- Explain your method of documenting time.
The method of me documenting time is through a video with sound that made use of cut scenes – There scenes are split into repeated action against a series of actions. The transition of each series of actions is to show it work hand in hand together with the repeated action scene under the flow of the background music.
In this video, I want to show the concept of time being a factor that creates tension. In this case, the Protagonist, who is me in the video, is counting down towards O levels in a hundred days time through labelled post it notes. In the first few weeks, life is still manageable as I can have the leisure time to exercise and revise. But as the weeks past, tension piles up as I become more stress due to the increased in the workload and the decreased in time to revise for the exam.
In the final few weeks before the exam, tensions continue to rise and it directly falls onto me as I became more frustrated as I want to rush everything in what I do under time pressure, quoted from the scenes of me frantically searching for a highlighter, scalding my mouth from drinking hot beverages and jerking up from my sleep to check my phone to ensure that I am not late as time is very precious.
During the day before the exam, I am seen to be holding a toy pen gun towards my head, this is to exaggerate the fact that under the tension build up over one hundred day, it has reached my threshold and I cannot take the stress and tension build up anymore, the action of toy pen gun is an exaggeration to show how the tension build up through time has push me to the point of no return anymore.
Lastly, the use of fast tempo music in the background concurrently serves as a great tool to builds up the tensions along the scenes as the speed of my actions became faster along the course of the video to let the audiences feel the tension I am facing with time as the factor for my despair and sufferings.
- How did you manipulate time? Why?
In this situation, I made use of two methods manipulate time – cut scenes transition and time remapping and fast tempo music to speed up scenes.
Why do I want to make use of these two methods is because firstly, the cut scenes will bring about the idea of time compression. The use of cut scenes is much quicker than doing a full scale transition in traditional films that is too long winded and audiences will feel bored, the idea of time compression is to show that how I can actually skew time to highlight on the story and scene that I want to show the audiences directly rather than spending the whole transition letting them know from the head to the tail of the scene.
Secondly, time remapping. I speed up certain cut scenes of the video to fit in with the flow of the soundtrack, this can create a tension to be build up and audiences will feel that the scenes are smoother as it builds up along with the tempo and beat of the video. I am making use of sound track in conjunction with the cut scenes to show how I can manipulate time by speeding up the scene so psychologically, audiences will not feel that it is too rush for certain point as the beat of the music is working hand in hand with the speed of the scene to increase the intensity. Examples are how I increased the speed of me tearing the post it notes when it is a few days before the exam.
- What are the semiotics of your work? The signifier and the signified?
The semiotics of the work are the post it notes, the words on the post it notes, the workbooks, pencil toy gun and the background showing different timing of the day and the background music.
The post it notes are also a signifier and it signifies the arrival of a new day when it is being tore down. Each time a piece is tear resembles the end of the day and the new sheet marks the start of the day.
The words – “100 days till O levels” , “D Day” and the numbers are the signifier that signifies the moment of the time to mark an important milestone for the audience to understand how long more the protagonist has left.
The workbooks are signifier to signify the tension build up overtime, the increased in the amount of books overtime indirectly reflect the tension being built up in physical form.
The pencil toy gun is a signifier to signify the breaking point of the threshold of the tension beyond pressure build up against time as I use it to point it against my head to show suicide.
The different timings of the day – Day, Evening and Night are the signifiers to signifies the transition of time over the course and period of the 100 days to show that the world of the protagonist is real and not still.
The background music is a fast tempo beat as a signifier to signifies the intensity on the tension build up over the period of time during the final countdown.