My concept was based on anxiety so generally, my video was a fast pace. The speed and tempo of the music and rhythm along with visual to create that tense effect that I wanted to convey through my video. There were both regular rhythm and irregular breathing and heartbeat sounds. I think the irregular helps to bring out the intensity of the attack, confuse emotion out of the audience.
Movement – In terms of sustain, it can be seen at the beginning where I walk to the canteen The attack slowly seeps in at the part where I started getting dizzy and breathless when I felt that there were too many people who were judging me, there was a continuousbuild–upof slowmovement as I was getting into anxiety. Afterward, as I get haunt by my anxiety the movement gets biggergradually. Until the point where I finally ‘escape” to somewhere where I can be alone, there was a sudden decay of the music and movement in the video. The growing and intense movement at the front part of the video help to contrastthe stillness in the last part of the video.
Causality – I think the people generally know anxiety as a form of being in a state of an attack. The twomostcommon expected ending is where the person calms down after a while or the attack gets stronger and stronger till the point where the person will do something to stop it aka. death. I think for concept even though it is kind of clear where my video is heading towards but I mainly focus on the portraying how anxiety feels like. I think the objects I use are unexpected and adding on I use asynchronous sound which the audience did not expect an empty chips bag to sound like glass when crushed.
Duration – The video was considered short as I have many things going on at each frame. In terms of duration, I think the gradual build-up of the pace of my video certain helps me to bring the audience emotion to a high point before dropping the audio and visual all the way down. This drop allows me to have a suddensilence which I think I could have extended it longer. But overall I think the duration of my video was pretty alright.
Exercise 2
Brainstorm a list of 20 events that last about 10 seconds example.Things that last 10-sec thing that cannot last 10 seconds. Those that are bold are events that I want it to last longer.
Eating my biscuit
My bits of biscuits that travels to my stomach
Searching for an item on Pinterest
Scrolling my friends Instagram stories
Sketching an idea that popped out of my head
Moving my laptop to the switch to charge
Swinging my legs
Daydreaming
Drinking cold water
Replying messages
Talking to my classmate.
Thinking of the 10 seconds video that I have to make in 20 minutes
Brainstorm a list of 20 places that you have never been before
Winter, Autumn
World War 3
Back in ancient periods
Conscience
Paralyzed
DayDreams/ Dreams/ Nightmares
Northern Lights
Conscious
Being an insect, bird
Moral Values
Being a flower, Potato
Illusion, Delusion
The Atlantic Ocean
Magic Magic Magic
Telephone
Psychopath
Smoke
Harry Potter
Clock/Time
CartoonShows
Narrowing down & ideation for some places.
Conscious (Moral Values) Brighter and calming sounds can use to represent the right decision to act upon while darker heavy sounds represent the wrong decision.
DayDream (Musical box, Clouds, Giggles, Heavenly like atmosphere, Peaceful)
I decided to choose “Anxiety” as my concept for this project.
Everyone will experience anxiety at some point in time. It can be hard to tell the difference between anxiety disorder and normal anxiety. I do feel some anxiety during stressful periods, but personally, I have not experienced anxiety disorder first hand. I believed the symptoms are a hundred times more intense of normal anxiety.
More than often, we always brush off things that they could not visually see, unlike other disease or illness. Mental disorder has always been hard to spot and discovered by another individual. It seems to be a taboo to raise the issue and they will rather suffer in silence than to speak up.
Thus I wanted to venture into how it really feels like to have a true anxiety disorder. Anxiety takes places mentally, it is a place that Ihas never been before.
I watch video on people who have talked about their anxiety and this is my interpreting their anxiety.
Artist references
Short Film About Anxiety – Mikey Murphy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXiqond9hmYA
This was one of the videos I stumbled across as I was looking into how anxiety feels like. He plays with the visual of the film, where he flashes the main character sitting in the room and the next second he is in pain underwater. This gives me a good idea of how I should arrange my scenes and the visual effects that I can play with complementing my sounds.
Raven Kwok – 1194D^3
The visual here does a fantastic job in complementing the sounds he uses. The black and white color shceme in contrast to the super colorful scenes shows the big difference between the two moods. I think it would be good to apply this contrast between the reality and the anxiety world so that it is clear to the audience.
Storyboarding
#1st attempt Lo-fi Storyboard
1) Main character looking at herself in the mirror to ensure herself she can do it. She walks into a crowd in school.
Visual: Middle Closeup, Longshot, Middle shot
Sounds :
Foreground – Footsteps getting heavier each step
Midground – Soft ticking, breathing sounds
Background – Crowd talking noisily
2) The symptoms of anxiety start showing
Gradually transit into a faster pace
Sounds :
Foreground: Heavy breathing, heart beating faster
Background: Stalking, Creepy music
Visual: Close up, Extreme close up
3) Climax most intense point of her anxiety
Visual: Quick Flashes, Blurry, Double image
Sounds :
Foreground: Non-diegetic sounds, Diegetic
Background: Intense, Fast beats
4) Main character took a breather on the rooftop alone.
