Production Folder - Sound Research

As I had not previously taken on the role of sound recordist or explored sound design in so much depth, I spent some time researching both the creative possibilities that can be achieved with sound and also the technical side.

I found the following book with an added DVD in the university library to be particularly useful, and specifically relating it to our film, the section that discusses creating effective atmospheric recordings within one single space.  I made some notes on this to discuss with the group, such as some early ideas about how the character's headspace could be communicated to the audience through sound alone, even alongside film content where the visuals could look different. I also read up about how to create a sound effect that I thought might work alongside the panic attack scene visuals, which was a technique I had seen been achieved in film before, that starts with a noise similar to white noise, builds up and then stops completely for a few minutes.

A similiar technique can be seen in this clip of Children of Men (2006, Dir.Alfonso Cuarón) at around 2:02 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfBSncUspBk

In addition to this, I also read a number of online articles relating to sound design in a few key film scenes that I have noticed achieve this effectively, as well as interviews with the sound designers involved. These included the end scene to Fight Club (1999, Dir. David Fincher), the raining frogs scene in Magnolia (1999, Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) and a collection of scenes in Let The Right One In (2008, Dir. Tomas Alfredson).







Project Research on Agoraphobia - Character Development

In order to further develop our character and share with the actor some further information to work with, I have compiled the following research on Agoraphobia and how the condition presents itself in an individual. I have underlined specific points that stood out to me and have also included a few extra notes on how these could be seen within our own character and their situation :

 Agoraphobia is a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult, or help wouldn't be available if things go wrong.

Many people assume that agoraphobia is simply a fear of open spaces but it is more complex than that.

 A person with agoraphobia may be scared of:

• travelling on public transport
• visiting a shopping centre
• leaving home
  (source:  http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/agoraphobia/Pages/Introduction.aspx )

-       ** moving from one place to another – moving from one side of the room to the other may appear difficult for our character? **

Symptoms/behaviours

-   Panic attack symptoms – rapid heartbeat & breathing, feeling hot and sick.

-   Symptoms of stress

-   Avoidance -

avoid facing anxieties/fears –work around going outdoors
set design of the room could be experimented with around this idea, e.g. many food tins piled up in a set part of the room, online order forms, collections of items that would usually involve going outside to get, items that would usually be in other rooms of a house all in the one space etc.

 -  Agoraphobia can also include fears associated with being left alone and the idea of being 'trapped'. character’s room can be used as a place of safety, place where character feels nothing can go wrong.

-   Can range in severity from sufferers who can travel short distances to those who are house or room-bound – character is suffering from a severe form of Agoraphobia.

Agoraphobia is not only a fear of going outdoors or of open spaces, but a fear of escape being difficult. It is a hard phobia to describe as the fears and symptoms can be different amongst individual sufferers.

Causes

panic disorder - an anxiety disorder in which the individual experiences panic attacks and moments of intense fear. The sufferer may associate panic attacks with places or situations where they occur, and then avoid these places or situations.

Traumatic events such as bereavement may contribute towards agoraphobia (character has a back story of being a soldier in the war – even though the viewer does not get a full insight or explanation into exactly what happened or of what this entailed, the set design of the room and behaviours/development of the character demonstrates that they have had some sort of a troubled past)

Drama project Short Film Inspiration - La Migala (the Bird Spider)

La Migala (the Bird Spider), Dir. Jamie Dezcallar (2011)

Whilst researching films that deal with approaching 'phobia' as a main emotion in a single character, this one film in particular stood out to me. La Migala (the Bird Spider) deals with a simple concept; a man who struggles with depression and loneliness as well as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), who buys and sets free a poisonous bird spider in his own apartment. The plot caught my attention initially as I find it quite different that the filmmaker has chosen to develop their character by placing them alongside their largest fear, and using this as a symbol for coping throughout the film. This differs from our own film in that we would like to achieve the opposite with our character, by using their phobia as a restriction in their life that they won't ever be seen to overcome within the film, and will instead focus on avoidance of their phobia rather than the facing of it.

I really like the way that this film approaches fear as a main subject matter and on going theme throughout, and feel that some of the ways that the film manages to keep this so simple and sometime subtle yet effective is something that we can take inspiration from and apply to our own film.

La Migala is also an interesting piece to look at within our group, as it takes on the same challenge to filming within a single location that our film does. Although set in a full apartment as opposed to our choice of narrowing this down further to a single room, there are many elements to this film that I feel keep the viewer drawn in despite restricting the filming to this one location space.

