Sense of Space - Idea Two

Idea two is called "Sheffield Sirens" and features all the different sounds available to hear whilst living in Sheffield. here is a script for the main voice over which will be the main focus four our sound scape with various ambient noises added in to the silent sections.

Sheffield Sirens: Script (Draft)
SIRENS…
It’s 3:30am, and that’s the 4th Ambulance siren to wake me
up tonight. It happens every night – siren here, siren there. It’s far too
annoying.
Sheffield is always loud. No matter what the time, you’ll find
somewhere full of life. Whether it be in the day, when everyone is shopping in
town….
[Pause]
Or at night, when all the students come out to play and sleep in the
road. I can’t say anything; I’ve been one of them.
[Pause]
Even though I’m a student, it’s still sometimes nice to get away to a
quiet place, where you can just rest, listen to nature, just be with
yourself.
[Fades to Silence]
[Sirens fade in]
Ah, the famous Sheffield Sirens again, early morning again, lack of
sleep… AGAIN! I really wonder what accidents occur at this
time…
[Silence?]
[Background Noise – Friends asking you to come
out]
Go out to a nightclub? Should I? Hah, maybe this time the sirens
won’t even wake me!
[Club Ambience]
My friends and I went to our favorite club; it’s been ages since
we’ve done this. I miss just being with him, but hell, clubs are busy, you bump
into so many people, and sometimes you get the wrong
person.
[Background noise – club/guy shouting angrily at you for bumping into
him]
I was having a nice night with my friends and didn’t want any
trouble, so we ignored the guy and walked away – which only made him madder. He
grabbed his drink, walked towards me and…
[Music Stops]
[Bottle Smashes]
[Silence]
[Sirens]
Now I know what accidents occur at this time. This time the sirens
are my fault. I’m the one waking you, annoying you whilst you try to
sleep.
[Sirens fade out]

Sense of Space - Idea one

Idea one is all based upon the sounds and noises heard when undertaking a normal "morning daily routine". this could be easily achieved as within my pair myself and Natalie could record the noises all at ease within one of our bedrooms and so would be able to try and make the sounds as effective as possible.

Basic Outline

The Morning routine itself would include waking up by an alarm noise which would be turned off and which would then turn into the radio of a man/woman speaking saying something along the lines of "good morning Sheffield, its 730am and its a beautiful sunny day..." so the audience know that its the morning. The remaining sounds in this piece would be to have the radio playing throughout most of the piece itself and then to have other morning routine noises occurring over the top, these include:
-Sheets rustling as getting out of bed
-Tap noises/cleaning teeth
-Shower
-Toaster popping up and scraping butter on to it
-Deodorant being sprayed
-Files being dropped onto desk
-The computer of "windows" turning on
-The noise of fingers beginning to type

-Radio noise fades out.

This will be easy to do and I think if recorded correctly it could sound really effective as a sound scape piece overall.

Sense of Space - Piece four

Piece Five - The Sound of Sport
By - Dennis Baxter

As soon as this piece begins, you know its about sport as you hear the commentator's voice slowly coming in, and followed by various other sport related ambient noises such as a tennis ball being hit from racket to racket, a klaxon being sounded at the beginning of an athletics race etc. I really likes how they were faded into each other as was almost like a "highlights of the Olympics" and gave you a snippet of each sport.

Whilst the sporting sound effects were occurring, there was also a slow piece of mellow music in the background. I liked the way this was used as it helped create the dramatic tension that there is in say an Olympic final and made me feel like I was there watching the sports myself and so therefore created a very good sense of space.

We only listened to the first minute or so of this piece as it was quite long, but from the opening minute, it immediately drew me into the piece and made me visit Falling Tree Productions and listen to the rest of the piece.

Sense of Space - Piece Three

Piece Three - Jarman's Garden
By - Sherre Delys
Year - 2000
Length - 14 mins 49 secs

This piece was very confusing to listen to, yet inspiring at the same time. The way this sound scape had been built up and constructed was very clever as there were around 7 different layers of sounds occurring at any one time. Various noises associated with outdoors and garden such as peoples footsteps in gravel/pebbles, wind chimes, the wind itself, plants/trees/grass being cut/altered with etc. These were all occurring one after the other with both a low deep base piece of music and a high one, so with all this going on at once, it was hard to focus on the narrative of the piece as the voice over wasn't the thing that came to my immediate attention like it did in the other pieces.

Within the piece (with it being nearly 15 minutes) there are many places in which the sound effects fade out and there are a few seconds of silence and you think the piece has finished, then the noises would slowly start again. I like this technique used and found it effective as to me, it felt like the few seconds of silence were representing how peaceful and tranquil this garden is to be in and when your there everything disappears and it simply is silent.

