Final Piece

'Talk'


DSC 3761 Sub 05 from nicole harman-smith on Vimeo.

Editing

We had to sort through a lot of different clips before we even got around to importing because while we had filmed at the same time, we couldn't start the cameras at exactly the same time. In addition to this some of the cameras carried on rolling while others were stopped and started and so there were different amounts of clips and they were different lengths. This made sorting through them very time consuming.
Once we had sorted the clips, we began with importing our piece into premiere. When importing our piece we had to triple the width of the 1920x1080 standard screen size so that we could fit all three pieces side by side to edit.
We knew we would be exporting them at the end as three separate files, but we needed them side by side to edit them accurately and ensure they matched up.
We also had to go through each clip and match them up, as it was essential they were in sync, and trim them to exactly the same length.

Our piece, though it had all been filmed at the same time, in the same place, still had some irregularities between the shots. This would have been due to different angles and spaced out lighting, which we noticed too late after our shoot.
Colour grading the two shots with the actors was relatively simple as they were on the same background, just a few meters apart, however it was trickier to get the right tones for the middle screen as it was using a different background and was also lying down flat.

Nicole used After Effects to figure out how to make our texts come up on screen, and she spent a lot of time getting the shape right and learning how to make the items move and add text. I helped her with finding the colours and fonts to make it look more legitimate.

We decided that it would be a good idea at the end of the woman's video to have it glitch to black as the others fade to black. This would be to symbolise how we are using old technologies less and less and the eventually won't exist. One of the hardest things to do these days is match up formats so that you can watch things. What I mean by this is for example, I have a lot of old videos at home, but no VCR to play them of off because my dad chucked it out to make room for a DVD player. Old tech is going out of style, and as our piece is partly about the relationship between new and old tech we wanted a way to show this. 

To do this we decided that having the man keep trying to contact the woman with his iPhone and technological pieces and the woman have a delayed response and trying to reply with something old fashioned the the man didn't understand. She continues to try to keep in touch but eventually her screen begins to glitch and fail, and turns off. This is the end of the piece.

To accomplish this I needed to learn how to create a glitch in premiere.

I looked on youtube to find different tutorials on how to make glitches. This was the first one I found that I liked.

It seemed very simple at first, copying layers and changing them to 100% blue, red or green, and then changing the opacity. I didn't get much further than this however as for reasons unknown I couldn't get the settings to remain fixed. As time was of the essence I decided to have another quick browse of the other youtube videos to see if I could find something else that might work.

I quickly found another video, and this one I liked the effect of even more. 

This tutorial involved creating and adjustment layer and adding wave form effects and changing it to the noise version. I could then mess around with how big the waves were vertically or horizontally, and see what looked best. I didn't want it to be too comical to look at, we wanted it to genuinely looking like it was bugging out, and so the waves weren't too in your face but were there just enough to be like 'ooh what was that?'

Before adding it straight to our final piece, I began to practice on one of my own holiday videos, and just spent some time experimenting with how I could place the adjustment layer, splitting it up and adding it in different places.

This is an example of what it would look like in the film. I really liked the effect and so did Nicole and we thought it would get across the point of the old technology fading away and falling out of use.

However we began to run into some problems when we tried to add the effect onto our final piece.

The file was already enormous as we wanted relatively decent quality and it was also 3 times the size of a regular screen.

This meant that when we added the adjustment layer and then tried to export it, the file came up with the finishing time estimation of about 9 hours. We understandably couldn't wait that long and for now had to hold back on adding the glitch to the end of the piece, but hopefully we'll be able to work on it and come up with a solution.

Final Shoot

After our first shoot was completed there were multiple things that needed fixing and improving upon in our next one.

To begin with, it had been a long time since we had used DSLR's when we took them out for the first shoot, and we wasted valuable time trying to remember where all the controls were and what all the right settings were for shooting in a studio. This time around we were able to set up the cameras a lot more quickly. We also changed the positioning of the table where the objects lay and incorporated the use of the step ladder which made it a lot easier when trying to film our birds eye view as we could place the camera further back and still keep it high up. 

We also spent a lot more time making sure we had as few shadows as possible in the shots this time, and to do this we were able to move the birds eye view camera further back to prevent this. This meant that instead of being positioned in front of the lights like last time we were able to pull it back a bit more, so it was less in the way of the lights and so the only shadows that were cast were from the actors themselves.