Visual: Longshot, slow panning, space.
Sounds :
Foreground: Slowing down of heartbeat, footsteps. Heavy to light breathing
Background: Calming music, lighthearted
#1st attempt Hi-fi Storyboard
Recording my sounds
Some of the sound clips that I have recorded by myself.
Feedback by Serena: My sounds are messy and do not have a smooth flow, it stops abruptly hahahaha *sweats*
After the initial draft, I felt that the introduction of the character in the crowded environment was taking up too much time, leaving lesser time for me to show the anxiety world in the main character. I decided to move the scenes around to leave more screen time for expressing the world of anxiety.
AFTER CONSULTATION
#2nd attempt Lo-fi Storyboard
Exploring non-diegetic sounds & diegetic sounds.
I am intrigued by the idea of matching using non-diegetic sounds. When the sound does not match the visual, it will create an interest in the audience leading the feeling uncomfortable as it isn’t right. This off feeling sets the audience into an uneasy mood, which is my main aim for me to express anxiety.
Diegetic Sounds that I am going to use
• Running Footsteps
• Heavy Breathing
• Crowd Talking
• Clock Ticking
Non-diegetic sound that I am going to use
• Gentle waves, Water splashes (Visual: Main character running)
- The sound of the crash then fades away and the listener is just left with silence, giving the feeling of isolation or abandonment, the sound of rain further emphasizes these negative feelings.
• Clock Ticking (Visual: Flipping through a book)• Gun trigger (Visual: Lightstick turn on)
- I tried to explore changing the sound of the “trigger” then tight and suffocating feeling.
• Metal Chain (Visual: Ribbon tightening on hand)
- I play around with the left and right sides during the metal chain part. I adjust the reverb effect to a big hall, which has more echo. I played with the left and right audio, so when the audience listens it seems that the chain is being dragged across the room, then finally the sudden tightening of the ribbon.
• Crushing of Glass (Visual: Crushing empty bag oe stepping on empty water bottle)
- Showing how an indivudal feels so suffocate and pressured during their attack
• White Noise (Visual: Main character in the state of anxiety attack)
- This sound is commonly usde to express creepy silence or no thoughts in the main character's head. However I want to express the chaos in her head thus I reduce the lenght of white noise used in the video.
#final Lo-fi Storyboard
1st half of the Soundscape (Visualise it with the above storyboard)
I rearranged my storyline as I think by arranging them like this, I am able to play around with the mood of the video better.
Using the raw audio I have records and some taken from royalty free websites. I have explored premier pro various audio effects and tried to apply them to my raw sound clips. As mention by Serena during the consultation that my sounds were all over the place. This time I took extra note on the transitions to smoothen out between each audio clips so that it doesn’t feel choppy.
Reverb Effect - Gives a little echo, depth into the audio by simulating of the sound of the audio playing in a room, hall, cathedral.
Constant Gain Transition – Gain crossfade at constant rate in and out.
Constant Power Transition – Smooth gradual dissolve transition, audio decrease slowly then quickly at the back.
Exponential Fade Transition – fades out first clips smoothen with a logarithmic curve while bringing up the second audio clip.
Final Timeline – 1st halfFinal Timeline – 2nd half
I tried to use the layering method to slowly build up the intensity of the anxiety emotion. After introducing the first element, before adding the second element, I will lower the volume for the first element and it fades into the background or midground. It was super hectic and confusing to have too many layers and parts.
FINAL VIDEO – Anxiety 1min 16sec
Feedbacks
Feedbacks: (Welp, I didn’t expect to have a good response, I thought my sounds were all over the place, but I guess that is the main point of it heh.)
Why not try to merge the two worlds between each frame? Instead of separating them into the first scene (walking in school), second scene (the world of anxiety) and the last scene (back to reality), it would be more intriguing to intersect the two worlds. The challenge would be how to differentiate the 2 worlds as they intersect each other.
The color scheme of the 2 worlds can be more obvious. (Initially I wanted to make everything that happens in the world of anxiety to be black and white, however, I felt that it will dull the impact of the chaos.
Random thoughts on my classmate’s projects
Gwendolyn: Using non-diegetic sounds as she puts on her makeup. It was really interesting to see her applying lipstick while having a matchstick being lit sound effect. It was sizzling hot when she added the fire at the end as she finished applying her lipstick. The concept was strong and powderful (get it, cause she’s wearing makeup). I hope to see more out of this concept.
Siti: It would be very interesting if the main character plays the roles of the patient, doctor, guard.
Debbie: Be more daring to try and exaggerated the cutesy sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXiqond9hmYA
