Project 3: Impossibilities of Being

A place I have never been before.

I envision heaven as a sort of a paradise for each individual. Only those who have done good deeds throughout their life are deserving to enter heaven. Hence they are rewarded with every possibility, making the impossible on earth, possible. In my video, I’ve depicted how MY heaven would look like.

Final Video

Link: https://vimeo.com/241365627

Research

As recommended by Lei, I embarked on a research on the movie “Avatar”, sound composed by James Horner. I chose this movie because it depicted a different dimension from Earth, and thus the sounds used throughout the movie would be unearthly. In a lot of the environmental sounds, there were the sound of birds chirping and a melody playing in the background. There was also a sound of a female’s melodic singing which added to the ambience of the unearthly world.

 

 

Plot

Follows the story of a lady’s death and her entrance to heaven.

Low-Fi Storyboard

Hi-Fi Storyboard

 

Medium of Video

Since I am creating an entirely new world, I decided to create moving graphics to illustrate heaven. I chose moving graphics rather than still graphics because a lot of the sounds come from movement, thus I wanted to display these movements to accompany with the sounds. Also, throughout the entire video, we are seeing it from the perspective of the character. The graphics in the video was created in Illustrator and then imported to After Effects.

Scene Analysis

Scene 1

Visuals

The story begins with the perspective of the character lying down in a grave.

Sounds

As she is being buried, there are sounds of a male and a female mourning in the background. This is accompanied by the sounds of digging soil. As she gets buried, the background sound of people mourning and digging is muffled.

Scene 2

Visuals

She gets completely buried, and the entire scene turns black. Her life flashes before her eyes which we don’t see on screen but we hear.

Sounds

We first hear the sounds of a baby crying followed by a car crash. The baby crying is supposed to represent the first thing she hears when she was born whereas the car crash represents the last thing she hears before dying.

Initially, I wanted to create a sound sequence about some of her important life moments, e.g. wedding bells, applause after her performance. However, due to limited time, I cut down short to the first and last sounds in her life.

Scene 3

Visuals

She slowly opens her eyes to see stairs and a door at the top. She climbs the stairs and arrives in front of the door. She proceeds to open the door.

Sounds

In the background, there are sounds of angels and bells. As she climbs up the stairs, she hears a heartbeat, which is ironic because she is dead. This represents the beginning of a new life. When she reaches the top and opens the door, we hear the sound of a door opening.

Scene 4

Visuals

She opens the door to find that she is completely surrounded by the ocean. As mentioned in Project 1, one of my favourite places is the beach. Hence, I created a space to illustrate this.

In this space, it is raining, my favourite weather. The sky is a sunset tinge which depicts my favourite time of the day.

We see from a distance what appears to be someone playing the piano.

Sounds

In the background we hear environmental sounds of waves crashing, rain and birds chirping.

We can also hear a faint piano melody which gets louder as she gets closer.

Scene 5

Visuals

Naturally, the sea should get deeper and deeper. However, we found that she is able to walk on water. This idea stems from my fear of the deep ocean. Even though I love the beach and sea, I get terrified at the idea of being out in the open, deep waters. Hence, I wanted to eliminate this fear by giving the character the ability to walk on water.

Sounds

Initially, I wanted the walking to be accompanied by the sound of splashing water. As suggested by Lei, I replaced this with a sparkling sound to create a more surreal soundscape.

In the background, the environmental sounds from Scene 4 remain.

Scene 6

Visuals

She realises who it is, and moves faster. The “camera” moves closer to the man and the piano.

Sounds

Background environmental sounds continue.

Scene 7

Visuals

It cuts to a scene of her embracing the man who she had missed. She has finally been reunited with the love of her life who passed away before her. In this scene, it is no longer a perspective shot and we can finally see our main character.

Sounds

The piano melody stops, followed by the sound of him getting out from his chair and then, the sound of their clothes brushing against each other.

Sound Analysis

Scene No.

Sound Origins

1

Male mourning From the net – Link: http://soundbible.com/2014-Sad-Male.html

1

Female mourning Own recording by mimicking the sound of a female mourning

1

Digging soil Own recording by using a small shovel to dig through a bucket of rice and lowering the pitch on Audacity to make it sound more earthy than grainy.

2

A new-born baby crying

 

From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/the_yura/sounds/211528/

2

Car crash From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/Pertti.Orn/sounds/250965/

3

Angels From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/pycckuu20032003/sounds/85245/

3

Bells From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/Robinhood76/sounds/62967/

3

Heartbeat From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/thenudo/sounds/146765/

3

Door opening Own recording of a door opening

4 – 7

Waves crashing From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/haldigital97/sounds/241824/

4 – 7

Rain From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/401277/

4 – 7

Birds chirping. From the net – Link: http://soundbible.com/1818-Rainforest-Ambience.html

4 – 7

Piano melody From the net – Link: https://www.bensound.com

5

Sparkling sound From the net – Link: https://freesound.org/people/Soughtaftersounds/sounds/145459/

7

Chair dragging Own recording of chair being dragged

7

Clothes brushing against each other Own recording of rubbing clothes together

Classroom Exercise Part 1

Rhythm Irregular, progression of a narrative
Movement In most of the scenes, there is only one subject which is the primary focus of that particular scene. There isn’t any other subjects that distract our focus.

Scene 1:

The falling of soil, starts as a single group, and eventually, more and more groups of soil begin to fall until it completely turns pitch black.

Scene 4 – 6:

Gradually moving closer to the man on the piano. This movement gets faster in Scene 6.

Causality For example, we see someone playing the piano, and I believe there is an expectation that that person has a connection with the main character of the story and it is expected to meet this person.
Duration As given, the entire length of the video is about 1 minute. Throughout the duration of 1 minute, it follows a narrative. I think it felt quite short because the story was highly condensed in order to fit into the 1 minute requirement, so the story moved pretty fast.