to us

‘To Us’, our take at an audio project because we found that there could be multiple instances where sounds can be used. ‘To Us’, originally ‘Projections’, was written by me about a year ago because I was fascinated by how museum pieces would utilise light in their art. By using light to pierce through fog, projectors that projected from the top down, and how film used projectors as a common medium in the past.

This idea kind of evolved and how we would film projector footages and how that’d look. We did primary testing because of the nature that projectors technically was just moving lights; exposure would be hard to handle and after primary testing, we found out that the footage would appear best within the camera under 2 conditions: darkness and cropped film.

Darkness.

Darkness is an essential key to getting proper exposure as we’d only have to compensate for the projection’s light. However, certain scenes had to be filmed in the day, so we had to find ways to bump the projector’s exposure up and the camera’s one down.

Cropped.

Cropping the film was also important because we wanted to show life scaled projections but because of space constrain and of the nature of how projectors are, the projector had to back up until we find the perfect distance. And at 1 point, I was outside the window of our location, 4 storeys high, holding the projector.

Sounds I’ve used is based off planes and the concept of a never ending journey.

A relationship is a cycle, and through this film we are able to see the ending of a cycle. How a person copes with a departure, how the journey ends and how it restarts.

Sounds used were recordings mostly from planes. Midflight announcement, taking off, seatbelt fastening jingle, turbulence.

Sound descriptions

Microwave Ding – Used as an alarm at the start, can be used to link the start and the end. More to be explained below.

Mid-flight Announcement – Usually, the captain would announce the temperature outside the aircraft, the altitude, to thank passengers for choosing this airline and most importantly, how long more a flight will take. This shows that the flight is about to land and its about to end.

Seatbelt fastening sign – Normally associated with lights coming on and off within the aircraft, is most importantly about safety. The first seatbelt fastening sound can be interpreted as safety is on, or safety is off based on how you think the main actor feels at this point of time. If audiences feel it’s seatbelts on, then it shows that this is how she’d cope in a safe way, but the environment of her memories are dangerous. However if audiences feel it’s seatbelts off, it’d show that she’s unconstrained in her thinking and free to roam around the memories. And at the end, it’ll be the opposite and a completely different meaning to the ending. So a vague use of sound can give different meaning to different people.

Many other non-diegetic sounds such as the projector fan that transits into the harmonic bass to set the tone that I wanted. Also, a transition of how a passenger would put on earphones after the plane as taken off for awhile.

 

L cut was used to transition to show that even though her consciousness is asleep, the reality is still ongoing.

The night forested sounds transitions to turbulence sounds as we show her sanity getting shaky. The turbulence was made with a hair dryer sound and how I’d move the recorder nearer and further in repetitions.

Projector white noise was also used to depict the sound you’d hear on a plane. The same same but different feeling.

The microwave sound was hard to replicate so I just used an actual microwave sound and stood there and recorded it for 2 minutes. The microwave sound mixed very nicely with the projector fan sounds. The microwave sound plays behind everything to show her state of mind, absent minded, unable to adapt, move on and change. Just stuck.

The ding to indicate that the food is cooked from the microwave returns to show that something is done and you can’t really turn back the time you lost. Paradoxically, it is used at

I played with reverb and volume changes over time to emphasis different acts and how each climax and each resolution is marked and denoted by the volume and how large a room becomes(from reverb).

Below is the video of each individual track at each point of time and how the volume and reverb affects the storytelling.