This did then raise another issue of the shadows of the actors on the white background, so we used softbox lighting which really helped.

This time around we decided to incorporate more actions into our film. 

When the actors arrived we talked them through our prepared list of actions we wanted to take place, and where we wanted them to place the items. Item placement was quite an important aspect of our work, and we worked hard to ensure that our shot was relatively balanced and we fit everything into the frame as much as possible. We made a conscious decision to leave the old fashioned phone in the frame through the whole piece as a nice little bit of consistency and a reminder that we still use some old fashioned technologies today. 

We had several practice run throughs of the piece before we began rolling to help the actors become familiar with the order of things. Once they began to get the hang of it, we started to film.

We did several takes, the first one or two we still had to edit where we were placing the items as the actors of course cannot see what is in the frame. We had place masking tape around the edge but it was only helpful in regards to what wouldn't be seen on camera, not how an item would look when it was in the frame.

 Once they got the hang of that we played around with timings, and how long each segment should last. We did multiple takes of different lengths, seeing what would work best.

Practice Shoot

The practicality of our shoot required a lot of thought. We were going to have three screens, and so we would need to shoot three pieces but with all of the timings of placing pieces in the middles to be synced up. We were initially thinking of filming each section individually and mapping out the timings separately and adding them together in post but we felt that this would massively over complicated everything and would be extremely time consuming.

As a solution to this we thought of filming everything at once, with three different cameras. We spoke to our tutor and to some technicians about the feasibility of matching up our footage if it was filmed on three different cameras and discovered that as long as the cameras were all the same and the settings on each one matched up, the footage should fit together seamlessly.

This would mean that we would be able to set up three cameras side by side and film everything real time so as long as we matched the beginnings of each piece, they should sync up perfectly.  

We booked out a studio and three cameras and tripods for an afternoon and evening, and spent the afternoon setting up before the actors arrived. The actors we used were two close friends of mine who have had experience working in student projects before and were eager to help out.

Myself and Nicole each bought in our props and set up the studio, using the white background and studios lights to create our shots. We asked the actors to come in black clothing, and kept the backgrounds to all the shots white to keep a nice monochrome balance to the work and making the colours of the props stand out more.

We had some trouble initially as one of the shots was required to be a birds eye view. This meant that one of the cameras had to be tilted  downwards as far as it would go and much closer to the props than the other cameras had to be to the actors. The camera, in fact, had to be positioned in front of the lights. This presented a whole lot of new problems with regards to shadows on the background, as all the individual frames were very closely aligned. We had to test out a lot of different lighting positions before we managed to find one that worked.

Before we even began filming, we ran through what would be happening in the piece several times to help the actors become familiar with what they needed to be doing.

We began by just going through the piece in sections, and repeating those and then fitting them together, allowing the actors to get used to what was happening, before eventually beginning to film.

We did several takes through the evening, so we would have a lot of material to work with. Due to already have rehearsed with the actors earlier, we managed to get through the filming relatively quickly as the whole piece is a couple of minutes long without any cuts, so all we had to do was run through it a couple of times and edit minor issues as they arose such as where the props were place in the frame and the like.

We also noticed afterwards that we had had some issues with framing. While before we began to film we set up each shot carefully, because it was all done in one take we sometimes forgot about checking the framing before we began to shoot again. 

When we looked back on the footage is it very obvious to us that we needed to raise the male actors camera up, as at times we cut of the top of his head, and also push the camera forward so the frame was closer to the top half of his torso so it matched the female actors shot.

We also didn't take into consideration the creases on the white sheet we used as the background which ruined the aesthetic of the piece.

Synopsis

Synopsis

Our installation piece will portray connections and networks through communication between people and focus on the idea that in the modern age, although society has many platforms of communication, people still find it difficult to connect and communicate with each other.

We will be portraying this theme through moving image, our installation will consist of three screens in a row, side by side. The right hand screen will show a male subject in his own space trying to reach out and communicate to the female subject in the far left hand screen, also in her own space. Both the right and left hand screens will alternate between low key and high key lighting to switch the viewers focus on which screen they are looking at and to show who's trying to contact who in that moment. The middle screen will be portraying the sense of separation and distance between them.