The ending of the piece was my favourite part overall. the slow rustle of the waves and the slow paced footsteps in the pebble dashed beach really made me feel peaceful and calm and felt like I was sitting in this garden and looking towards this beach.

Sence of Space - Piece Two

Piece two - Tunnell Vision
By - Pejk Malinovski
Year - 2001
Length - 5 mins

I very much enjoyed this piece the most out of all the pieces I had listened to purely because of the humour side it had to it. It was really easy to listen to and had a very clear structure which consisted of a piece of low background bass music, the 2 voice overs of the males (one English and one French) explaining their experiences which have happened on the tube and then also the occasional sound effect of the tube moving own the tunnel with the ladies muffled voice over of "stand clear of the doors please". This sound effect in particular made this piece very realistic to listen to and at one point I actually felt like i was on the tube myself.

However, although I just stated at one point of this piece I felt like I was actually sat on the tube myself, this was only when the voice over of the train women came. So, as a piece overall I felt that it didn't create a very good sense of space as the ambient noises weren't as regular as they should have been.

On the other hand though, I did get a very good feel for both of the characters as it felt like they were being interviewed live as I was listening to this piece. This was indicated to me by the use of coughs/muffles from the characters and due to one having an English accent and one having a French it was clear to know who it was and when they were talking and I found it very easy to connect with the characters.

Sence of Space - Piece One

Piece one - Meat Factory Ear worms
By - Richine Beirne
Year - 2008
Length - 13mins 47 seconds

In this piece I immediately noticed that there were at least 3 or 4 different layers which make up this sound scape. These being, the knifes scraping against each other/factory sounds, the mans voice over and various pieces of music to explain how he feels about working here sometimes and how the music get him through it.

The different sounds that are being heard throughout this piece help create a sense of space due to the specific ear worms he uses which remind him of certain things. An ear worm is a song that gets stuck in to your head and reminds you of a certain place/thing and in this case he used to sing "Bright eyes" to take his mind away from cutting up the meat. This really helped me to create an image in my head as to what it would have been like for this man to be cutting up the dead animals and to be covered in their blood.

The voice over itself is a middle aged man with a very smooth middle pitched tone to his voice and has a very strong Northern Ireland accent which is rather soothing to and so juxtaposed the topics he was speaking about throughout the piece as these wern't so "smooth" minded.

Although I did like the concept to this piece, I found it quite unsettling to listen to. The way the ear worms are cut in to this piece of sound is very abrupt as I just begin to get into a piece of music and then it stops, with the sound effect of one of the knifes he is using and to me it represented him cutting into one of the animals, so the music had too be cut too.

Sence of Space

In preperation for our new project "Sence of Space" we were given a set of four questions to apply to a number of different pieces we listened to. The questons were as follows:

1)How many layers are included in the soundscape?
2)What ambient tracks are included?

3)How does teh dynamic range of sounds create a sence of space?
4)How is voice/pitch/tone used and edited within the piece.

I have never made a piece of work that is just entirely sound based and so I will look foward to creating my own very soon.

Edale - The day itself

With the schedule, shot list and storyboard with us, myself and Fraser set off into the countryside of Edale ready to film the material we needed to complete our 3 minute silent film "Ashes". The reason we called the film ashes is because it is based mainly on the girl (me) holding this box, which contains the ashes of a loved one she has recently lost and the whole reason that she comes to Edale is to sprinkle her amount of her nans ashes into a stream over a bridge which used to be her favourite place to visit with her Nan when she was little.

Pictured to the right is the exact bridge that we used to sprinkle the ashes over.

Whislt filming, we did encounter a few problmes as it was very "hilly" and so we had to make sure the shots were filmed correctly in order to make sure the camera was set up correctly and the shot wasn't "wonky". Also, the rain made it hard to see the screen of the camera, but luckily we had a rain cover with out equipment we had collected the previous day so we managed to insert this over our camera to protect it from the rain.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my day at Edale, although it was very wet and cold, i still managed to have fun in teh piece of work I was creating and enjoyed making my first pratical piece of the year.

Edale - Shot List

Here is an image of the exact shots that were filmed whilst we were Edale. I wrote this list whilst actually on set at Edale as we went along so I knew what shots we had compelted and what else we had left to do and compared it to our schedule so I made sure we had completed everything on time.

