3 Minute Audio Project

Jamie and I met up to discuss roles and ideas for the audio project. The meeting was useful and very exciting. We decided that I would be the sound recorder and that Jamie would be the sound editor, because Jamie has some previous experience with sound editing. However, we will both be involved in each others roles. Our main three ideas were:

The Spaceship

We would start off the piece with sound piece with small, indistinguishable electrical sounds and build upon those until we reached a climax of 'the take-off' where a spaceship would be taking off. We noted that this idea would require a lot of knowledge and skill in sound manipulation.

The Seaside

With sound, we would create the feeling and emotions of a day at the seaside. The piece would start off with minimal sounds of the wind and the waves. The sounds of tourists, birds, cars, etc would build up and eventually the sounds would die down and we would finish with the wind and waves sounds.

Recluse

We would start off by having muffled sounds, suggesting that someone was listening to someone else without them knowing. This character, the recluse, would decide to venture out of their comfort zone and approach the outside world, only to be hit with lots and lots of every day sounds (kettles, door bells, laughter, etc.) these sounds would be layered on top of each other until they become almost unbearable and then the piece would end with a gunshot or some other loud, shocking sound.

Love me or leave me alone - Analysis

Love me or leave me alone is a film which I feel is a little bit pointless but fairly inaccurate in it's portrayal of a young love. The film's narrative shows a young couple having a fall out, and making up again. A very simple story delivered with great and sometimes stunning cinematography.

I felt that the portrayal of the male character as a bully was uncomfortable and not clever at all. I did not enjoy the opening scene because of the seemingly unnecessary violence towards the boy's girlfriend. The ending was also disappointing as I would have liked to see the girl not forgive him so easily. I think the message of the film was wrong to be honest, I feel that the film would be more successful if the girl character had not forgiven the boy so easily. The boy doesn't pay for his actions and seeing this in a short film almost promotes aggressiveness towards women which is wrong and not very pleasant to see, not that I think that all film should be pleasant, I just think that this particular film was unsuccessful.

I did not think that everything about Love me or leave me alone was bad. The cinematography was brilliant at times. The framing of certain shots was stunning, for example in the opening scene a lot of the shots were very 'square' with characters central in the frame with the background very plain. The shot towards the end by the level crossing, I thought was fantastic as the couple were completely surrounded by darkness and they were doused in a very orange light, I thought this was visually very stunning. Also the cut just before the barrier fully closed, I thought was clever. A lot of the editing was also very successful. The jump cuts in the first scene really created a sense of aggression and panic, representing the feelings of the characters in the fight. Another example of good editing was the sex scene where two shots were constantly being cut together, both very different shots; one of the couple kissing very still and the other of them having sex and moving a lot. I felt that this was a great piece of editing as it showed two sides to their relationship at the same time.

Overall, I felt that Love me or leave me alone was very impressive to look at but the subject matter was thin and the message was not very good. The cinematography greatly surpassed the narrative's clumsiness.

Starting Research

 My seminar group were all asked to present to the rest of the group, a website that inspires them artistically. This exercise, I guess, was to help the rest of the group discover places where they could conduct useful research for the Project Module of the course. There was a range of sites presented, from a semi-humorous, 'piss-take' YouTube channel to an interior design website. I found some sites more inspiring than others as you can probably imagine...

Links to The Sites Below

http://inthralld.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoProCamera
http://www.youtube.com/user/juliansmith87
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles
http://www.streetartview.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/
http://www.vice.com/en_uk
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/
http://www.thrashermagazine.com/