More Audio Recording and Filming

We decided to go to the Sheffield United v Port Vale match at Bramall Lane on Saturday 1st December to record more audio and start filming for our experimental piece. This was a particular good match to attend as  it was part of the FA Cup, it was an extremely busy event and plenty going on for us to focus on and capture. We hired out a Marantz this time for our audio recordings so we would be able to record in better quality. Prior to the match kicking off, we connected one of the small mics to the Marantz and headed into the crowd of home fans to record some podcasts. As we are structuring our piece in a documentary style, we wanted to hear some comments from real fans and get their own personal thoughts about the game and football in general. Before match day, we had created a set of different questions we would be able to ask various people in order to collect a vast range of audio to pick and chose from. While recording our pod-casts outside the ground, we also tried to ask a different variety of people questions to make it all sound different, from elderly men who had been coming to watch games for decades, to very young children who have a different interpretation to the game altogether.
After this, we walked around outside the ground, still using the Marantz, to collect more audio to use throughout our piece, including arriving fans, ticket turnstiles, and local fans selling match day programmes, and collecting charity donations.

On my way to initially meet Sophie at Bramall Lane, I passed several fans and police fans and horses heading for the stadium from Sheffield Train Station. As I had my D-SLR with me, I started filming snippets, both focused and unfocused as we want to experiment with our shots to see how it fits with the audio. Once at the ground, both Sophie and I continued to film elements of the 'match-day', filming most shots twice again - focused and unfocused. I personally feel that we captured alot of useful footage and audio that we can now start editing together properly, however we talked about some further ideas for both audio and film that we feel we can collect within the next week to take our idea further and make the best out of our original plans.

Planning Filming

We plan to go to the next Sheffield United home match this afternoon as they play Port Vale in the next round of the FA Cup. While we are there we intend to record more sound and start collecting some visual shots for our experimental piece. Prior to today's match, during this week I have tried to contact Sheffield United Football Club personal to try and arrange some filming inside the ground, and possible of the team during a pre-match training session. I also emailed a member of the media staff at the ground for some information regarding my request. Although he replied to my email, he was unable to grant me access due to problems at the ground. 

This morning, I also rang and tried to contact Sheffield Wednesday Football Club to try and see if we could film over at the Hillsborough ground, however the media department for the club were unavailable to talk, however asked me to ring back at the beginning of the week (Monday 3rd December). If they also are unable to grant access to filming inside the club grounds, me and Sophie have started discussing other potential shots we can film instead, and will hopefully add to these when we meet later on today.

Gathering Experimental Audio

On Tuesday night (20th), Sophie headed over to Bramall Lane, home of Sheffield United Football Club. The team had a home match that evening that we wanted to record some sound for, but as I was working til later that night, Sophie went alone. We wanted some rough audio to begin with so we would have an idea of what sort of sounds we would be able to use and work with. As it was only the first pieces of audio we were experimenting, she used a sound recording device installed on her phone to record various parts of the match from outside the ground, including chants from the home fans. It has given us a starting point to work from and given us the chance to plan in more detail what specific sound we want to record next.

Inspriations

During one of our seminars, Debbie showed us a range of experimental films and audio clips. One that stuck out to me was "The Curious Ear: Meat Factory Ear Worms". 

It was a short audio documenetary about the meat farms in Ireland, told my a man who had experienced it for himself. The interesting thing I found about this piece of audio was the way it had been constructed. Not only do you have the man describing his personal memories of the trade, but in the background, scripted alongside his voice, you can hear sounds of the meat factory being portrayed for the audience to hear, allowing you to personally visualize the experience for yourself. I also really liked the style of documentary used, and feel I could learn from this when it comes to producing my own piece of work.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/the-curious-ear-doconone-meat-factory-ear-worms.html 

Initial Ideas & Planning

For our first assignment, Sense of Place, I am working together with Sophie to produce an audio track that is approximately three minutes long. We decided to meet to discuss ideas and try and plan an concept that would be an interesting piece to produce, but would also later fit well with our visual 'Sense of Place' we would be creating. This would be essential as for experimental piece, our audio would be acting as a soundtrack.
To start with, we both had identify ourselves with separate roles. For this project I am Sound Editor, and Sophie Sound Recordist.

We created a spider diagram to try and come up with a final idea. We tried to come up with as many various plans as possible, at the same time keeping in consideration how each would work as a piece of audio. Eventually, we decided to look more closely at sport, in particular local football. As there are two local, and quite big teams in Sheffield, we decided this would be a good idea as we would have close access to collect our own material, and learn more about the community we now live in. We are going to try and produce a documentary styled piece of audio, asking patriotic fans about football, while having actually sounds of a 'match-day' for the main soundtrack.  

More Contemporary Films

I decided to go back and look at another short film from an earlier seminar called ‘Telling Lies’. I found this short piece interesting as I hadn't seen this sort of approach before, and it was a simple, yet effective idea. It focuses on a guy called Phil, and four separate phone calls he has in just under five minutes after an eventful night. Speaking to his mum, ex-girlfriend Sarah, mate Darren and possible new love interest Victoria, you are able to hear each conversation, but you don’t see the characters. Instead of being able to see each person, when they take it in turns to speak, you hear what they are saying, and coloured text appears on the screen of what they are actually thinking. By doing this it gives a comical attribute to the film, as well as allowing the audience to have their own personal interpretation of the characters involved.   

Contemporary Video

During one of our seminars, I was introduced to a 2003 music video by The Chemical Brothers that instantly caught my attention due to its interesting set up and imaginative ways. 

The video was created for the 2^nd single off the bands 2002 album, "Come With Us", and was directed by Michel Gondry. While on holiday in France, he captured the film; but not before he opted to carefully accumulate the idea first. After watching the video for the first time I decided to look more into the construction for the shoot and see how and why it was produced in the style it was. I discovered that Gondry, previous to directing the actual video, had plotted out the synchronization of the song on graph paper, moving on then to model the scenery using various objects such as tapes and books. However, by taking this detailed approach, he was then able to brilliantly craft the music video in a genuinely effective style.

Gondry filmed a train journey in France, between Nîmes and Valence. In total, he filmed the same journey between the two places ten times during the day to accomplish different light gradients each time that he could later sequence together. After collecting all the footage, he then used it to cleverly edit it all and assemble it to create the video. The train journey was shown all the way through, however certain buildings and objects that passed by appear and repeat in time with various beats and music elements of the track, for example; at 00:54 seconds, counting in bars of four, a brown house appears on every 1^st and 3^rd bar, this continues through to 01:09 where at the same time, another small train starts to appear every 3^rd bar. Then at 01:25, the light gradients start changing, and the journey goes from daylight, to night, and back again. I personally really enjoyed the music video and thought the techniques produced were inspirational. 

The Chemical Brother - Star Guitar Music Video (2003 Digital Remaster)