Whilst watching this film for a second time, I took the following notes on areas which I found to be interesting and achieved well within the film:

• The part where the sound stops as the character first takes the spider out of the box - made me connect with the character and how he sees his fear as he first comes into contact with it - like the sound, the character's fear makes them feel completely frozen.
• Sound use in film - a memorable point is the kettle whistling after the phone message scene occurs. The sound change emphasises drama progression/build up of tension and could be representing the conflicting emotions of the character.
  The sound of the spider tapping on the floor made me as a viewer feel uncomfortable - connecting with character and their own fears.
• Dim choice of lighting throughout the film helps to reflect upon and represent the character's loneliness, darkness/depression as well as give off a sense of fear - as a viewer, there were times I expected the spider to suddenly become present out of this darkness.
• Several close ups throughout the film - particularly upon character's face, items within the apartment and the spider - shows progressive development and position of the character.
• Amount of focus on character - follows simple daily routine and structure of day to day life - gives viewer an insight into this character well. Close up on feet as character gets up out of bed and puts slippers on repeats throughout - think we have one shot similar to this within our own film, as it shows the character does have some form of structure/routine to their day, even though it appears to be a simple action.
• Favourite shots - Toothbrush running along character's hand - clever way to show character imagining his own fear and the way that he perceives it - diegetic sound use also used here - think this works well as symbol of/for fear. Spaghetti turning into worms - playing with character's perception of fear as well as fear itself.
• Set design and elements of the background in apartment says a lot to viewer about character - emptiness, colour scheme etc. all help to suggest and portray the character's sense of loneliness.
• Few empty room shots - light at window - similar to shot in We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011, Dir. Lynne Ramsay) , as well as early storyboarded shots for our own idea.
• The panic scene at the end of the film - similar to ours as character reaches for door handle - a strong character performance and close ups help the viewer to put themselves in their situation and connect with their perception of the fear.

Inspiration for 'A View' (our own film)

I think our film can take inspiration from the creative choices and ways in which this film approaches the main theme of 'fear', as opposed to the style or form of the film. La Migala gives more away to the viewer via a voiceover narrating the character's thoughts and gives more of a back story to why they feel the sense of loneliness. With our film, we are aiming to challenge ourselves by choosing not to give the audience this information, but instead let them work things out themselves via the more subtle details and features within the film, in the hope that it will make our film a bit more unique and take a slightly different angle to those we have previously seen approaching 'fear' as a main subject/theme.

There are some shots within this short that are similar to ours in the way that they tell the story, however with our film we aim to achieve more of the showing of these features as opposed to the giving/telling to the audience that a voiceover narration can aid in.An example of this is the photographs as items of memories - within this film, the character is literally seen looking through old photos and holding them in their hands, whereas in our film, photographs will be used in the background design of and way that we choose to lay out the room, and by having our character knock one of these over without noticing this action themselves, we aim to build up the anxieties of and personality of the character for our viewers in a more subtle and gradual way.

Bradford International Film Festival - 29/03/14

This weekend, I visited Bradford International Film Festival, and attended a screening of a new documentary called American Promise, followed by a Q & A with the filmmakers, who were also the family involved within the content of the film. Although this was a documentary screening and not a fictional drama, I found the way in which it visually carried the theme of journey and transitioning through different times to be really interesting and done very well, and it made me think about how the theme of journey within our drama film can be visually shown as well as interpreted in a number of different ways.

American Promise (2013 (USA), Dir. Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson)

The documentary, directed by parents Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson, follows a twelve year journey in the form of documenting their African- American son and his friend's personal day to day school life through the American education system. Documenting a twelve year journey through film and then condensing this down to 2 hours 15 minutes worth of documentary footage was also something that I found interesting, and the filmmakers openly talked about the challenges included within this and how they went about achieving this, along with dealing with the moments that were unexpected during a twelve year time period, yet were captured on film.

I found the documentary really interesting to watch, and from a viewers perspective it really did feel that the theme of journey came across very strongly, as I felt I was given an insight into the character's lives having watched them progress from the beginning of the film.

As each stage of the son and his friend's education progressed to a new level, the film held onto single shots that summarised some part of their previous or upcoming next few years. For example, one particular shot that I remember clearly was taken from ground level in a sports hall, with the focus being on a basketball positioned close to the camera. This fit in within the past stage of the film, as there was a point that it showed in quite a lot of detail whereby the son faces challenges surrounding fitting in at school and adapting to this within playing for the basketball team. I found these held shots to convey the idea of a journey and reflection, as whilst these were on screen they gave time to think about the progression in the film and some of the broader themes that the documentary uncovers.

Seminar with student actors (27th March 2014)

This week, we had three performance for stage and screen students in our seminar, who looked through our script and gave us some valuable feedback from an actor’s perspective.  Despite having no dialogue in our script, our group found this really useful as it enabled us to view the directions given within our script from the actor’s point of view, which is something we hadn’t considered in so much detail whilst starting to create a first copy draft version.  We first distributed the script, before expanding upon the character biography and explained the fact that we purposefully hadn’t included a full description as to why the character suffers from Agoraphobia, as the unknown identity links in with our broader themes within the film’s narrative.

