Creative Media Practice Project Evaluation

The Creative Media Practice module has been an interesting and enjoyable module to explore. With the brief being open to interpret and create any work that could fit into experimental film, originally it was quite difficult to come up with an original concept, however it opened up many possibilities in terms of the approach that we decided to take. I wanted to challenge myself with this project, and from an early on stage the idea of something internal within the mind was a concept that I felt inspired to explore and that appealed to me, as opposed to choosing to follow the route of recreating the sense of a physical place.

With this early idea in mind, the concept of exploring the mind through sound and film seemed largely broad, and it felt quite challenging to condense the ideas that the group had into one simplified idea. I have found that the research blog has been an incredibly useful element to this module, as this is where I have collected many of my ideas in one space, and it has helped me to develop the concept at a progressive pace and keep a record throughout the creative process of what has worked well and which ideas are consistent throughout any changes we chose to make.

Working alongside Sarah for this project, I have found that although we have previously worked on film work together, this project in particular has made us aware that a lot of our ideas are similar and we worked strongly together as a team throughout the different stages of the project. I found that holding regular group meetings in between seminars and spending a lot of time together in the locations that we intended to film in before recording to be particularly useful. This was especially the case during the times when we were struggling, and when the project felt a bit disorganised in terms of attempting to fit the film and audio content that we had gathered into our original concept. 

 As memory seems such a broad topic to cover, we originally decided we would like to explore the concept of showing the scene which occurs during the last few moments of a life. When we went out and recorded some rough audio, we found that by listening back to it, it reminded us of a journey, and several different aspects to a person’s life. This was what then inspired us to work further upon the idea of a series of memories flashing before a person’s eyes. At this stage, when we were paying attention to focusing our ideas on the audio side to the project, this seemed like a strong concept to explore, as it was open to many possibilities and the audio that we needed could be collected in easily accessible and every day locations. However, after we had edited a very rough version of this together into a sequence for the rough cut crit session we had, we felt like the concept was not refined enough, and that our concept would not come across strongly to listeners. The feedback we received during this session was useful, as although we were correct in assuming members of the audience were unlikely to understand our concept from hearing the audio as a standalone piece, some of the comments gave us inspiration to slightly adapt our idea and move forward with the project. I think the main problem with this was that we had been a bit over ambitious with developing the concept, and could in fact have just used the theme of memory as a whole from the beginning, instead of trying to cram too much into the life flashing before your eyes style of sequence. The original idea felt overcomplicated due to the fact we had so many different ideas that we felt a bit lost with what we were actually gathering footage and audio wise. However, after re reading the brief, and taking into consideration the three minute restricted running length, we thought about what we could do to turn the project around; the content for a simpler concept that would be achievable within the remaining time and the next stages to go from this point onwards. Although this was not ideal, we managed to work effectively as a production team to sort this out reasonably quickly and soon came up with a concept that we were both happy with and was still manageable to achieve within the remaining time outlined on the production schedule.

I feel that our ability to work well as a team and manage our time worked to our advantage really positively during this project, as we were both able to problem solve effectively and come up with a concept which we felt comfortable with producing and that we found enjoyable to explore. The final concept for our ‘sense of place’ project was decided upon; to show a series of memories within a lifetime through the eyes of a person who is experiencing progressive memory loss. We felt that this improved concept fit more strongly into the theme ‘sense of place’, with the place being the mind and the main category of approach that it falls under being non linear, as the memories shown are sometimes in a non chronological order. However, the project does cross over into the pure abstraction approach to some extent, as we chose to have a particular emphasis on experimenting with adapting the focus on the camera within our film to create meaning linked with memory loss. We also chose to experiment with lighting the further the film progresses, to work alongside the out of focus shots to lower the tone of the piece.

