Month: April 2023

Parasite scene 1:21:00 

The Concept:

The project was inspired by the sounds and feelings I have heard and felt on the first night I’ve spent in the hotel for quarantine after landing in China. As I was overwhelmed with all the thoughts of me having to live in a foreign country without my family, and having the anxiety of not wanting to test positive for each quarantine tests, I tried to express those combination of feelings by layering mulitple recordings. Turning a memory into a soundscape was not an easy process as the term of “memory” is more close to abstract idea, and I didn’t want my soundscape to be simple and clear, but wanted it to be a bit more abstract, I used sounds such as water drops and shaking beads to represent the sound of a fast beating and anxious heart beats of mine. And to as I also wanted to add the feeling of eeriness, I added effects on some of the layers, also to add dimension to my memory soundscape. 

The Process:

To list all the sounds I’ve used in my project:

• shaking beads, knocking, stovetop, water drop1, water drop2, water drop3, necklace chain, bottle cap dropping, guitar, seed cracking, vitam C tablets fizzing, shoes sweeping, turning book pages, keyboard sounds and tearing paper sound.

As I mentioned I didn’t want to recreat the actual sounds I’ve heard while staying at the hotel, I wanted to play with different sounds that didn’t actually related to my memory. However, after recording many unrelated sounds, I’ve realised all the recordings were not going well together smoothly. Therefore, to not make it too abstract, I rerecorded and added recordings of water drops, that differs from one another, to make the audiences listen and feel how quiet yet noisy the hotel was. The opening and the ending of my project was what I think the most focus went into, because I thought having an edgy start that catches people’s attention while also having tight ending was crucial. To do this, I used a guitar’s low E note and reversed it to make it sound like it is a beginning of a journey because it was the beginning of my memory. And for the ending, I used the recording of a page tearing audio to give an impression of the journey has come to an end because I’ve teared the page. 

To me, the process of editing, combining and layering the audios was actually fun and the most interesting part of the whole project. I had all the sounds I’ve needed to create my memory, so I enjoyed while struggling to have to smoothest transformation of each recordings. The only challenging thing was how my drafts sounded unusual on different speakers and even headphones. But by fixing the parts that needed the volume to be lowered or boosted and  adding a little touch ups, I got the result I was expecting for the final one. One of the lessons I’ve learned while editing the sounds is how small edits and touch ups can make up a huge difference in recordings and the more you spend time by adding details, the more the recordings get combined and blend to each other evenly.  

The Conclusion:

I am overall very happy with my memory soundscape project, and since it had to be only 60 seconds, even if I had more time I wouldn’t have did anything because sometimes, simple is the best! But if I still had to fix something, it would be me adding up more unique audios and make the transitions more smooth. 

During the presentation, it was interesting to hear how my fellow classmates have perceived my project. Some got my intention right, of how it sounded creepy and like a starting of a sci-fi film, while some said it could be about gambling because of the coin dropping sound… And as everyone observe a certain information all differently it is hard to make the meaning behind your art work clear to all. However, based on their feedbacks, I could’ve focused more on layering the recordings. 

The Image: 

1. Response to “The Uncertainty of Documentarism” by Hito Steyerl.

Steyerl’s theory of how the “unbroken belief” of the documentary form is being challenged is how it has stopped corresponding to reality and has become abstract. In other words, Steyerl states in the article that in the past, it was only considered a form of the documentary if the document had captured something clear and visible, while the change has made the abstractness or the uncertainty of how the document represents something can also convey the truth. 

For example how those CNN images still acutely express the uncertainty of the real world even though the images are all low resolution and could only see patterns of something green and brown moving across the screen. “The closer to reality we get, the less focused and jumpier the images become. 

Nowadays I think it is really difficult to differentiate the reliabilities and inaccurate news and content because of the highly developing technologies. For instance, an image of the former president of the united states, Donald Trump getting arrested created by an AI has caused a lot of buzz on many social media platforms. In fact, I myself believed the false image until I checked the comment section. Therefore, compared to other media such as articles or images, live broadcasts bring trustworthy information.

created by Eliot Higgins using Midjourney v5.

2. Five Obstructions (2004) by Jorgen Leth & Lars von Trier

The rules of each obstruction are simple: 

#1 It must be shot in Cuba and each sets and shots have to be shorter than 12 frames. 

#2 It should be shot in the worst place to shoot a film 

#3 It should be made with Leth’s freedom of style 

#4 It should be a cartoon

#5 It should be re-created by von Tier

Though Danish director Jorgen Leth was challenged to remake The Perfect Human, the way Leth go back and forth from Cuba to India, Belgium to the U.S. and stopped at Denmark to show it to von Trier shows how committed he was to refilm the original film. In the film, von Trier said “This isn’t a competition with yourself, this is therapy” to Leth, and this brings out von Trier’s intention with his project with Jorgen. Indeed, when it comes to filmmaking, I think people should have in their mind that there’s no right or wrong and should always challenge themselves to try new methods. The same goes for Leth, von Trier’s goal was not to make Leth’s film a great remake of The Perfect Human, but to observe the process of filmmaking more like a “therapy”. 

The first remake observing the first obstruction in Cuba was fun to watch as Leth had the limitation of only using 12 frames as it also added a bit of rhythm and humanity as it contained Cuban culture. For the second one, I enjoyed watching Leth himself being the performer and part of his artwork. The third, the one that was the most different in the style compared to von Trier’s original one shows how two artists in the same art field can differ when making art. Then, the fourth one was my favourite of all the 5 obstructions as it had to be an animation. Although the message or theme an animation and film deliver differs, it was interesting to see a short film recreated as a cartoon. The last, and the most meaningful obstruction kind of gave me the impression of two artists sharing knowledge or just simply uniting with filmmaking as a bridge.

As a person who enjoys watching behind-the-scenes videos of films, it was almost fascinating when I watched this documentary film for the first time. It not only made me learn all the processes of filmmaking but also made me understand that exploring the limitless possibilities of cinematography is more important to stick to a certain rule and there is still a lot to be exposed in the film industry. 

Img from “Five Obstructions” (2004) by Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier, taken from Kanopy.