https://soundcloud.com/jack-connor-3/kate-kasby

The driving force behind my portrait of Kate Kasby is the conviction that someone’s surrounding environment can, conversely point to or even reveal what might otherwise be invisible in his or her personality. I feel that when entering a house of a person whom I know little about I really get a sense of who they are through what I see. So this is something I tried to focus on when interviewing Kate, I wanted to bring disparate images together to form a new and cohesive whole – an intersection of environment and identity. Kate coincidently had a great story about her sisters’ bar that is a ‘special’ place for her, this became central to the portrait.

Due to the projects length I knew I had to approach this task in a more artistic manner with a strong focus on vocal montage to create a rich audio vignette. I aimed to use voice over, archived sounds and music to characterise the person, this was inspired by the piece Just Another Fish Story by Molly Menschell. I really loved the way the voices ran over the top of each other whilst keeping a steady pace.

I recorded the interview using a Zoom H4n, unfortunately I didn’t quite have the levels right so there are a few minor blowouts in the final cut. Perhaps once my postproduction skills improve I’ll be able to overcome these kinds of issues. I also found it difficult to try and encourage the conversation without speaking too much so as to avoid being present in the edit.

I used some pre-recorded sounds to further the constructive engagement of interpretation and meaning. I wanted to re-contextualise the sounds to give them some creative appropriation. A swing-set can be faintly heard at the beginning as Kate talks about aspiring to be more like her sister. I thought of the swingset as a metaphor for this… to swish back your legs and kick them up ahead of you and keep your eyes on the skyline.

I didn’t want to continuously hammer information into the listener’s head so I used music composed by my brother to break the story. This allowed for emotional highs and lows, tension and release.

I think a key aspect that I will take away with me is that short projects like this one need to be textured, have a sense of randomness and the content should stripped apart to what stands out, even if it’s a simple happy story.