Description of the Space
The space that inspired my project was the park by my house. I’ve lived in this house for about 14 years now and have been to the park countless times, but now I see it every single day. Every morning I walk up the block to the bus stop that sits across from the park. Waiting for the bus and looking over to the trees and the pond and the playground began adding a small bit of peace and serenity to my morning commute. My mornings usually consist of stressing about school work and dreading the long bus and train rides that lay ahead. Being at the park in the morning separates me from that, even if its just for a quick moment. That’s why it inspired me to create my sonic portrait of a space, and later my sound and vision project about escaping the pressures of school work to enjoy nature for a little bit.
Working Process
My working process started by sitting down and listening to my sound file. I started thinking, is there anything else I can do with these sounds? A different approach I could take with my video? I had such a clear idea for my sound project and gathered very specific sounds to execute that. I had also listened to it numerous times, associating all the sounds with what they were supposed to be. To get a different opinion, I had a few other people listen to my sound project and asked them what they heard. They all described the same thing: the subject doing homework, exiting the home, going to the park, and returning and continuing their work. I was very pleased that I had created my sound file to convey what I wanted it to, but it didn’t leave much “wiggle room” for a different approach to a video. Ultimately, I decided not to fight with it and to keep my vision clear and create a video that visualized my sounds. I asked a friend to come over and be the subject of my video. Through many, many takes and trial and error, we gathered video footage of what I imagined the subject of my sound file to be doing: writing, typing, tapping, fidgeting, sighing, walking, entering, exiting, etc. I decided to use only video footage, no stills. I wanted to video to move fluidly, and not get chopped up by random still photos. I took all my footage, inputted it into premier pro, and began editing. I spent a lot of time finding the right clips to line cup with the right sounds and cropping them so that they fit accordingly. once everything was in place, I added transitions and effects. The beginning was meant to be a mix of different actions occurring around the same time, so I had those videos fade into one another. When the subject was moving around and the camera was observing her, I just had it cut from scene to scene, just like looking from different angles. When the subject was remembering her time at the park I used the fade to black transition, so that it would look like she was closing her eyes and reminiscing about what she saw. I wanted the beginning of the video to feel a bit more stressed out and frantic so I added an effect that I thought worked well, the posterize time effect. I duplicated each clip, added the effect, slowed the frame rate to 6 frames per second instead of 24, and changed the opacity to overlap it with the original clip. This made the first part of the video blurred and choppy. The effects stop once the subject gets to the park, relaxes, and everything becomes clear. I was very pleased with what that effect added to my project.
Compositional Strategy
My main compositional strategy and objective was to capture visuals that matched my sounds and get them to match up with my soundtrack. I felt as if this would make the narrative very clear and cohesive. I integrated image and sound by gathering visuals I knew matched the sounds I had. Then I worked to place them exactly where they belonged on the timeline of the soundtrack. I cropped some clips and added different shots and angles to add some variety and different perspectives, bust still kept everything cohesive. My main goal was to make something that made sense, so that when you watched it, you would know exactly what was going on. I felt that I created a Sonic Portrait of a Space project that did that, and I wanted to carry it over into my Sound and Vision assignment.
Assessment of Work
I’m very much satisfied with the video I produced. It met my expectations completely. I’m very happy with the fact that I got all the shots I wanted to create what was in my mind when I was working on the initial sound project. Yes, and for that, I am proud of what I made. My favorite part of the video are the blurry effects in the first half. I feel like that further enhanced the sense of anxiety and stress that I wanted to convey.Did I create a Hollywood movie with awesome effects and an enticing story? No. Did I create a narrative of a stressed student escaping for a quick break at the park in order to refocus?
