In-Class Assignments

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In Class Assignment: Project 3 review

  1. Rhythm
    1. Before the climax, a constant rhythm was achieved with the soundtrack playing in the background. Given that it was an ambient mix, it was able to set a calm and lighthearted mood to the story.
    2. Later the rhythm was broken with a halt in the backtrack and a sudden resounding deep bass. This irregularity leaves the audience confused and anxious as a result. This works well in signalling a plot twist which was applied in my project.
  2. Movement
    1. I don’t think I’ve successfully applied movement to my soundtrack as most of the sounds seemed flat and only faded in and out for the ease of hearing on the user. I could have directed my audience more intentionally with my sounds so as to add interest to my soundtrack. For instance, the incident and climax of the story could be better narrated if I used arranged the whimpers of the mom, daughter and father’s heavy breathing in the sequence as mentioned. This gives the audience a visual understanding of the space while adding details and interests to my soundscape.
  3. Causality
    1. With a narrative, I was able to meet the audience’s expectations in a logical and systematic manner. This was intentional so that my audience could follow the progression of events and emotions. However, I did try to toy with the causality of the plot was the audience expected the daughter to be caught but it turns out that the father could speak too and sacrificed himself in her place. The plot did, however, end on an ambiguous note with the father being dragged out of the house, leaving the audience guessing.
  4. Duration
    1. The duration of the project was unfortunately too short for my narrative to be told comprehensively. Moreover, the ending was hasty which led to an unclear ending. I would have extended my film by 10 seconds more to better narrate the ending.

10 seconds in-class assignment

Don’t want to encounter for more than 10 seconds
1 a wet fart (sound and smell)
2 a creepy old uncle climaxing in my ear (sound)
3 metal scratching against glass (sound)
4 fingernails on glass (sound)
5 domestic violence, woman screaming and crying (sound)
6 snakes slithering all over me (visual and tactile)
7 a person shitting, ass pov (visual)
8 beastiality (visual and sound)
9 decay of human flesh (smell & visual)
10 a rape scene (visual and sound)
11 alarm clock going on and on, with no respite (sound)
12 police siren going on in the dead of the night (sound)
Want to encounter for more than 10 seconds
13 a beautiful man working out
14 ice cream
15 things falling in line
16 beautiful scenery
17 a beautiful lady working out
18 a documentary about saline
19 beautiful corals
20 cute kittens
I picked police siren going on in the dead of the night because it suggests an ominous ending, and leaves the audience’s minds to run wild after. Since a police siren going off in the middle of the night usually suggests some sense of danger and crime lurking in the dark, it creates an ominous emotion in people, leaving them more unsettled than say, an alarm going off.

In-class assignment: Clock Time

I wanted to manipulate experienced time by documenting the varied pace of occurrences within the same time period of 5 seconds.

The first 5 seconds clip shows a stopwatch going off and stopping at the 5 seconds mark. This is so as to give the audience a gauge of what a neutral and objective time of 5 seconds would feel like. The second clip shows a woman blinking so as to set the pace with a “slow” activity. The next clip shows Marc letting out a long breath of smoke to signal an increase in activity and pace. The third clip presents Jia Xi pacing slowly towards the camera. At this juncture, the pace of the video quickens with the next clip capturing the door meter beeping furiously. The last clip is a panning shot of a car wheezing by, thereby elevating the pace and activity to a heightened level.

The video can be accessed here; https://vimeo.com/user23065571/review/296388487/ab9f5e3c6d

 

 

Noise, Listen, Sound and Silence

Today, we did a short performance that allows us to dabble with different facets of sound, mainly noise, sound, silence and listening.

We interpreted noise as an auditory experience that you can’t tune out or escape from even if you wanted to. Sound as a sound wave that your eardrums picks up, but have yet to be interpreted. Silence as ambience noise since silence is impossible if one has hearing abilities. And lastly, listening as an act in which you interpret of your auditory experience.

In this class exercise, we arranged a series of clips that started out with static television noise, the imaginary sound of a balloon popping, the ambience of a rainy day and a visual of the same static. This is so as the ambient noise of the rain is similar to tv static so we decided to screen a visual of static so that our audience can draw parallels between the two sensory experiences and interpret the sound as static instead of rain.

In-class exercise: Sound

During class, Serena introduced different genres of sounds and its respective applications in the specific field of film. We were later given some time to make our own diegetic sounds.

This activity was useful in arousing our awareness to the sounds around us, thereby preparing us for our upcoming assignment.  Sounds that seem organic (i.e. crunch of the biscuit, footsteps and flipping of the book) are pleasing and soothing to the ear due to the low pitch and regular rhythm. That being said, the soundtrack of the water fountain sounded rather feverish due to the punctuation of high pitches and high timbre. Mechanic sounds like the door switch and the beeping of the door sound inorganic due to the constant intensity, rhythm and pitch.

Shaking a pouch of coins

Water Fountain

Vending Machine

Cutting up blue foams using wire cutter

Scrunching up of plastic wrapper

Opening a can

Lighting a lighter

Knocking a metal plank

Footsteps

Flipping through a book

Door switch

Door beeping

Crunching on a biscuit

Crackling of the cigarette

In-class assignment 1: Scale & Frame

Piercings have always been a form of expression that documents our journey with self-affirmation or self-discovery. Piercings have also played an important role in religion. Therefore, it would be interesting to feature all of Siti’s piercings as an embodiment of her past and religious beliefs.

 

Extreme close-up of her ear, featuring her piercings

 

Close up of her part of her face and her ear

 

Long-shot taken from the bottom, featuring her fashion-forward dressing

 

Bird’s eye long-shot of her outfit

 

Location: Roundabout Driveway of ADM

Date taken: 20 August 2018

Model: Siti K