The influences for this concept came from originally doing a lot of in depth research into already existing experimental short films, and then narrowing this down to a few which particularly stood out to me. I liked the concept of a journey through the mind from an early stage in the module, as it feels like quite a personal concept to explore and is something that I feel can actually be hard to show realistically through film. The idea of exploring memory loss within the piece appealed to us as the project progressed, as we began to think about the range of possibilities available for us to explore both technically and creatively within this developed concept. We felt more positive and inspired by this concept, and spent a lot of time planning and experimenting with how this concept could visually be achieved by exploration with technical choices in terms of camera and sound. An idea that was agreed on early on was our choice to use focus pulls and explore different lit situations within this to portray vaguer memories, which we feel worked well and came across very strongly towards the end of our film in particular. I feel that this helps to add perspective from the subject’s point of view and intended for this to connect with the viewer and change the tone of the film to quite upsetting within a short amount of time. I also feel that the speed in which the film changes tone works quite successfully alongside the narrative, which is intended to represent that a memory can be lost very quickly and I wanted to show this sudden change  within the visual build up and progression of our project. One of the key connections we established that we wanted to go ahead with during the production process was time and memory and how the two can be connected visually, as well as with audio. With this in mind, this was the main reason for our decision to include the frame shots, as well as the ongoing background track of the clock ticking throughout the film alongside the other visuals, sounds and voiceover narration.

The addition of voiceover was an idea which we were initially unsure about. After gaining feedback from a number of different viewers perspectives, we received mixed feelings about whether this aided in making the film seem believable or not. The original intention for this was that it would create an extra layer for our piece, and not guide the viewer away from the visuals as such, but add more of a personal perspective on to the piece.  We didn’t want to include a full voiceover, and instead focused on a few repeated words and key sentences which would represent the fragments of memory that could be remembered. After listening again and taking on board the feedback given, if this project was to be approached again the voiceover may have to be reconsidered.

 

In terms of the finished piece of work, there are definite strengths of the piece. Some of our intentions do come across to viewers, as demonstrated in the mock crit. feedback session. The choice to include focusing as a main area to explore works well to keep the tone of the piece quite upsetting, alongside our choice to hold on to shots for slightly longer than usual. Within this, we aspired to achieve a believable sequence that at times may feel quite real to the viewer.  The decision to include a voiceover was a weaker area within this which we did not intend to originally include, as we weren’t keen on the idea of the viewer being driven by the voiceover as opposed to the carefully planned out and focused visuals.

 

 

 

 

Our intention for the piece is to make the audience feel as if they are being taken on a journey and given an insight into fragments of memory from the subject's perspective. The piece is purposefully in non- chronological order at times and our intention with this was for the audience to view it as quite moving. In terms of the intended audience, we wanted to explore quite a personal topic, and show the memory loss process through film from the perspective of the subject as opposed to someone who might not necessarily understand it from the outside. We aspired to take a less informative approach and instead more of a reflective and experimental one. Within the experimental nature of the film, we would like to see what different members of the audience take away from this piece and how they perceive it and connect with it on a personal level.

The process of creating the piece of work has been enjoyable. I feel like the project has greatly improved throughout the process and believe our team work and motivation has been a key strength during this project.

In terms of weaknesses, I found condensing my own ideas down to be quite difficult at times, as I was passionate about the idea and had lots of ideas at the same time. For the final project, I was responsible for filming and editing the video content, whilst Sarah took on the role of recording and editing the audio content.

The strengths of this project were our organisation and the efforts that we put into experimenting with new ideas together from an early on stage in order to develop our concept. As a team, we managed to use events outside of the course as opportunities to create our film and audio piece. For example, some of the sounds we include, such as the childhood scenes and the party scene are genuine scenes and not acted, which is intended to make the piece seem more real. If a similar project brief was to be approached in the future, an improvement would be to show our work more openly to people and on a more regular basis to gain further feedback as this is something we both struggled with at times.

 

Overall, I have very much enjoyed this module and learnt a lot during the creative process. I have also identified personal strengths and weaknesses of my approach to a creative brief, which have been useful to know and can be applied to other projects and film work.

