Sound Is Finally Over!

After speaking with Sebastian I decided not to change my sound anymore and just exported it alongside the image.

If were to do this project again I would probably try and incorporate instruments for me that's where I feel more comfortable and I believe I could make it better if I were to use them as well.  I would also use Cubase rather than Audition because like I said before I feel a lot more comfortable with that software and that software is more geared towards making music than audition is.

Other than that I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and was probably the least intimidating of all the projects.

Time Art Is Finally Over!

So it's finally over with and I have never been more relieved, lots of trial and error and far too much time exporting. (9:18pm - 2:15pm rending into png + 1h rending into mov).

I used a variety of effects on the assumption that individually the effects are quite simple so together they couldn't be that difficult. I created a force field with ripple, I added a lightening effect to my hand and tracked it, I found a great tutorial on how to create the 'Matrix' effect [x] and managed to get a free trial of particular to put that in action. I then tracked and masked the effect onto my hand (rather badly in the end, my poor computer really wasn't up this task but you can't download any programs/plug-ins on the Uni computers). After this effect I used the magic/energy effect I practiced earlier in the month and matched the two screens up so that partial world would transition between the two.

The final effect that I used (aside from colour correction/pentatone) was the energy ball,  had already the energy ball about a month ago and recently tried tracking it to my hand as practice for After Effects. However when practicing I decided that adding a shadow beneath would be really effective, I had to look at a lot of different tutorials which included pre-composing the orb scene and adding a floor layer and making that and the orb a 3D layer, after doing this and adding a light I had a shadow. This was the first time I had ever worked in a 3D space with my own footage and it was proving difficult.

When I finally cracked this effect I was so happy, this had taken hours of trying different things and I was having real problems with the preview screen since the rest of the project was so big my computer just didn't have enough RAM to cope with it. So after all that time adding the shadow I had to get rid of it before exporting because my computer just wasn't going to cope with it, especially with the idea of having the track the camera, 3D layer and 3D orb.

Overall this project wasn't as straight forward as I expected and caused a lot of problems and really tested my ability for time management (and even though I tried and it would have worked but I was over estimating my abilities in AE). If I were to do it again I would do it on a more powerful machine so I could preview the footage properly, I would try to get a lot closer with the edges of the masks and I would just be overall a lot cleaner with the execution of the effects. I would also not do it one long take, that was a very stupid idea, I do not know why I did it. 

I tried and this time you can judge me....

So I finally booked out two cameras, set them up and started trying to frame my twin screen correctly. On Thursday I thought I had it cracked but at this point the sun had gone in  meaning my shoot for the day was over, however I was so sure that the framing was correct I just didn't move the cameras from their spots or the markers on the wall (post-it notes, anything else and accommodation would kill me). Come Friday I came home and immediately started shooting only to import the footage to find out one camera was shooting in the wrong resolution (I know, I know never assume. I'm starting to learn my lesson!), I re-shot straight away and when replaying I thought that would be final shoot.

I imported the footage and everything seemed fine, I then decided I would edit the footage over the weekend and work on some other things that night. Now I'm here with the 'perfect' footage realising it's not so perfect because basic maths exists and I didn't use it. 

I framed the cameras so the middle edges of the cameras matched up so when my arm went though it was pretty seamless aside for the slight difference that really can't be helped. What I didn't take into account was the 20px gutter that would separate the two screens in the final composition, meaning when the gutter was in place the screens just looked odd. Here was this one arm that should have been passing through the screens but instead was getting cut off at one point, carried over and continuing.... it looked weird basically.  

I tried to fix it in AE but the only way I could do it was by zooming in on one side and zooming out on the other meaning they were out of proportion and one had a slight border. So tomorrow I re-film (thankfully this is only a shot piece) and I leave a slight gap between the cameras. I will eventually crack this project, it will happen. Preferably sooner rather than later. 

I tried therefore no-one can judge me!

So I sat down with my own camera again and played around with filming the 2 screen part of the project with just one camera... which could have went better.

I want to film my project with a neutral background that has flaws in someway (dents or scratches, not completely noticeable but there nonetheless) I think a perfect background (like a studio space) would take away the grounded look I want it to have so people associate it with humans rather than robots. The idea for this piece is that as human we invite technology into our lives and eventually they will take over the spaces that we inhabit.

