From last weekend, we divided the album covers we currently found, and started to shoot the first impression videos. I picked the album Lovelife that found by Jackson, the original cover is the black and white street view shot from the front window, which looks quiet retro. I never listened to this album, but the cover reminded me of those old films made in 1950s that I watched in the cinema courses. I could imagine that I’m sitting in the car, listening to the radio, but the sound is always off and on because of the poor signal, and pedestrians and other cars are passing by. After having this idea, I recorded some traffic sound and also searching for the radio adjusting sound effect to finally mix up for a 30 second soundtrack. At the beginning, we hadn’t determined which media form we would use — do we film video clips for all the twelve covers, or some of them only need soundtrack and a simple still image. As a result, we decided to first express our first impression in any form we could think about, then I made this soundtrack and it did imply the feeling of the Lovelife cover. 

I found this was very related to the modularity principle wrote by Manovich that I mentioned a lot in previous posts, because the sound itself could also work independently for our theme. Later, Jess filmed a short video, and combined it with my soundtrack, which made it more completed and looked just like the original cover. By doing the last assignment and these draft pieces for this one, I think modularity may be the most important feature that distinguish online media from the traditional media works. The fragmented media pieces provide the possibility that we can tell a story in a creative way, and we can even make the project not that narrative. It is also related to the ‘linear films lie’ concept in week 7’s reading. I also took the cinema course called ‘True Lies: Documentary Studies’, that directors may have their own perspective when they shoot and edit the film (because they are still humans, so they can’t be 100% neutral), so audiences will think about the authenticity of the ‘non-fictional’ documentary, and maybe finally come up with different opinions. However, for Korsakow films, it is true that ‘directors’ still do the editing, but viewers have the strong power to insert their thoughts, to view the film from their unique perspective, and maybe to see the ‘truth’ they recognise.

Back to our project, we finally chose to have twelve videos all with sound to show our feeling of the album cover. Most covers still need visual media to make sense, and our point is about judging a music visually, so video may be the most suitable form for this project.