Steve Carter – the audio technical instructor – has given us an induction for the radio studio. The timing of this is just right for our pitch project, as we have been discussing how we can best use sound. It is pretty much settled that we should have a voice over. Kathy helped us out by recording a child reading from the script, but it just didn’t work. I think it might be the timing, but the bottom line is that we don’t have access to a 11 year old actor and we can’t expect to just ask a child to perform for us.
Meanwhile, in the sound studio, Ben put on a wonderful voice, which has now been named Professor Piddle. Will and I were both thrilled by Ben’s performance. To be honest, I don’t know how happy Ben is with it, but I genuinely believe it will work. The next step seems to be to finalise a script and continue creating artwork. The art side of this project is being totally carried by Will as Ben and I are being distracted by the Exeter project, which is very time consuming at the moment. I hope there will be an opportunity later to rectify this imbalance, especially if Ben is going to be our “voice artist”. It’s really starting to feel like I’m just not pulling my weight. Ahh, the guilt…
Thursday, 20 November 2008
A quick word about Maya...
...I hate it.
I just do. I can't help it. I don't know what to do about it. Maybe some kind of psychological help is required.
I went along dutyfully to the first 3 or 4 Maya sessions, but I can't keep my mind on it, my brain just tunes out after about 15 minutes and I suddenly find it's coffee time and I have no idea what's been going on for the last hour.
What now?
I just do. I can't help it. I don't know what to do about it. Maybe some kind of psychological help is required.
I went along dutyfully to the first 3 or 4 Maya sessions, but I can't keep my mind on it, my brain just tunes out after about 15 minutes and I suddenly find it's coffee time and I have no idea what's been going on for the last hour.
What now?
Soundscape! A Lazlo Woodbine thriller!
Using a basic digital recorder and library sounds, create a soundscape no longer than 3 minutes that captures some form of story…
For my soundscape project, I wanted to begin with a story and try to communicate its atmosphere. I am a fan of the fiction writer Robert Rankin. Although he is usually to be found in the scifi section of the library, his style can be more accurately described as preposterous-fantasy. I find his writing style to be very visual – I know exactly what his nonsense world looks like – and I wanted to see if I could recreate one of my favourite characters through sound alone.
"Lazlo Woodbine is the undisputed master of the 50's era American detective genre. With him you always get what you pay for, when you pay for the best private eye in the business. He doesn't come cheap but with him you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a corpse-strewn alley and a final rooftop showdown. No loose endings, no spin-offs and all strictly in the first person.
Laz only works the four locations: his office, where his clients come to engage his services, a bar where he talks a load of old toot and the dame who does him wrong bops him on the head at the beginning of the case, an alleyway where he gets into sticky situations and a rooftop where he has his final confrontation with the villain. No master of the genre ever needed more."
When Rankin writes the character of Lazlo Woodbine, it is an obvious pastiche of the genre. By creating a soundscape for the office of a 1950’s Private Eye, I suppose I am doing the same. I hope that the ambience conjured up by the sound effects are “visual” enough for the audience to recognise the genre, even if (or probably because) they are such stereotypes. I don’t think for a moment that a listener will pinpoint my soundscape as that of Lazlo Woodbine, as in actual fact he is a fairly unknown character to most people. But I think the point is to leave no doubt in the ear of the audience as to the genre of the scene and where possible to give further clues to its location, period, time of day and general mood of the scene. The main theme I wanted to get across was that this was a lone charecter, thoughful, possibly weary. I am not entirely sure, with the phone ringing in the background, whether this is the beginning or the end of a story (or case).
My sound effects were: clinking glasses and the glugging of whiskey being poured from the bottle, rain, ticking clock, blinds closing, footsteps, the lighting and first drag of a cigarette, telephone ringing. Apart from the old-style telephone ringing (which I got from Steve Carter's huge collection of sound effects) I recorded all of the sounds myself. Special thanks to my housemate Susan who kindly lit-up for the sake of my homework.
I had in my mind the idea of using music to add to the atmosphere. My plan was to have saxophone but as I listened to various jazz cds from the Media Centre’s collection, I found a piano piece that seems to fit the pace rather perfectly. Mind you, I had to listen to a lot of inferior jazz before I came across something that worked!
I also had a last minute panic about the timing. I spent some time with Ben showing him how to use Audition and how to find additional sound effects and music from the ones he'd recorded. Having played my project to him, it suddenly seemed far too fast and I wanted to go back and re-edit. In the end I think I only added about a second between the phone and the glass, but it was very difficult to let it go; I could have continued editing for many more hours.
Hmmm…. I think I like sound…
I hope to upload my soundscape here, once I’ve worked out how…
For my soundscape project, I wanted to begin with a story and try to communicate its atmosphere. I am a fan of the fiction writer Robert Rankin. Although he is usually to be found in the scifi section of the library, his style can be more accurately described as preposterous-fantasy. I find his writing style to be very visual – I know exactly what his nonsense world looks like – and I wanted to see if I could recreate one of my favourite characters through sound alone.
"Lazlo Woodbine is the undisputed master of the 50's era American detective genre. With him you always get what you pay for, when you pay for the best private eye in the business. He doesn't come cheap but with him you can expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a corpse-strewn alley and a final rooftop showdown. No loose endings, no spin-offs and all strictly in the first person.
Laz only works the four locations: his office, where his clients come to engage his services, a bar where he talks a load of old toot and the dame who does him wrong bops him on the head at the beginning of the case, an alleyway where he gets into sticky situations and a rooftop where he has his final confrontation with the villain. No master of the genre ever needed more."
