Individual Self Evaluation

Individual Self Evaluation – Experimental & Audio

The idea was to create two pieces of work, one audio and one film that could be presented separately but also together as one piece of film. Concerning the film aspect of the project, we wanted to create a piece that was done in a black and white film noir style, as our idea was to get footage and audio from an independent cinema, mainly the projection boxes. As we thought that would be an interesting space to use. As we would be getting audio from a projectionist and around the equipment, including 35mm projectors, we thought it would be appropriate if we filmed our project in a similar way to how some of the earliest films were filmed. Our group was a little confused about how experimental we could be with our project, the amount of freedom given to us in this task was a little overwhelming and we weren’t 100% clear on the aim of the task, taking inspiration from the audio documentary ‘Meat Factory Earworms’ (2011), we essentially fell into a very similar category, creating a noir style documentary about a lonely projectionist. We also took inspiration for some of the footage from certain scenes in ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994) and ‘Sin City’ (2005), some of these scenes, despite being moving image, have such slow or little movement in them that they almost appear to be still imagery in part of a slideshow. Our project was mainly aimed at film enthusiasts with no particular age bracket, just people who are interested in film and its origins and the people behind its production and presentation.

The process of making our project was relatively simple in some respects but difficult in others. In our group of 3 members including myself, I filmed all the footage, recorded some of the sound effects used in the audio piece, edited the entire audio piece in Pro Tools and cut all the film footage to match the audio track in Final Cut Pro. The project did go to according to plan, the only problem being, the plan we had wasn’t particularly experimental and was very conventional compared to what probably expected of our project. The main problem we faced during the course of creating this work was the fact that our group was doing another separate project alongside this one, and because of technical problems was very time consuming and due to this we had problems balancing time and finding available macs to work on, also taking into account that certain members of the group were not as committed as others, leaving others to pick up the slack and the extra responsibility. A problem I had on this project was the fact that I had next to no experience with working on macs in general and using Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro, this made it a very long and time consuming process. Another problem we had during the production of this project was that every so often the audio tracks in Pro Tools would just stop working, all the sounds in the project would suddenly become extremely loud static for no reason at all, but I realised that if I closed the program and reopened at my last save it would work, but this happened to me several times. Audio clips would often just disappear from the screen all together sometimes and I would have to do the same thing. When we received feedback from our peers in our presentation and review, revealing that our project was not heading in the direction it should have been, one week before deadline, I knew it would be extraordinarily difficult to essentially redo the project alone, especially with such little experience.

Our piece of work as it currently stands, is finished, but as the documentary style film that we have previously presented. I have trouble looking at my own work from an audience point of view anyway , but by the end of creating these pieces, both and film and audio. After spending so long editing them and repeatedly viewing and listening to it and after receiving feedback that it isn’t what it could have been, I do not like it. That being said I do think it has some strengths. I believe that the black and white filming aspect of it is appropriate, as we were talking to someone who uses the original 35mm film medium, our project was presented in a way that conveys those early days of film. The film Sin City influenced our film in two ways, both the black and white footage and the still imagery style frames, that we emulated in some of our shots, referring to the viewable individual frames that make up a reel of 35mm film. The negative aspects of our film, I feel, are the fact that the film is too conventional and is immediately recognisable as a documentary style film. The audio is not as interesting as I would have hoped, due to my lack of experience using Pro Tools and its effects, the actual interview audio material we got from the projectionist was a lot less interesting than we had anticipated, I cut it down to 3 mins consisting of little sections as the original clip was around 26minutes and there wasn’t much of particular interest to choose from, also I had to cut out a lot of erm’s and like’s. The film itself is too conventional in that, the audio says “spotlight” and it shows a spotlight, it says “projector” and it shows a projector. I feel that due to several factors, confusion around the task itself, team members being busy with other projects, lack of experience and an element of fear. We played it very safe during this project, we were not as experimental and we could have been. If I could do it again, I would probably go down a much more unusual route as that is where my interests lie, taking the project to much stranger territory. If we are lucky and have the time, we may be able to do this with our project before the deadline and submit that one instead .

In this project I have learnt what I consider to be a fair amount about using Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Soundtrack Pro, importing and exporting files and the problems that can bring and using macs in general. I have developed my skills in all of these areas significantly but to what I can only assume to be a very basic level considering how complex these programs are and what they can do. As I was much more involved in a hands on way with this project, both filming with the Canon XF100 and editing. From the start to the end result, I have been part of every aspect a film goes through in production, this has taught me some skills that I otherwise would not have acquired if I was assigned an individual role to play in the making of this film at the beginning of this project. I have developed all my skills that we have touched on in practical sessions, such as cutting and fusing audio clips, blending and crossfading audio, layering the clips effectively, altering volume levels and panning the audio. Regarding the film aspect, I developed my skills in, cutting footage effectively, removing diegetic audio from the footage, adding effects and rendering, fitting the film accurately to match a soundtrack where there is speaking and converting and exporting all of this properly.

Overall as a team of 3 for this project, there was essentially no teamwork whatsoever, the initial idea was put forward by me to the one other team member at the time, we refined it slightly and then the third team member joined the group. I then contacted someone that I knew worked at the cinema, putting me through to a projectionist, I then organised with him a time for us to meet up so we could shoot and record everything we needed. I filmed everything using the canon xf100, I recorded several sound effects at home using a Zoom that I had booked out and edited the project in its entirety using Pro Tools, Soundtrack Pro and then Final Cut Pro. The only responsibility that didn’t fall to me was recording the audio of the Projectionist speaking and a few sound effects around the cinema. My strengths when it comes to teamwork are communication and organisation, I have had to essentially work alone on this project due to some of my other team members being busy on another project we were working on, that because of lost files and poor commitment had transformed into a very slow and frustrating process. As this is our first semester and we are all still getting used to working in groups and the equipment, I have been very relaxed in regards to not getting angry with some of my teammates when they haven’t been pulling their weight or are almost taking advantage of me and other team members. While I think that this more relaxed approach is appropriate sometimes, I cannot say I will be so relaxed in the future if this happens again, as this work has my name on it and I am not proud to present something with my name on it if it isn’t up to scratch, especially when it falls short of the mark because someone else had better things to do or lost part of the project due to carelessness.