The copy of the script below includes notes that were given to us as feedback from the students, and that have helped us to develop our script in much more detail. The seminar has been enjoyable as well as very useful towards our production, especially at this early stage as we are meeting with our actor later this week and would like to give him an as detailed as possible script.

Drama Project pitching session and initial feedback

For our pitching session, because the group as well as the idea were fairly newly formed, we chose to base our pitch on our very early ideas by using the underneath basic drama structure diagram that we were given during last week's seminar.

 



The two main important features to our film are room and character as our film depends on the two working together to make a connection with the audience. The theme of 'journey' outlined on the brief will be explored in quite a subtle way in our type of film, and will take on the form of progression of character from the beginning of the film to the end. 

The pitching session has been very useful to our group, as we were really interested in and keen to hear back from others some feedback and views on the choice of a single location and no dialogue aspects to our film. The feedback that we received on these was very useful to us - people in the group generally agreed that it was a unique approach to the film and were interesting concepts that we should work upon further developing. The suggestion of bringing an instrument into the film to symbolise the character's connection with the outside world was brought up and is one which we all agree could make our film stronger and act as another way to connect the character with the viewer through having them express themselves through this instrument, even if used in a subtle way.

 

Drama group meeting and job roles

Initially our group was left with what felt like a bit of a difficult situation, in that a few of us from Lee's seminar group had started thinking about concepts for the drama film with members from other tutor's seminar groups when the brief was first made available to us on Blackboard and we had not yet had any seminars on the project so had not been made aware of the fact we were unable to work with people we had previously been in groups together with. We completely understand the reasons behind this and agree with it being done, however it did mean that unfortunately we had to leave one of our concepts undeveloped and split into two groups to develop new ideas, which was a bit of a shame as we did not want to have to leave an idea behind that we would have liked to develop further.

Oliver and I had previously worked together on the Documentary brief, however after discussing with the tutors our concerns with this and reason behind wanting to work together being that we already have a clear outlined concept to work upon, we made the decision to stay together in this group but find different people to work with us. Luckily, we managed to find another partially formed group to join, and our Drama project now consists of:

Anna Louise Bailey (Producer)
Oliver Guy (Director)
Rose Ryk (Camera Operator)
Sarah Cooper (Visual Editor)
Hannah Grencis (Sound Recordist)
Adam Young (Sound Editor)

Personal job role

 Sound is an aspect to filmmaking that before starting university, I had come across very briefly but not realised the amount of creative possibilities that it can bring to a film. I have found an interest in how sound can be used to add effect and be experimented with to create meaning within a production and have noticed that I have picked up on how sound use and design is used effectively more than I previously would have done when I watch films now. Because of this, I am looking forward to experimenting with sound recording within our drama film, and feel that a lot can be achieved with our idea, as there is no dialogue in our film so parts of it will be relying on experimenting with ways to use sound to our advantage creatively. Personally, I don't yet feel too comfortable on the technical side to sound recording, although I do know the basics and I plan to book out equipment over the next week to get familiarised with this. I did not want this to put me off having a go at being sound recordist, as it's something which I'd like to explore in more depth, so although I feel like it will be a challenge technically, I am beginning to plan creative ways to use sound to our advantage on this short five minute film.

Drama Project seminar

During this week's seminar, we used the time to think about the importance of character development in Drama filmmaking. For this, I worked with Oliver Guy to follow the below list of questions for a character of our choice. We chose to base the character on an idea that I had come up with during the same seminar, whilst watching another short film and then discussing the possibilities and room for creativity that becomes available when using a single space as a filming location.

Still keeping with our aim for the project to not follow a literal journey and be kept as simple as possible, I came up with the idea of filming within a single room, and never letting the camera or character leave this one single space. From this, we developed a character who suffers from Agoraphobia, a fear which is hard to define but is often described as being afraid of public places and places where escape may be difficult. After developing this character by answering the questions, we both began to see potential for this to be made into a interesting drama film which would provide us with a challenge for our final film project for the year - filming in a single space with a single character.

We also thought a lot about and discussed how we could further develop the character for the viewers, and how we could very subtly adapt areas of the set design within the room to suggest elements of the character to them without giving them too much information.

Drama Project - further concepts

Having spoken to Sarah and Oliver, who have also been thinking about our new drama project brief,  we began to share some initial ideas and discuss the possibilities for approaching the brief. The brief is quite broad, with just being given the word 'journey', this leaves a lot of room for creativity and can be interpreted in a number of ways.