Editing Progress

In response to the feedback which we received after the mock crit., a few changes have been made to the edit, in order to make our piece more believable and consistent. One of the main pieces of feedback we wanted to work upon was the mixed comments that we received relating to our choice to include a voiceover throughout the piece. After watching back the film several times and discussing how this fit into our concept further, we decided to not fully extract the entire voiceover, but instead just use key words and phrases which would connect to our overall concept in a clearer way. Choosing to just include these, as opposed to a more  consistent running voiceover narrative throughout further helps our film to convey the background theme of memory loss to viewers, as often words or phrases can be repeated during this. We also added a few fades to the sound edit, as well as increasing the volume of the ongoing ticking clock noise which runs all the way through as a background track. This was because this did not come through clear enough in our mock presentation, and it was a key element to our idea associated with the strong connection between the passing of time and memory. In terms of further visual changes, we also increased the shot lengths of some of the shots that we felt were the most powerful in the piece, such as the out of focus lighting shots. This was due to receiving positive feedback about the length of the shots that we used during the presentation, and us wanting to incorporate these further into more of the shots used throughout our film, in order to strengthen it as a full piece.
   

Respose to mock crit. Feedback (12/12/13).

 

Last week’s (12/12/13) mock crit. session was really useful, as the feedback and comments that we received have helped us to establish the stage in which we are at with the production process. It has also been useful in making us aware of how different audience members perceive the film as well as what they take away from it and how they interpret it. Before showing the film, Sarah and I felt a bit uneasy about presenting it, as we weren’t too sure if our idea came across strongly enough or if the footage we had gathered made the film look too busy in places. However, after showing the film, we were pleased to hear that a lot of people actually understood the basic concept behind our film and they interpreted the sense of place as we intended; not to be a physical place but as more of a sense of time, character and memory.

 

Some key pieces of feedback that we received during this session are below:

 

· Most people understood the sense of place as being not physical - instead of using a literal location we chose to try and portay the notion of time moving on, and memories fading away alongside this. People grasped this idea well and overall they generally liked the concept.

· Some people commented on the use of voiceover - they weren't sure whether this flowed well enough or if it sounded a bit too firmly scripted at times as opposed to natural. We were made aware of this and this was an area which we too were unsure about . One person in the group suggested the use of an older person as the voiceover, as they did not feel much realism to the idea – especially during the way the scene change between the child and teenager is introduced.

· Another useful suggestion was to experiment with adapting the colour grading as the person grows older throughout the different stages of the film.

· The use of the frame gained mixed reviews. A useful comment was made about whether or not different aged people should hold the frame throughout the different visual stages of growing up shown. If we have the time to complete this, this is an interesting idea to consider exploring.

· Most people in the group gave positive feedback regarding the focus pulls used within our piece. The original meaning of these was intended to be surrounding a theme of memory loss – only a few people got this, but one comment which stood out in particular made by a member of the group was that maybe we should have this as an ongoing, running theme throughout the piece, as opposed to just key parts of it being out of focus.

· We received positive comments about the lighting and length of the shots - how we held onto this for a long amount of time was mentioned in a positive way- this could be applied to other shots within the piece to create further effect.

· people recognised a sense of nostalgia within the childhood scenes. A key scene that people mentioned was the birthday cake sequence, and particularly the timing of the candles blowing out and the transition between this stage and the teenage stage worked well.

Next steps:

 

· Make sounds smoother - sort transitions out.

· Revisit the voiceover - listen back to it as a standalone piece, then together with footage and see if instead of fully removing it if we could take some parts out - instead of a running paragraph or sentence have a few key words instead  and focus on making the natural sounds sharper instead.