Edale - Final Storyboard

This is the final storyboard of the rough images I posted on my blog previosly. The reason why I neatened up teh drawing was so that when myself and Fraser went onto set at Edale, we could literally follow this step by step and no what sort of locatipons we needed when we got there and also what specific shots we needed to complete.

Edale - Schedule

This is a schedule sheet we were given as a group for the day we were going to spend. I made sure I bought this with me on the trip so that me and my partner Fraser could stick to this as best as possible and made sure we used our time efficiently. It worked out that we didn't actually film our shots in order to our story board and actually started with the middle, then the start, then we filmed the ending. However, we still finished with plenty of time and stuck the schedule as best as we could.

Edale- "Portrait of Place"

Here are some images of a very rough draft of my story board. Each square represents a different shot type within my three minute film which includes a veriety of wide shots, close ups, mid shots and both with the use of a tripod and some handheld for effect too.

Gas Man

Gas Man is a Scottish drama set in 1997 directed by Lynn Ramsay and is about a family with a mother, father and two children who is having or has had a previous affair and has another set of children with another women.

For the first opening scene, not much dialogue was used and hardly none of the characters faces were shown. However for the plot and surroundings as to what the audience was seeing, they were not needed. The structure and style relates to its subject matter as there are lots of little highlighted moments which showed to the audience that something was going on "behind the scenes" with the dad of this family and the other women he met on the train tracks when meeting his other two children. One of these "highlighted"

moments is when the dad touches the women's hair who he has had an affair with. The pace of this shot is lsightly slowed down and therfore intensifies to the audience that something has occured between these two in the past or is still happening now.

Another element that stood out for me was when the daughter of the dad overly repeats that the other girl "said you were her daddy" over and over and it takes a while for the dad to say a reponse. This showed me that the little girl knows something has been happening between the women and her dad and the guilt in the dads feelings was shown through a high angle/point of view shot of the dad looking down on the girl in guilt.

The use of sound in this film is subtle and not much is used apart from at the party when various christmas songs are played. It's very ironic however that most of the christmas songs that are being played are happy and upbeat and people should be happy at christmas time, yet its clear the Dad is struggling at the fact of having two seperate families.

One of my favourite shots in this film is the
clips where the dad and the children are walking along the train tracks. Its a great wide shot as you can see on the right hand side, as you get the scenery of beautiful scotland in the

background, with the dad and his daughter in the foreground. I think that perhaps because this was a low budget film, I think the train tracks may have been used as a "dolly" so that tracking shots could be completed as there wasnt enough money in the budget for an official dolly and so the train tracks were used in two ways.

Overall, I did enjoy this film as it used a variety of shots and a good use of locations, particularly the train tracks for the use of a dolly.

High Rise

High Rise is a very short film that was made in 2002 by a director called Gabriella Russell. It focuses on a young mum who lives in a high rise block of flats on a council estate in Leeds (as this is where it was filmed). After watching this film I was led into thinking that the young mum features in this film was suffering from post-natal depression and felt emotionally detached from her child. This is because as she is watching the game show on television she can see her child wants her attention, she ignores this and steps outside the room, even though she can clearly see her child is about to be put into danger whilst attmepting to reach for her toy which is on the windowsill.

A particular element that I liked to this film was the fact that Gabrielle chose to use no dialogue or sound apart from the noises from the television in the room and also from the baby when it screams/cries in distress as to when her mother leaves her alone in the room. I feel that this technique was used as it enhanced the emotional distress in which the mum was feeling and added to the dramatic tension whilst watching it.

The structure and style used relates to its subject matter very well as the use of no dialogue and the chosen camera angles. There was a particular camera angle in which when the mum falls to the floor and the camera is looking down on her. This insinuates the fact that she has reached "rock bottom" in her life and is close to giving up. Also, there was another camera angle in which i particular liked which was when the mum came running back in the room to think her child had fallen to the floor from the window of their high rise flat. It was then a high angle shot from ou of the window looking down to a broken girl doll on the floor. This symbolises that it could have been her child and she was lucky that her baby didnt fall out of the window.

Although only very little sound was used, what we could here as an audience was very appropriate and succesffuly portrayed. The main sound we here is the sound coming from the TV which has some form of game show playing. The mum of the child is watchign the porgramme with such an intense stare its almsot as if she was looking at the woman playing the game thinking it was her. this then intensifies the charasters emotions and allows the audeince to connect more with her character.

Overall I did enjoy this film and the fact ti felt so intense and yet it was only just over two minutes long. Although, even though it was so short, it was long enough for this subject matter in which was trying to be portrayed. The way it zoomed into a random window of the high rise tower block, showed the footage of the young mum and her baby and then zoomed out again, it led me into thinking what else could be occuring in all the other flats in this high rise block.

