An attempt at linking my work

This is embedded from my sound cloud made for this project, if it doesn't work follow this link;
https://soundcloud.com/haa-nah-park 

Sound Evaluation

I think sound might be my favourite element of film or just everything in general.
When there was an opportunity to spend a few weeks focused completely on sound I was really excited. I first started by thinking of what scene to do from one of my favourite films. I wanted to do something from Batman or a superhero film but nothing was really working or sticking out as something good.
I couldn't think of anything so I went about it a different way and recorded sounds and thought of what could go with it.
I have a sound bank that I've built up over a few years of different sounds like foley and atmos sounds so I tried some different things with those, I had a collection of footsteps, different room sizes and background hums that I could work  with. I layered them all up and added different reverbs to create a small room with the sounds coming from outside. I recorded conversations I had had with  various people and put those sounds outside the room. It became apparent to me that I should do a quote from Anne Franks diary when I had put the conversations in the background outside of the room I had created.
At this point I had quite a lot of sounds within my final piece and it was sounding quite cluttered and messy. I had more room noise that was necessary and it needed to be simpler.
I still hadn't chosen what part of Anne Franks Diary I wanted to use as the base of my piece but I continued with it and as everyone knows the basis of what happened so I could take away and add specific things and be able to put a voice over onto it.
I started taking things out of it, I cut it down to around 7 tracks with the voice over by the end.

It turns out that in this situation less is more and it worked out quite well. Once I had decided on a segment I moved around where the conversation began and finished and where the footsteps moved towards the front of the space.

Adding the pencil writing on the page added some centre to the track, without the voice over still makes it linkable to Anne Frank I think because the size of the room created makes it feel very claustrophobic and small.
The isolation of the sounds reflects the literal isolation the Franks experienced and the building up of the footsteps and faint talking in the background is how I imagined the suspense of living in that situation.

After looking at the different pictures of where she lived it gives a good idea of how small and cramped it would have been. This image was of the door to the annex in which her and 7 other people lived.

It makes me think that I could have perhaps added one more sound of people breathing in the background, but I think the simplicity of the final piece emphasises like I said earlier the isolation of their situation.

Sound Joy - Professional Toolkit

The classic creative block always there when I show the most enthusiasm towards a subject, typical.

The horrible memories of A-level Music Tech return as my migraine like headaches return.

I was thinking at first that I would do a scene from The Dark Knight, where the Joker crashes a party and intimidates all the guests. It is set in a high-rise building at night with a lot of people drinking champagne and eating food.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to include lots of layers of sound, firstly the muffled sounds of the city that would include helicopters, police sirens the list could go on. Then the guests and the party, firstly talking you would hear glasses, plates cutlery making the noises you expect to hear at a cocktail party. Then when the joker comes in, the guests are quiet only faint noises like breathing the odd glass noise and gasps.

When I recorded my sounds I had all this in mind and it was fairly difficult, however I kept going and thought I'll be able to make something of them when I came to edit them in protools.

However this of course was not the case.

After messing around with EQ, Compression, Reverb and panning it still didn't sound like the Joker could burst into the make believe room I had created.

I listened to the sounds individually and when listening to the one titled "ew breath" there is a second at the end of the clip where you can hear me gasp. When I was recording I tried to move without making any noise and instead fell of my chair. I would say this then got me thinking about situations where people couldn't make noise but it didn't I continued to listen to my sounds making the reverb longer and shorter seeing if they would sound like anything I knew. That added with the gasp got me thinking about Anne Frank and how her and her family were trapped in the annex hiding from the Nazis. Not really sure how my brain made that connection, but never the less it did.

After editing my sounds some more and panning them to a more appropriate place I got it to sound like it was in a box or a cramped space.

To conclude this update of where I am with my work, I have to find a short passage from Anne Franks diary. I'm really pleased with how it's going so far, I also enjoy the simplicity of it, in that I won't be including typical World War 2 sounds, like tanks and guns, I will be including the scratching of Annes pencil, the creaking of her house, things that scared her during the war, other that the risk of being caught.

Prompts for presentation - Sound Design

PLAN OF ACTION

NEXT WEEK RECORD ACTUAL SOUNDS!!! 

FOR ATMOSPHERE - FENSHAM(?) LAKE/POND

- IN STUDIO WEDNESDAY TO RECORD GUITARS/BASS/SOUND FX

-EDIT THURSDAY 

Experimental Sound Design... Maman

Research from looking at Maman...

29 feet made from bronze, marble and stainless steel

"Like a creature escaped from a dream, or a larger than life embodiment of a secret childhood fear"

CONTEXT
by Louise Bourgeois 
A French - American sculpture

Maman started in the late 1990s, the spider is used a lot in her work.

"The spider was an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother." - Bourgeois 

MEANING
The sculpture picks up on the theme of the arachnid that Bourgeois had first designed in a small ink and charcoal drawing in 1947 continuing with her sculpture Spider (1996) 

Spider (1996) - smaller version of maman, 9ft tall, made from bronze, first edition made from steel.

It alludes to the strength of her mother with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection.

When Bourgeois' mother died she jumped into the Biévre River because of how depressed she was, her father swam to save her. < could be useful within the project, shows how strongly she felt about her mother.

BACK TO MAMAN

maman similar to the french for my mother (ma mére) 

Thoughts on Maman from 'Art and Education' 

- 'They can evoke potent but differing emotions, from childhood curiosity and playfulness, to terror and imobilising fear.'

- Eventually I did enter its architecturally protective legs and looked up to see that she was carrying beautifully shaped white marble eggs. Standing inside her architectural  space I felt a strong, space, maternal presence, a positive energy directed on me like a moments reflection. 

Other opinion:

- Now confronted by the huge predator she felt an almighty dread and immediately panicked. Switching survival mode, her only thought was to escape. With adrenaline rushing through her body and a 'stinging tingling felling in her lips she quickly looked for a door to go through so that she could get a way from its intimidating stance. She was very frightened by the possibility of being chased by its threatening legs that could run faster than her in any direction it chooses. 

By comparing the writer and her friends reaction it shows 2 very contrasting opinions of maman. Which I hope to show in my work.