Filming two parts that have to match up perfectly proved difficult although I didn't realise how much so until I got to editing. I decided to edit each segment individually, pre-compose and then add everything together at the end however I didn't get past the first scene because whilst filming I had managed to change my position making me a bit closer to the camera than I was when shooting the left side of the screen, I also moved faster and didn't match up with the other side. I tried editing them in different ways, scaling up/down, changing the speed ect. But honestly it just seems more trouble than it's worth when the same effect can be made by simply putting two cameras next to each other.

I did get some bits to match up but only for a few seconds before they were out of time again, although they did look pretty cool when they matched up.

Now tomorrow I'm going to ask in the equipment store if they can help me out with 2 cameras (that film video) and hopefully I'll get filming this project over with so I can get started on the fun part - actually editing it. I'm quite surprised at how excited I am to see this project turn out, on the condition that from this point onwards nothing and I mean nothing at all goes wrong. But let's be honest it's inevitable.

Mastered and Ready to g- wait.

So I finally sat down to finish my sound project, after speaking with Sebastian I only had a few things I need to change, clipping being the major one and making the sounds a bit more spontaneous in regards to panning.

Clipping was easily fixed and panning seemed easy until I sat down to do it, I based my projects off a very structured plan I had in my head and the prospect of changing that plan was actually quite daunting. When I started changing things up and playing them back they just seemed a bit 'off' to me, now in the later parts of my track this didn't bother me because that was my intention - everything is supposed to go wrong it's supposed to be off kilter a little bit. But I started playing around with just the smaller tracks that ones that are setting the beat/pace, they don't change in time they just change in position and in some cases pitch. After mastering and exporting I had a final listen to the piece before I imported it into Premier but something was missing, I noticed that in my attempt to make things spontaneous I had inadvertently taken all bass tones away from the left ear. Now whilst in my 'make things traditional' sense I wanted to go back and change it immediately but then I thought maybe this could be it's signature, something to make the piece unique?

Whilst I really don't believe that I started looking at the sources from 'Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art', maybe this is something that other people do? I read a lot around the use of space in exhibiting sound pieces and how the architecture of a room can make or break a piece of work. I listen to Le Monte Young (Mainly his non-experimental work I'm afraid, still interesting) [x x x], and rather infuriatingly couldn't find a working version of Achim Wollschieds Wallfeild a piece I think would have been very interesting to listen too especially since it's subject matter is so close to what I based this project on. I was also looking forward to hearing everyday sounds turned into tones, something very similar to what my first instinct was in regards to this project right at the beginning. The lack of video/audio documentation of any of the pieces I'm actively looking for is really annoying yet to an extent I can understand why they are not in the public domain, 'Background Noise' is a book that explains experimental sound is there to fill space rather have space to accommodate sound. A lot of the artists seem to spend more time building the stage than working on the performance which in hindsight is probably the best way to do it, if you don't know what you are working with how do you make something that compliments it accordingly.

Now I'm not sure of the acoustics of the room this piece is going heard, nor would I know what to do with that information if I had it. What I do know is that when listening through headphones the imbalance my piece currently has doesn't match the narrative I had set out for it, so I believe it's going to change.

However here is my piece as it currently stands, it will change a bit before hand in day and I'm going to try and grab another tutorial with Sebastian to see if he has anymore advice on how to improve it before hand it.

Mixing down.

Today I sat down and finished isolating all my individual sounds so I could finally start mixing my final project. I already has an amazingly drawn diagram of what I wanted and where I wanted it so at the moment it's just a case of getting everything in the right order on the screen. My original plan was to create several different multitrack mixes and then compile them all together for mastering but I can't seem to find a way to do it,  so my new plan is to arrange the different 'rooms' in different mixes and then transfer the sounds already in order into my main mix before I start scoping.

2 Multitracks come together to form the opening sequence

At the moment I'm just getting the basics down such as where everything should be going and where the sound will appear in the listeners head when they sit down to listen to it. I'm then going to compile tracks based on their position for instance the 7 main positions I have at the moment are L100, L60, L20, 0, R20, R60 and R100, however these will probably change as I still want to play around with the positions of the actual rooms rather than just the positions of the objects making the noise.

My idea for the entire sequence is to repeat the grooves complied by the noises I have from each room and gradually get higher in pitch (only 1 step at a time, as if building towards something) whilst also getting faster. Once it has reached its pinnacle moment things will start going wrong, things will go out of time, things will go off pitch and ultimately go wrong. In the background of this noise footsteps will become frantic running from side to side/forward to back, I want the listener to feel that the human doesn't belong there and that it's the humans presence in the house that's caused everything to go wrong because that's really what happens in real life and what happened in the case of this sculpture. When first built the house was perfect, structurally sound and perfectly capable of staying there for a long as we deemed it necessary it's the constant use and wear and tear of being used by people that caused the house to be condemned in the first place, if the house hadn't been condemned Rachel Whiteread wouldn't have a sculpture to show. 

