VISIONS 2014 Film Conference

At the 2014 UNCW VISIONS Film Festival and Conference, I attended the one hour Video Race screening and the first Film Block, as well as some of the discussion section afterward. This was the first official film conference I had ever been to, and I realized soon that it was something I intend to attend a lot more.

            The one hour Video Race screening was silly and fun; while the audio was turned up a bit too loud in the theater, causing the air and birds and hands near the on-board camera microphone sound to blast into the large room, there were several solidly creative interpretations for their parameters. They were all based on the Mad Lib writings they had made, and one noteworthy minute film that comes to my mind typing this here was the one in which the group members in the shot did not say anything; they rather acted out or did things according to the Mad Lib, without speaking, which was funny and interesting to watch.

            The First Film block was particularly great to attend. The notable films that stick out to me are “Win or Lose” and “Caught.” Win or Lose was about North Carolina’s vote for Amendment One, which would outlaw same-sex marriage in the state. A gay professional family photographer ended up becoming a huge part of the Vote Against movement, and he took hundreds or mayhaps even thousands of photos of people of every background and walk of life wearing a Vote Against shirt. In the Q&A afterward, we found out that the director from Elon, seated at the front of the theater, had over 200 hours (or was it 200 GB?) of footage from the filming of that documentary. Caught was a very funny and energetic look at how teachers and authority in school treat things like Pokemon cards, and that got a lot of laughter in the theater. The makers of that film were based out of NYU and not there, but the Q&A did provide the interesting experience of meeting the directors and producers and heads of these films we had just seen. Impressive animation and cinematography was also present in the films, and the documentary about the end of 35mm projection was particularly interesting, as I’m friends with the current Head Projectionist in Lumina theater.  VISIONS was a great experience, and I intend to go next school year as well, and perhaps even show something there.

Blog 11 - Wild Card position

For the Wild Card final project in this FST201 class, I have the role of Sound designer. So far, members of our group have met up to discuss the story idea itself, as we are going with a Narrative-Experimental hybrid. Troy drew out some storyboards in collaboration with Kendrick, and Michael and I have met up to write out the script, which we did two days ago Now.

As the Sound Designer, I plan to get more practice in with the recording of sound, using H4N's and other mixers, and getting used to the equipment, etc. Some in our group have mentioned the possibility of recording most of the dialogue audio with ADR, and that would be very interesting to try; it will be a learning experience if we do so, and doing so would further our future abilities in film making!

Because of the creative and experimental nature of our short film, recording sound will be a bit unconventional, with the "trippy" and dream-like story elements. I intend to do all of these things and get better with them.

Blog 10 - Editing the Soundscape 3B

Editing the Soundscape 3B was a great experience, and a different one as well; I was the main editor for Assignment 3 in my group, and at first we weren't entirely sure how it was we wanted to go about editing together all the many different sound clips at our disposal. I made sure to ask for creative input from Brandon and Adrienne, as well as Jacob, but I ended up editing and arranging most of it into its final composition.

The idea of different sounds theming together was reinforced for me, and as I edited further and we got momentum going along for the Soundscape, it became apparent that using fewer sounds was sometimes necessary to maintain the theme that we were creating. And so we created.

Blog 9 - Sound Recording

Working on the Sound 3A project, I was reminded of how much we can do with little resources. Jacob in our group had his own sound equipment, using an H4N and his own larger shotgun microphone, and he and I gathered with Adrienne and Brandon to record sound in the Edit Lab. We essentially had already thought of several sound ideas in the class before that toward the end of it, as well as on the Facebook group page we made for the project. Adrienne had compiled a list of all the requirements for the different types of sounds required, and she wrote down many of them under each category. We then proceeded to record several of them, like typing on a keyboard, laughter, wheels rolling, footsteps, spinning a coin, etc.

I was reminded of how amazing sound can be; of course, music can be an incredible artistic entity of its own, but through this assignment I was reminded of how sound can create visual poetry, the way we did; different sounds can tie into different themes together. I was also reminded of how great a sound recording session and library can go with little to o budget; many sounds can also resemble the sound something else would make, like a slamming fist on a table resembling a gunshot, a soda can opening resembling a flashlight/lightswitch turning on, etc. Especially when the editing process begins, the possibilities are even more open. Simply reversing piano pieces and a long, drawn out chord can make for ambient greatness.