Short Films

On the 6th October 2011, I watched a variety of short films and answered various questions on them, these being:

1)Identify the themes of the film - what was the directors aim?
2)Describe what you consider to be the main focus of the film
3)Did you like/dislike the film and why?
4)Was the film successful/unsuccessful in dealing with its subject matter and why

5)Was there an element of the film that stood out?
6)How does the film form (structure and style) and how does it relate to its content (subject and matter)
7)Discuss two techniques used in the film which you found interesting

8)Is the sound used in an appropriate/successful way?

As a group we watched 6 short films which were called: The life size zoetrope, Strange Lights, Blight, Daybreak Express, Terminal Bar and Paperboys. As a group we answered the 8 questions as listed above and said what we liked/disliked and what we found effective from each film and whether this would inspire in any of our individual film making.

Towards the end of the session we watched a further two short films; Steel homes and Christmas with Dad. I will now answer the following 8 questions from before about these films.

Steel homes
1 and 2)The main themes of this short film were to do with the fact that the people featured in this film have had problems and want to store personal belonging of theirs or a family member/close friend as they mean something to them in what they call a "steel home". The main themes highlighted by the director (Eva Weber) of this film are to do with isolation and feeling alone and the directors aim is to show these through the camera angles and mise en scene used etc.
3)I did like this film in the way it was created and the fact that we never saw the characters in the film actually speaking and was just a voice over, this interlinked with the main themes of isolation and being alone and wanting to keep these belongings in one of these "steel homes". I also liked the fact that the whole film was in the one location of the steel homes itself and it made me realise how important that these "steel homes" are to some people.
4)I think the film was very successful in dealing with its subject matter as just from me watching it, I automatically felt the emotions in which the characters were feeling and the use of edits such as fade/blurs helped with this as it created the whole feeling of "isolation" which I personally think was the directors main aim.
5)Two techniques that were used in this film that I found interesting was firstly, the decision of not seeing the characters actually speaking and just hearing the voice overs. This was good and bad at the same time. I wanted to see the characters faces matched to their voices, but the at the same time, by not letting us see the faces with the voices it created this whole "anonymous" feeling which related well to the main theme running through the film which was isolation. another technique used in the film which I particularly liked was the fact it was all filmed in the same location. This was done successfully and really captured the whole sensation as to what having these "steel homes" is like for these people.

Christmas with Dad
1 and 2) This was a documentary type drama based on a young dad (Aj) who has two kids with a woman and another one on the way and also has to look after her previous 5 kids. I think the directors aim (Connor McCormack) in this short film was to show the audience about Aj's lifestyle at Christmas and to tell us about him as a person. This is shown in the way that when he speaks to the cameras he opens up about the health problems in his family and that his father was blind and how in approximately two years time, the same thing would happen to him. He then goes on to talk about how he is worried that this is going to affect him being able to look after the children, especially his new baby which hasn't been born yet. This makes the audience feel more sympathy towards him as looking at the family before, my attitude had instantly changed.
3)I did like this film as i believe the features of this short film worked well together and I think the main purpose was portrayed to the audience successfully. However, although the film was called "Christmas with dad" it would have been nice to have a heard a bit more speech from the other characters, being the children and his wife, just to see their point of view on the situation this family is in.
4)The use of sound in this short film is simple, yet effective. There are a few "jingle" type sounds that are played a couple of times through transitions to show the different scenes. These jingles are used to show the fact that its the build up to Christmas in this household. There is no other music or sound effects used, but I think this is good because its a documentary based short film and if there was a complex soundtrack it would take away the simplicity of the camera work and initial themes and aims of the film that the director is trying to pursue to the audience.

Overall, I enjoyed this session very much in looking at the short films that already exist today and how they can come in such a variety of form and are all trying to pursue different things. this session as given me a lot of inspiration for when it comes to creating my own short film later on during this course.

Inspiration

I am a great lover of horror and thriller films, with "se7en" being one of my favourites starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, directed by David Fincher. Its a physco horror in which Detective David Mills and Detective Somerset have the task of solving 7 murders which are all interlinked within the seven deadly sins, hence the films title.





I really like the opening credits to this film because once you have watched the film, they actually show the seven murders as to how the killer is going to undertake them. The high pitched music is eerie and sets the scene for the film which is about to occur. I also really like the way the actors names appear in the small white writing which then flash on and flash off. If I were to make a horror film in the future I would bare these credits in mind and I would hope to be able to create something similar.