When Rankin writes the character of Lazlo Woodbine, it is an obvious pastiche of the genre. By creating a soundscape for the office of a 1950’s Private Eye, I suppose I am doing the same. I hope that the ambience conjured up by the sound effects are “visual” enough for the audience to recognise the genre, even if (or probably because) they are such stereotypes. I don’t think for a moment that a listener will pinpoint my soundscape as that of Lazlo Woodbine, as in actual fact he is a fairly unknown character to most people. But I think the point is to leave no doubt in the ear of the audience as to the genre of the scene and where possible to give further clues to its location, period, time of day and general mood of the scene. The main theme I wanted to get across was that this was a lone charecter, thoughful, possibly weary. I am not entirely sure, with the phone ringing in the background, whether this is the beginning or the end of a story (or case).
My sound effects were: clinking glasses and the glugging of whiskey being poured from the bottle, rain, ticking clock, blinds closing, footsteps, the lighting and first drag of a cigarette, telephone ringing. Apart from the old-style telephone ringing (which I got from Steve Carter's huge collection of sound effects) I recorded all of the sounds myself. Special thanks to my housemate Susan who kindly lit-up for the sake of my homework.
I had in my mind the idea of using music to add to the atmosphere. My plan was to have saxophone but as I listened to various jazz cds from the Media Centre’s collection, I found a piano piece that seems to fit the pace rather perfectly. Mind you, I had to listen to a lot of inferior jazz before I came across something that worked!
I also had a last minute panic about the timing. I spent some time with Ben showing him how to use Audition and how to find additional sound effects and music from the ones he'd recorded. Having played my project to him, it suddenly seemed far too fast and I wanted to go back and re-edit. In the end I think I only added about a second between the phone and the glass, but it was very difficult to let it go; I could have continued editing for many more hours.
Hmmm…. I think I like sound…
I hope to upload my soundscape here, once I’ve worked out how…
Animated Exeter: briefing, initial group changes and more mood boards
We have been asked to produce an ident/trailer for Animated Exeter, an animation festival that takes place in February. The ident will be played before every screening, which means it has to be visually interesting enough to survive repeat viewings. It also has to include the sponsor logos – not the most fascinating imagery ever! I began working with one group, but it soon fell apart as no one else actually wanted to be working on this project. By week 2 I was in a different group, who seemed pleased to see the mood board I had created.
There are lots of ideas being discussed within the group. I find that I am usually the boring one who points out that we have limited time available to us (we can’t spent 5 weeks building a set; the project has to be completed by early December). Ben has got some strong ideas around using a clock tower. He’s also keen to use a wooden egg prop which he has at home. This fits quite well with Ralph’s idea of using the Phoenix from Exeter’s Art Centre. I am lucky in that I live in Exeter so am familiar with the building, so I am doing some sketches of the phoenix and also of a couple of clocks… I don’t know if they are useful but I want to be doing something towards the concept art. I really don’t enjoy the pre-production side of projects, but there doesn’t seem to be much else to do at the moment. I am worried that if I stop working it will be hard to start again! I guess I should try my hand at some storyboards too… groan…
Pitching Project - Mood Boards
I created this mood board using images from the illustration library at Woodlane campus. I tried selecting pictures that suggested collage, fairly crude hand drawings and scribbles and also layering and annotations.I think the top image (by Nick Gould) has probably influenced the art work that Will has started working on [see below]. It is leading onto the idea that we might have one continuous line, maybe being drawn in a notebook, which will change to illustrate the script. It might also be a timeline of some sort, but I'm not entirely sure how this will work.
Pitching an idea to an animation producer from the BBC
When this project was first discussed, I immediately thought of working with Ben and Will. I have worked with them before on other projects and so was hopeful that the three of us together would come up with some “sellable” ideas.
Ben had found a website by an Amerian English teacher, Richard Lederer (http://www.verbivore.com), which had a collection of school children’s humourous errors from history papers (eg, George Washington was a very social man. He had big balls and everyone enjoyed them…). We began talking about how we would present these funny lines and how animation could be used to enhance the humour. Our initial thoughts were of Terry Gilliam style cut outs, creating a collage of images. We then went on to discuss using a page from an exercise book, with scribbles and pictures appearing as the script was read as a voice over. This lead us on to thinking about having a character presenting the historical-mistakes as a 1950’s style “public information film” but concluded almost at once that this idea had been done before and been done better. The next step is to put together some images into a mood board so we can better communicate our ideas with one another.
Ben had found a website by an Amerian English teacher, Richard Lederer (http://www.verbivore.com), which had a collection of school children’s humourous errors from history papers (eg, George Washington was a very social man. He had big balls and everyone enjoyed them…). We began talking about how we would present these funny lines and how animation could be used to enhance the humour. Our initial thoughts were of Terry Gilliam style cut outs, creating a collage of images. We then went on to discuss using a page from an exercise book, with scribbles and pictures appearing as the script was read as a voice over. This lead us on to thinking about having a character presenting the historical-mistakes as a 1950’s style “public information film” but concluded almost at once that this idea had been done before and been done better. The next step is to put together some images into a mood board so we can better communicate our ideas with one another.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
New Year
This is my first post of the new academic year. I should have started them earlier, but I've been too busy doing work for the course to have time (or be bothered) to write about the course.
So I will try and do a catch up blog soon, with updates of the course so far...
So I will try and do a catch up blog soon, with updates of the course so far...
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