delirium of drunken song, or maybe just to add some humour to the piece. It was pretty interesting choice Hill made to virtually place a music video in the middle of the documentary, having the ability to question the viewer to associate its purpose within the overall piece. In the scenes we begin with an interview of the man, but the interview slowly starts to turn into song and before we know it this man is on a barren street singing in front of a roller door, the song having strangely familiar qualities to Semisonic Closing Time. It’s hard to understand how the documentary has come to this and the purpose of this moment; however its spontaneity adds appeal and you are more interested than ever before. The song cuts to montage sequences of people drinking beer and the man standing in a stereotypical bar with bar lights and a foggy interior. From this we can gather the different form of documentary this piece has chosen to take, and though the song doesn’t have the best rhythmic qualities and may displease some with the stylised acting, its presence illustrates the ability to surprise the viewer and that the piece has an understanding of its audience.

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. 

Not many moments can surpass sitting in a cinema theatre filled with people and watching them react to something that you’ve created. Having learnt from the successes and mistakes of our film in Film/TV1, this semester I’d like to put my knowledge into practice to again create something to be proud of and that people enjoy, but that’s also refined in technique and construction. In terms of the subject of the documentary this course is built around, I hope to choose something interesting and that I may not have much knowledge about, so that the process is as intriguing for me as it is for the viewer. Through the production groups it will be nice to interact with new people as we work collaboratively to build an understanding of documentary through knowledge and experiences in the course.

Building on Film/TV1 I’d like to continue my development of the key features of professional film and television production, this time specifically in documentary. Individually this would include continuing to enhance my technical skills in terms of filming, having been producer last semester, I’d like to have more of an opportunity to deal on the technical side of shooting. From an analytical side I aspire to develop my ability to analyse documentary programs as a practice and how to apply that knowledge to my own work and others. Also to keep building my ability to direct and evaluate my own learning through outlets such as the course readings and analysis/reflection tasks, in helping to identify and solve problems relevant to my media practice. And finally to have fun and enjoy the whole process because before you know it twelve weeks are gone.