Octopus

For this last blog, I thought about using the short video I am presently working on to discuss the effects of sound on a media piece. For the last few days, I have been recording, re-recording, re-re-re-recording sounds, music and voice to capture the essence of the video and to facilitate the post-production part of my work. Adding sound to a video is deffinitely the most interesting thing I have done so far this semester since it allows me to create an ambiance for a movie that is entirely dependant on the choices I make in terms of sound. For this video, our team was thinking about representing the isolation of a girl in her madness. And it was really important for us to use still pictures and to give a blurry aesthetic to some scenes more than other. For us, the woman has an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, it was important not to make it too obvious to the viewer and fall into clichés.

I constructed the poem in 8 scenes and tried to express the complex inner life of the woman. Her past relationships, memories of her childhood, present thoughts compose the poem conceptually. Literaly, I wanted to choose words that would give the sense that extreme sensitivity to life can occasion insanity. I also wanted to represent the subject in a very philosophical way. Knowledge and non-knowledge of her condition makes her aware of knowledge and non-knowledge of life. As much as her sensitivity makes sensitive to life, her insanity makes her alive. I wanted to explore the notion of how grasping a concept, a notion, or knowledge can so often be ephemeral... as much as it can be ever-lasting.

The voice in the piece is mine. The first recording I made of it was too low, "like you are about to die", said Charles. No, we didn't want it to sound like she was dying. She was rather alive in her emotional life. So, for the second recording, I read the poem in a very emotional way. But, for the finish my teamates wanted to achieve, the voice sounded "too emotional, it's almost absurd... like the Moulin Rouge." And that has been our first debate about how the poem should sound. The thing is that I recorded a violonist to accompain the video and the violon was extremely emotional already. They convinced me that the images were neutral (wheat fields, industrial setting...) and so the poem should sound neutral because the violon was too intense. The director wanted something engaged but neutral. Ok so the last recording of the poem was made very neutral and we agreed that it was the most representative of our subject's condition.

The violin in the video acts as a non-diegetic elements. Since the viewer cannot see the originating cause of it, it acts as an acousmatic sound in the piece. The instrument is present in most scenes and represents the emotional layer of the piece. The woman, since the poem (or her internal monologue) is very neutral, expresses her feelings through the violin. I really thought violin would be the perfect instrument for this piece. I wanted something abrasive, industrial, edgy and blue. The three members of our team agreed that there was nothing to change to the violon. The musician had rendered the perfect emotion for the piece and it would only be a matter of putting the good music pieces with the good scene. Now, this is where most of the post-production layed.

The point of the soundtrack was to make it the closest to the images, as if the sound was emanating from the images. I didn't make the soundtrack so it would contrast the images but go perfectly well with them.

I also added another layer to the piece by creating a sound ambiance (kids playing in a schoolyard, arctic wind howling, industrial beats...). The whole point was to make it really subtle so we didn't fall once again, into the cliche. I really wanted something that blended into the music and the poem but added value to the images and the sounds. I didn't want to associate a particular image with a particular sound but rather create a general atmosphere. For some scenes, it was the coldness of isolation, for other, the warm recollection of childhood memories. It was really important for me to activate the sound memory of the piece by adding this layer.

Since we use still photography and that the pictures are not explicitely representative of the story, it was important to have the poem read as a semi-diegetic element. Because we wanted the piece to conserve a certain abstraction, the poem doesn't not relate exactly to actions or thoughts of the character, but also to some abstract concepts of existence. We wanted to have the voice fit the character and that's why I recorded many times and with many different voices, in order to find the perfect voice for the character. We wanted the viewer to have the impression that the voice was coming out of the character's head.

It was very interesting to experiment with sound and the visual elements of the piece. As soon as the photos were retouched and modified, and even in the process of doing so, I would change the sound accordingly to the feeling my two teamates wanted to portray. They would also adjust the images according to sounds they find interesting in the piece. The piece has been a fusion between sound and images, and an experiment on which sounds fit best with which images. It has been extremely constructive for me to work with video 3 students and to be able to create a soundtrack and a poem that would convey my thought on the fragility of inner life.