To help me visualise the look of this imaginary house and where I believe noises should be coming from I've gone back to my amazing drawings with far too many annotations, this is just for me to use whilst editing and it's great for trying things out in my head (that sounds a bit weird but we'll go with it anyway!) before I try them in the mix where something could potentially go wrong.

I am making notes of effects I've tried and believe will work somewhere else in the piece just not here, for instance when editing some generic sounds from the kitchen I found a chorus effect (bass chorus) which is exactly what I'll be looking for when I a bit further into the piece and things start to go wrong.

Let's just say there is a method to the madness. 

Recording the house

Before I set out to record my sounds I did a diagram of what I excepted my piece to look like, to help me visualise it I decided that I would draw a house (because drawing is obviously my best talent) and then label it accordingly. My idea has changed a lot over the time I've been thinking about it and I've decided to stop over analysing my idea and go for what I believe is obvious but then twist it slightly. I want to incorporate the way the sculpture was made with my interpretation of what sounds the house would make. 

The idea is simple, record sounds around my house and arrange them so in a surround sound system they sit where they would be if you were standing in front of the house, these sounds will eventually become 'panicked' and speed up until they are engulfed by what is essentially concrete, diluting the sounds until all that is left is the noises from the Attic (I'm thinking a possible ghost, I haven't quite decide yet I just want something to resonate with the listener to show that it's still there, it hasn't disappeared it's just changed in state)

So I have all my sounds now, minus a few I'm going to have to source online, but other than that I'm ready to start arranging in Audition. I'm also going to try and research some sound installations online although in the past my search has been futile I'm now going to broaden my search to movie soundtracks and realistic soundtracks to see how they composed the arrangement.        

Time Art Brainstorming

So I did a bit of brainstorming and I've finally had a breakthrough with what I want to make my Twin Screen Project about! I got the idea from one of Bills lectures when we were talking about dystopian lands and how we rely on computers so much in futuristic settings. My idea is show the connection between humans and robots and have a narrative following a person as they slowly turn into a robot. A person will reach from one screen where they are human into the other where whatever they are showing the 2nd screen (Hand, foot ect..) has a robotic feature. As the piece goes on their feature will get more and more robotic until the final scene in which they reach back into the original screen (where they would normally turn back to 'human' features) and their robotic feature stays the same.

Now that's very wordy but like I said at the moment it's just an idea, I'll be working on this a lot more when I've made the final edit of my photography project which should be complete soon.

I tried!

So when I first set out to learn After Effects I was pretty useless (and still am, let's not get ahead of ourselves), but I am getting better. However after hearing from the class that the Set Extension tutorial would prove difficult I sat down only to fall at the first hurdle. I was trying to do the Optics compensation and I did everything that the tutorial was telling me to but it just wasn't looking the same or even remotely similar. 

What I was supposed to get

What I actually got, a zoomed in version of the original clip

That aside I have been playing around with AE in my own time and created a 'Magic Orb' thanks to a tutorial on VideoCoPilot, I never finished the entire tutorial (It was supposed to zoom through the sphere but AE wasn't having any more rendering that night) but I did like the effect I got in the end.

I also exported some of the files we've been working on in class, here is the 3D text trial and the Mocha trial.

So there's a bit of an update, I do now have an idea for my time art project and I'm currently researching around it, if it's possible and starting to storyboard the idea.

It makes noise!

I've always loved writing music and playing around with it in Cubase but when I started Music Tech (and evidently now) I do find it hard to drift away from what can be seen as traditional composition methods. For example; sitting down at piano and figuring out the key, the meaning behind minor or major, what motif would fit best? That kind of thing, but then again I've only ever composed for theatre, and pretty badly at that.

Something I've found today is that no matter what sounds I have I edited them so they fit my idea of an instrument so I could create some kind of riff or beat. Now whilst in theory this works for me I'm beginning to think I'm loosing the raw quality of the recordings by taking away their literal identity. Although trying to turn sounds from a pool table into a guitar riff and drum beat is pretty fun - at times infuriating - but still fun.