The piece will begin with the attempts of communication being made. This will be seen in the middle screen by showing an open white space with a table where each of the subjects, on either side, will leave objects for each other; the screen will also be displaying text. The objects will portray older forms of communication and will include notes and letters, telephones, a laptop, TV,  Radio and other forms of music, books and other random objects. The text will portray newer forms of communications and also appear within the middle screen and will overlay the moving image. Each of the subjects will be seen sending text messages which when sent will show up on the middle screen, showing that they have been undelivered. Along with text messages- webpages, tweets, hashtags, status’, failed phone calls and stand alone text will also show up in the centre screen. Throughout the piece, subjects will then continue reaching into the middle, leaving objects to try and talk to each other, however, neither receives each others messages or objects of communication that have been left for one another. The middle screen eventually fill up with text and objects as it goes on. The piece will end with the male subject finally picking up a phone call from the girl, only for the sound to be distorted, her screen will start to glitch to enforce the breakdown and lack of their connection and her screen will then go black. 

Treatment

Treatment

Our piece is a three screen, short, installation film that will be about 1-2 minutes long and run on a loop. The aim of the piece is to deliver a statement about communication to a diverse audience. The piece will easily catch your eye as you walk past, and it shouldn’t be necessary to view the entire piece in order to understand the message that it’s trying to deliver. As our work is going to be displayed in a university, while our work will be for a large audience our primary viewership will be from students and university staff. With this in mind we knew that our piece would work best if it got a message across to people who just saw it in passing, on their way to a lesson or lecture.

To begin with our three screens will fade in from black to the white studio setting. The left hand screen will show a woman, the right hand screen will show a man, and the middle screen will show a birds eye view of a white table. The colour of our piece will be important, it needs to be kept simple so that it doesn’t distract too much from the theme, with a white background and black clothing it will keep the balance through the film.

Initially the woman will pick up a letter and put it in an envelope, and place it on the table in the middle. Then the man will send a text, which will appear on screen in the middle and say ‘not delivered’. The woman picks up a book and flicks through it, and places that on the table. The man flicks through some music on his phone and plugs in a speaker, then placing the iPod and speaker on the table. The woman then picks up a radio, places it in the middle and tries to tune it. The man then uses his phone again and tries to make call to the woman, which doesn’t go through. As he continues to try to call the woman, the call fails and her screen starts to flicker and disappears. Our soundscape fades to silence and his screen also fades to black. The main theme of our piece is about communication, but also looks at the idea of how older technologies are being used less and less, and newer things are coming into our lives that replace them. The piece aims to show that no matter how much we try to hold on to the past, eventually we have to move on.

Our soundscape will consist of subtle sound of the objects we have throughout the piece, each linking to the next. It will be a mix of downloaded and recorded sounds so that we have a wide range or different sources available to use.

Our lighting will be high key, and we will be using a variety of props. Items we will use will be things we already own so there will be no need to go out and purchase anything new. We will be using a letter, a phone (actors can use their own), a book, an iPod and speaker and a radio.

Our actors are two of my close friends who are really looking forward to helping our in a student film. They are both students themselves and have had some experience being in student work before. They are fairly flexible and are willing to do what is required of them for the shoot, and are going to provide their own clothes and mobile phones to use in the piece.

To film our piece we will need to take out three DSLR cameras and three tripods. Our plan on how to film is to set up the three cameras side by side and film the whole thing in one shot from three different angles – the left screen, the middle and the right. We consulted with a technician on whether this would work in post, if the footage would match up etc. We found out that as long as all of the settings - such as white balance - are the same, it should all look the same when we go to edit it later. Our middle screen is going to be looking down at the table as all of the items get placed on it, this way you would get a clear view of everything as it happens. We first of all planned on filming it all in one take but that might be a bit ambitious as it will be over a minute long and there are bound to be mistakes made, but we’ll see how it goes, if it looks like we can manage it on the day, we will attempt to film it all in one.

Paperwork for Maps and Networks

Maps and Networks Developed Idea

After a lot of consideration, Nicole and myself decided our idea of using the butterfly effect as a short film was a much too linear and narrative idea for our installation piece. We hadn't properly thought outside the box about what we could do with an installation and we were just looking at making another film with a regular plot.
We also began to realise that logistically with just the two of us we would probably have a lot more work to do than we had anticipated.
With this in mind we decided to change what we were doing. We didn't want to change it completely though, so we decided to just adapt what our initial idea was, which was about the connections between people.
Nicole came up with the idea initially for our butterfly effect piece, which was to use more than one screen within a screen to show different things that were going on.