Filming update (10/12/13)

On Tuesday (10/12/13), we went out to film a few more of the framed scenes at Endcliffe Park. We did encounter a few problems surrounding this - one of which was that the park we intended to film was occupied, so we could not film the original shots that we had previously planned. However, we still managed to make use of the location by gathering some general location footage, and ended up setting up the camera from the angle shown below in front of a row of houses, which we think fits well within the idea of showing perspective, possibly towards the end of the film as the focus could be symbolic of an unclear memory:

We did manage after some time to get a few close up shots of items within the park area, which we could end up using briefly within the childhood scenes:

 

By the time we were due to finish filming it was starting to get dark, but we used this as an opportunity to gather a range of different shots focusing on blurred out lights within street and lit up building scenes, as shown within the still images above. This gave us more to work with within the edit, as some of these could double up and be used either for childhood memories (being in the context of a reflection of the street where the subject grew up) or elderly memories (lights going in and out of focus representing searching for a memory that is becoming unclear and almost, but not quite forgotten. 

 

We also used this as an opportunity to experiment with using the frame at different times of the day. We now have three framed shots, one for each of the progressive stages of growing up that are shown in our film, apart from the end, elderly memory loss scenes. This is because we wanted to keep these as simple as possible, and let the final few clips, which purely show lights going in and out of focus from a window visually show the narrative and memory searching theme by themselves, as opposed to the frame directing the viewer's eyeline to a particular area (inside the frame).

These are the final shots that we intend to use, showing rain and lights out of focus from the perspective of inside looking out of a window. These will be used to lower the tone of the piece and create a sad atmosphere:
  

 

Connecting the sequences together - showing the progressive passing of time

 We needed to come up with an idea of how to show the passing of time in between each growing up stage of our film. We thought about the change in tone that the film has, and experimenting with the time of day, to allow the audience to make the connection between the progressive different stages of our film. For the opening sequence, we discovered that if the camera was set up for around 20 minutes towards the early evening, the sky progressively changed and could work if we sped this up in post production. This works particularly well alongside the sound of the clock ticking, which we are going to be using running throughout the film, as a background soundtrack alongside the memory sounds. We discovered that this would also work well towards the end of our film, and thought about the possibility of having the end connecting back to the start. This would also fit within our theme of fragments of memory, as pieces of memory could be shown from throughout the various stages of the subject's life, and wouldn't have to necessarily be shown in chronological order. This could work especially well towards the end of the film within the blurred out sequences which represent vaguer, almost forgotten memories.

 

 

 

Audio piece (use of voiceover)

 

To strengthen our audio piece, and to focus it more towards the progressive memory loss idea towards the end of our piece, we have decided to include parts of voiceover within our audio soundtrack piece. However, instead of including a standard running length voiceover to soundtrack the whole visual piece, we have decided to stick with a few key phrases and words that will run at various times throughout the film. I have created the following script, based on the list of memories that was previously created, as well as the footage that we have shot so far and a bit of background research on speech within memory loss.

 

Childhood sequence
 

Memories starting to fade

Artist Influence - John Baldessari

Because we have previously been struggling to decide whether or not to show our hands with the frame in shot and how we can use the frame to our advantage, by ensuring it adds something to the background already, I have been researching how other filmmakers and artists have achieved a similar concept.

One artist that uses his hands visually in shot to create new meanings within his photographic art work is John Baldessari. Even though the images are stills, viewing a selection of his different work has helped me to visualise how adding something like this to a shot can be visually pleasing as well as create new meaning, and made me think of new ideas of how we could use our hands holding the frame in shot to convey a new meaning to the viewer in terms of our overall theme of memory.

This has influenced our idea, as after viewing how adding a separate frame into shot can add extra layers of meaning to visuals, and can be used to direct the viewers eyeline to a particular area inside part of a larger overall scene or image, it has inspired me to experiment more with taking the frame out to different locations and also at different times throughout the day, to see how this concept can be used within our fragments of memory theme. Adding the use of the frame within the visuals works well to make scenes look less busy, and instead let the viewer focus on one area of the scene, which will work well alongside the overall memory theme that we have running across our piece.