Here's a little file I created on Friday entirely out of sounds from a Pool table and some Water;

Ooooo it's a Ghost

To get a better idea of what I'm aiming for I decided to mind map every route I could think of in regards to House. I personally am leaning towards the 'Ghost' idea, the fact that the house is a ghost/memory of what once was - to do this I'm going to use the classic house noises but with a ethereal atmosphere about it.

I'm still thinking it through in all honesty, I believe this is something that is going to be made in the edit. I'm also experiencing the same thing I did in Music Tech - trying to think too logically.

When I had to produce dubstep I had a slight meltdown because the way of composing the music was completely different to classical (It doesn't use sheet music, this threw me a bit too much). I did eventually get the hang of it but getting back into that mindset is proving difficult.

For now I need to get my head around the narrative I'm aiming for and who I need to research in regards to the actual sound portion of this task - I'll get there, give it time.

House.

So I've done some reading and I think I finally have an opinion on this sculpture, although it's political as per usual. 

What I found intriguing was the fact that this sculpture's creation rendered the thing it's embodying useless. An interesting quote from Rachel Whiteread, Shredding Life; 'It raises more polemical issues in contemporary society: the right to have a home, control of property and the demise of areas of free access in the urban context.'

What I want to do with this project is embody everything about it, first impressions, political views and it's creation. I was brainstorming ideas and my first idea was pretty plain, general house sounds. Then  I started thinking about how houses are recycled throughout generations and given to different families through different circumstances.  I will then speed up the sounds and make them more and more condensed to show the over use of the property. Followed by a penultimate crash symbolising the creation of the sculpture (which included knocking down the property surround the mould) but also symbolising a tragedy in the life of the current occupants rendering the building empty. Now whilst I'm unsure of the following but I want to show the politics of the situation, the fact that they are so many homeless people in London yet they are knocking down accommodation that they could have used. Over all the ending would be a complete 360, a new family would move in and the cycle would start again. 

Hence this weird list/mind map was created.

Hopefully it will make more sense when completed. 

The art of not being an Artist.

Art; The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture , producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional  power:

When people call me an artist I feel wrong. To me what I do isn’t art. I’m not a painter or illustrator which is what, in my head, constitutes as art. Whilst this argument is more complex than I originally thought I still cannot shake the feeling of unease when someone calls me an artist.

To me art is a rather pretentious hobby that middle class people force their children to view because they feel the need to live a cultured life. Not a kid making Youtube videos in their bedroom to distract themselves from doing homework or studying. It may have been the way I was brought up, it may have been something that I’ve picked up myself but there is still some uncertainty I have with being under the same name as Picasso. (Bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea?)

I believe that whilst ‘art’ has seemingly similar intentions lugging everything from film to theatre to paintings somehow demean them. I personally get more satisfaction being called a filmmaker than I do being called an artist. ‘Artist’ being used as such a broad term, to me, looses its uniqueness - ironic for a sector that is built on unique interpretation.  I understand that society has a need to categorise everything and that ‘Art’ is simply a large container filled with many other smaller ones but art is supposed to be a very personal thing, why we don’t treat it’s name as such bothers me.

 

This entire thing entered my head because I got assigned my photo for Image Factory and it’s of a sculpture called ‘House’ by Rachel Whiteread – I know nothing about sculptures or how to interpret them.

I learnt a long time ago that some sculptures have meaning and other don’t, or they do but they may as well not. (A bit harsh I know, but it’s the truth)

A few years ago in Middlesbrough the council unveiled a new sculpture near the riverside and Transporter Bridge that locals assumed was there to promote the towns past. However when Temenos (Anish Kapoor) was unveiled I can safely say it wasn’t what people were expecting, even 5 years later as locals we are still unsure as to how and why the sculpture was built. It says a lot that in the suggestion box at the bottom of The Guardian’s article about Temenos there is a link to another article titled ‘Anish Kapoors Temenos sculpture shows how uncool Britain is’.

Temenos is described as a butterfly net, brilliant! What has it got to do with Middlesbrough? Middlesbrough has and always will be an industrial town, most people who live in the area work as engineers or somewhere in that line of work and it’s been that way for over 100 years. The area is even known for being the home of the first public railway – so why on earth do we have a sculpture of a butterfly net? What’s even better is the project cost £2.7 million to make, yet to my understanding none of the steel came from Middlesbrough’s steel works, it was all shipped in.

The point of that story is I am very much aware that an artist can have good intentions, just not for the community they are exhibiting in. Whilst what I have read about ‘House’ makes it seem that all intentions were pure I can’t help but think there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Therefore I have some books, some websites and an open mind.

I hope Whiteread is worth it.