We initially began discussing the project and agreed that although we weren't entirely fixed on a clear concept yet, we did know that we did not want to make this a literal journey for the audience to view, and instead we wanted not to give much away and make the audience look at the film themselves and interpret it in a number of ways. 
I mentioned an idea that I had been thinking of within the past week and wanted some feedback on, which was the possibility of having a journey play out as backwards, or not in direct chronological order. Within this idea, the end of the film would link back to the start in a subtle way, via a simple image or element to the films mise- en- scene being shown in both places, with the narrative taking place in between. The feedback that I received was that the idea could work well, however it would need to be more structured and developed nearer to the planning stages, which was something we could do within the next few week's worth of seminars.

Another idea that Oliver came up with and Sarah and I began thinking about was the journey from an animal's perspective, for example a dog going on a walk and witnessing an event. We all agreed that this was an interesting concept to explore as the story itself could be kept simple, however through showing it through a dogs perspective the visuals could be interesting. Also, by not literally showing the animal at all but rather the way it views the world, the audience would have to work out themselves that it is not filmed from a human's perspective, which is quite an interesting concept to explore and think about developing.With this idea, we agreed that there would be quite a few limitations/things to think about, however as an early concept we all liked how different it was and the creativity that it left us with.

We agreed that these were both early ideas that we should keep hold of and think about further before being introduced fully to the project in the next few weeks, however we knew that we needed to keep in mind restrictions that the brief may have, such as not being able to work with a member of a team that you have previously worked with.

Interpretations of 'Journey' - initial Drama project planning

With 'Journey' being given as the only direction towards a theme on the drama project brief, the way that I usually develop my initial ideas is to write everything down about different ways of interpreting this. I completed this with only the word 'journey' in mind, and then developed this off into how these ideas could link to different categories, e.g. a journey of time (a single hour/day etc.), a journey of character or a metaphorical journey- something as simple as the journey of an item in a bag, or an interrupted everyday journey, such as witnessing an event during a usual morning routine that causes some change to a character. I also thought about words and phrases that the word 'journey' immediately made me think of, and asked some people I know to do the same, then compiled the following list in order to outline my initial ideas in one place:

Final Post Production Outcome

Throughout the editing process, the group has been a bit more split up during this stage, so that the visual and sound Editors (Saul and Oliver) and Director (Noah) could really work on the film that they wanted to make, without the edit suite being too crowded. We all kept in contact online and met up after lectures and seminars during the week, as well as reviewed the film several times at different points throughout the edit. I feel like our organisation and communication as a team has been a strong area which has been quite consistent on this project and has helped the edit to get put together in good time.

We did face some initial sound problems during the first rough cut edit of our documentary, so to take the workload of Oliver, myself and Alex Potter went around Sheffield city centre, gathering various different sounds that captured 'city' and 'street' environments and atmospheres, such as close up audio recordings of trying to put a beat together by focusing in on small items such as cans, railings and plastic signs. This was due to us unfortunately not having gathered enough street based sounds whilst in Liverpool, and therefore parts of the edit not quite matching up to the visuals, or being what we had originally intended the sound design to be.However, there were some useable sounds that we gathered such as sounds of the fairground rides in the city centre, that Oliver added into the final edit which seemed to work well alongside the beat track he had already spent a lot of time working on.

Another issue during post production was at one point the group splitting up into two groups - audio and visuals. Although initially this worked out well as it enabled each person to focus on their job role area, towards the final edit being finished, I suggested that we held a group meeting as I felt like the sound was becoming a separated piece, and that the video editors had separate ideas for what they imagined the sound track to consist of than the sound editors. After discussing this as a group and comparing notes and ideas, this sorted out the problem of the two elements to the film feeling disconnected, and the project seemed to be moving a lot quicker after this meeting.
The final film is one that we are all pleased with, however we hope to add to it and use the feedback that we get to work upon creating an updated, longer version which has been given the opportunity to be shown at the International Festival For Business in Liverpool in June. I think for the purpose of the 5 minute hand in, we all feel like the finished piece does have a celebratory feel to it, which is the main thing that we wanted to achieve. It also explores Liverpool as a city and connects this to our subject matter, which fits well within the 'Liverpool Stories' brief that we were set. However, if we were to change some elements to the film, personally I think it would have been better to have included a bit more of a structured introduction to the piece (e.g. with the contributors introducing themselves), as well as try and focus on getting across the documentary style more consistently throughout, as there are times when we as a group all feel that our film has more of a promotional look to it from a viewers perspective. This could have been due to us gathering such a large amount of interview footage, with some interviewees talking for long amounts of time about subject matters that were really relevant and insightful to our documentary and would have added to it by making it a stronger piece, however within us having to stick to the 5 minute timing restriction for the running length of the piece, unfortunately a lot of this had to be cut out. Nonetheless, we are all pleased with our finished piece; we particularly like how it ends on such a light note and feel this gets our positive mood and message as well as tone of the film across well, and we are all looking forward to gaining some feedback and working upon this to create an extended version of our documentary.