Based upon this, I have come up with a list of ideas that could be visually achieved in order to connect the frame to the idea of progressive memory loss:

Some memory loss ideas (with using frame in shot)

·   Having the frame progressively getting closer to the camera/further away as memories become more vague and less focused.

·  Having objects/items moving in and out or even through the frame, to create the meaning of memories flashing by/searching for a memory within fast paced background visuals - the contrast between the frame being the part of the memory that is left, and the busy fast moving environment that is happening alongside this, not from the subject's perspective.

·  Some shots include the frame, some don't necessarily have to. The framed scenes could be the bigger picture; the location scenes. The ones which don't contain the frame could contain the finer details that may spark a key memory from a larger scene e.g. items from childhood. This also links well within our title for the piece; 'Fragments'.

Hands framing New York Harbor - John Baldessari (http://jpgmag.com/news/2010/10/museum-watch-john-baldessari-pure-beauty.html last accessed: 11/12/13)

One of our framed shots in the evening - Traffic moving through the frame.

Experimentation with editing and further content to film

 

Editing Progress

Yesterday evening we spent some time putting together the footage that we had gathered to see how it flowed to create a memory themed sequence. We decided to focus more on the visuals at this point, as we intend to record a larger range of audio over the weekend and lay sounds over the visuals that are different to the ones caught on the original recordings.

The shots that we particularly like at this stage are the opening eye sequence along with the title appearing, as we feel that this represents our idea well from the beginning.

We also like the shots that we have managed to get where the frame is shown being held within the larger shot; a frame within a frame. We prefer the city shot taken at Norfolk Park out of the two different location shots shown below; we like how the hands are shown within the frame, as well as the separation between different layers that can be seen within the out of focus background location and different layers of colour within the background scenery.

 

  

We did experiment a little with the audio, by placing some already recorded basic sounds underneath the footage to see at which moments in time within the visuals they best fit and where we felt like the narrative and memory theme was coming across at most strongly. We discovered that the repetitive sound of the clock ticking provided a pleasant and relevant background track to most of our footage, and we think this will work particularly well alongside a simple, limited voiceover within the first few moments within the film as shown below:

 

Experimentation with Perspective

 
Whilst we were filming some location scenery at Norfolk Park last week, I wanted to experiment with how we could adjust the composition and content of the visuals to create perspective. I liked the idea of taking a small part of the general, larger location and adjusting the camera positioning as well as the focusing. Because our idea is based upon remembering and reflection on memories, some of which are unclear, I positioned the camera at ground level and decided to focus on a view point from lower down as opposed to a more general establishing location shot. I thought about how this could fit more widely within the context of our film, and by how showing just one part of a scene that isn't the most important or dominant, could be representative of a person experiencing memory loss 'not being all there'. I took a video test shot of this, whilst moving the camera to create a feeling of disorientation, and a sense of trying hard to focus on remembering forgotten memories.

 

 

This was the larger, bigger picture of the scene:

Experimenting with times of day

The memories that we film will not necessarily follow a linear structure. Whilst experimenting with the idea of looking through windows, some photography that I did made me think about how we could film in easily accessible locations at different times of day, to convey new meaning within our visuals. We could end up showing the same content in the daytime and evening, and the two could look completely different, as well as the mood and overall tone of the piece adapting alongside this.

An example of this is the image below - by adjusting the focus on the camera the outside world seems unimportant, but the rain is focused upon from an inside point of view, which could possibly suggest that the subject's perspective that we are filming from is feeling trapped, and suggest a sense of loneliness. This could fit in well with our theme of reflection; looking back at memories which are becoming less clear as time goes on.













Another idea that I came across whilst taking adjusted shutter speed photographs is how we could possibly incorporate still images into our piece, perhaps during the beginning opening sequence, when we see an eye blink and the sound of a camera click to create the impression that a photograph is being taken. If we chose to do this, it could further be associated with the idea of a photograph being a frozen moment in time, and could lead the narrative from the perspective of the subject as they are left only with these fragments of memory.