Month: November 2023

proposal Dana + Irene

advertisement video:

five pages of storyboard:

Отсканированный документ 3

1. Concept

My memory was just a peaceful moment for me in middle school. I stayed at home because I was sick and instead of sitting in classes and really working. I was sitting next to the window in rainy weather. While all covered in blankets I wanted to create an even better atmosphere for myself.  I opened the window. There was wind and rain outside, but the fresh air felt really good. I was reading my book, and coughing in the process. My mom walked in, gave me a beverage. She whistled some melody and walked out of the door. Then the rain ended and while humming the same melody as my mom I closed the window. 

At first, I just wanted to immerse my audience into the moment by showing them rain, wind, paper movements, and my sick noises haha. However, I changed this into the whole story with the beginning, high point and ending. I also decided to make it as a loop, so it’s spiral – beginning and ending are connected and inside of this whole story there is also a smaller loop. Open the window – close the window, open the door-close the door, mum whistling- me humming. The whole concept was in the loops. 

I wanted to translate the contrast between my comfy mood and the restless weather outside. So, I had a lot of different sounds.

1.   Process

I decided to try to film everything in a music practice studio because it has noise reduction. However, I needed to film rain sounds in the gym shower. I used the real door to record door sounds, but for the window, I used a piano cover because it gave a different sound. I faked coughing and sniffing – I tried to do it for the whole minute with just some pauses, so I will need to make fewer cuts at the end. Same thing I did with the wave and rain, but ended up still cutting some of the parts that didn’t work for me. Just in case of problems I did around three takes for each sound. I had prepared a list of sounds that I needed beforehand, so I would be able to just cross them out and be organized. I recorded everything with a tascam and the phantom. I used a mono channel because I wanted to showcase everything from my perspective, so I chose to stay only on one channel. After the first day of recordings, I tried to cut everything and discovered that some of the sounds were too quiet I got a little inspired and decided to add some more sounds. For the editing process, I started by loading everything to Google Drive. Then I spent a lot of time listening and renaming all of them. I chose a name for every recording so it would ease my editing process. However, I did count on the fact that I was uploading files to the Audition from my laptop and not from Google Drive, so it all was useless. First I picked my long background sounds – rain, wind, sniffing. However everything was too loud compared to the rain, so I changed the volume of all the media files. Then I added the beginning and the end-window sounds. After that, I worked with the door sound and whistling. Also changed all the volumes and cut everything. I did some editing at the door/window part with the closing sound. At first, I tried to make it a reverb, but it didn’t sound the way I wanted it to, so I just cut out the needed part. Then I added the Coca-Cola sound and the drinking sound. I wanted to use coffee at first, because it’s more comfy, but coffee doesn’t really make sounds, so I chose a cola can. Then I needed to move all the clips because my sequence was wrong from the beginning. I wrote a script with seconds on it, and I started to move everything. At first, I wanted to whistle after my mom left, but then I decided to make the same melody, but with a different sound, so I picked humming. I did fade out for the rain and wind sounds. I re-recorded some of the sounds louder. Cut and added the sound of pages. I also used one of the page sounds at the same time with the knock, so it would give a reason why I didn’t answer the first time – because I was busy reading – and distracted. I wanted to add some dialogue between Mom and me to explain that there are two people in the room. However, we can’t use words. I exchanged “YES” for “MHM” and other words I just invented. I whispered, so it wouldn’t be that obvious. 

 So, for the final steps, I adjusted the volume of everything and cut unnecessary parts out. I tried not to have a pattern, so it would all seem natural. So I ended up with the story – a window opens, some time passes, mom knocks, I answer, she walks in, we talk, she gives me a coke, I drink, she whistles, walks out of the door, then rain fades out I close the window while humming mom’s son. The continuous background is wind, rain, sniffing noises, and pages turning.

 At the very end, I thought that it would be more logical not to fade out the rain and wind, but end them at the same time with the window closing. I tried to fix it by deleting the action “fade out”. However, that was my biggest mistake. I deleted half of my work (almost all of the action – only some parts of the background left). Thanks to me, I saved the previous version with fade out, because I wasn’t able to recreate or to use ctrl+Z to turn back. So the whole sketch of my work is still deleted. 

1. Conclusion

If I had more time, I would have made the whole audio less messy – do better noise reduction, and checked sound time. 

I would’ve also used my friend to record Mom’s lines of unexisting words – so the voice would be more different.

Do even better volume control, so there won’t be any peaking sounds. 

Make the story more logical and meaningful.

1. Image of Audition

Photo in the process: (here are only half of my clips)

In the documentary “The Five Obstructions” (2004) Lars Von Trier challenges Jorgen Leth to remake “The Perfect Human” – a short film five times. Each time with a new obstruction ( set of specific rules). Give obstructions there were:
 1. The film must be made in Cuba.
 2. The film must be made as a cartoon
 3. The film must be made in extreme poverty (“in the most miserable place on the Earth”)
 4. Use “Film Noir” style
 5. The film must be made with the theme of “The Perfect Human” but in a place of Jorgen Leth’s choosing

At the beginning and through the filmmaking process Leth struggles -he gets frustrated. However, later he embraces the new rules – obstructions and starts to explore creativity in this new reality. He tries to remain flexible and open-minded to Von Trier’s suggestions. So he starts to create in the given limitations.

The result was really interesting. These obstructions caused a significant effect. Limitations forced filmmakers to think differently and to explore new. It forced him to push his own boundaries. Each remake became a unique interpretation of the original movie. All this experiment shows the potential benefits of working under different kinds of limitations. They push you out if your comfort zone and the result shows your ability to be versatile and skillful.

I want to add also that the same approach works in all of the creative industries, especially I can point out music making, writing, and dancing. As a dance teacher, I have a lot of experience in this area. When I teach improvisation it is always about the limitations. You search for new movements while doing something uncomfortable and limiting.

And from the most recent experience, during the Communication Lab course, we had a lot of projects and all of them have some kinds of restrictions. They help to stay focused on the task and to come up with different creative approaches and ideas. 
Other thoughts that I had during the watching:

I loved the dynamics of filmmakers’ interactions, It seemed that one tried to challenge another one. I feel that. It is helpful in the creative collaborative process. I always play the role of a challenging person – I love to see how people provide the most creative ideas under a little push.

I loved how locations influenced the final result. Leth needed to shoot every one of 5 movies in a different country and I am interested in how cultural context and background influenced the final work.