Johann Pascual was someone we stumbled across whilst looking for research for our 'butterfly effect' idea. We really liked the idea of using multiple frames in our piece, and this inspired us to move away from our rigid idea of a short film and make us decide to branch out a bit. 

This was the kind of thing we wanted to go for with our piece. Not with as many different boxes as this but something similar. We then deviated from our initial idea into maybe using three side by side boxes to show different objects being used to try to communicate between people. 

We also found this video installation art on Vimeo that had the 3 screens side by side in a way that was similar to what we wanted. There is really nice imagery in this piece, and all the colours and tones match throughout the work. It's clearly of the same or similar place and has an eerie melody being sung throughout the piece. 

What I took from this piece is that the woman is always in the middle. We want our work to be similar to this in that all the important parts happen in the middle screen. Our characters would be either side and the passing of objects would be in the middle.

Something else I like about this piece is that most of the movement also happens in the middle emphasising it's importance, the outer two screens have very little motion compared, and the woman doesn't often appear outside of the middle screen. This I thought was interesting, as a way of keeping peoples attention mostly focused on the one area. This is an issue Nicole and myself discussed, as when we make our piece we don't want there to be too much going on so that people don't know where to look.

When people do appear outside the middle screen, there is a peak in interest as it's a break in what's been happening for the rest of the film. It was a useful tool to think about using, just having motion in the outer screens occasionally to further involve the viewer.

At a couple of points in the film the characters from the outer screens cross over into the middle screen which I think is really effective as it happens so rarely. It reminds us that they're in the same world but just doing different jobs, and sometimes these overlap. 

"Stormwater" 3 screen video art installation by Tom Skipp from estrellasonora - Tom Skipp on Vimeo.

So instead of thinking of the butterfly effect and literally the procession of events, we moved on with the idea of connections between individuals, and and how people struggle to communicate what they want to say.

The basic set up would be this;

three screens, the left one with a woman, the right one with a man, and the middle one as some sort of no mans land , which they keep crossing in to but missing each other.

The idea was that they are both trying to communicate but can't. We experimented with the idea of technology and how different generations struggle to get across what they mean when they're talking to each other, and also looking at how teenagers these days have been raised with technology and it's very natural for them to be using it, and how that contrasts with people of older generations to whom it is a very alien concept. 

With this in mind, we thought of one of our characters using just old fashioned technologies, and the other using modern ones.

We arranged it so the woman on the left would be the one using the old fashioned items such as books, letters, radios, and the man on the right would be using items such as an iPod and an iPhone.
I also wanted to link this to Tom Skipps 3 screen video art piece by having the most important parts of the film occurring the the centre screen. I really loved the ending of the film where the man crosses over into the middle screen and picks something up, I think it was a really effective use of the crossover and Nicole and I wanted to show that in our work.

Presentation

Initial Idea

Our concept is derived from the networks part of our theme, looking into connections and links between events in day to day life.

We looked at Chaos Theory and The Butterfly Effect, and decided this would be a good starting point to build on.

The Butterfly Effect is the notion that small events have large consequences - such as a butterfly flapping its wings creating atmospheric disturbances that could cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet. This theory also relates to everyday events and paths leading to outcomes and consequences that could easily have differed if one thing in the sequence had diverged. From this we decided we wanted to make a short video piece exploring a narrative or chain of events in a mundane situation, looking at connections and networks and how everything and everyone is connected in the choices and paths they take, affecting others without them even knowing that it's happening.

Example of The Butterfly Effect in films

To start our research off we looked at scenes within films we were already aware of such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Mr Nobody.
In the following clips they show a chain of everyday acts in different peoples lives, all happening by chance but if any one of them had happened differently, the outcome would not have been the same.
These scenes try and explain this in narrated short stories.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button



Mr Nobody



Twin Screen Idea

For our idea, we thought of making our short film into a twin screen piece. This would enable us to show two different outcomes for the same person. Both screens will show the same footage for an amount of time, until in one of the films, an action is different to the other, and therefore the paths diverge and both sides of the screen have two different possible endings to the scenario.

Sugar Water


Summery of Film Plan

• Twin screen
• 2 different outcomes
• One main character - Nicole's Grandad?
• Follows path of small actions/events
• No narration
• Two screens, one on top of other
• No dialogue
• Primary location - Grandads house

Maps and Networks Initial Ideas

When we got given out maps and networks theme, I instantly began to think about where this topic could take me. As our piece is an installation piece I didn't quite know where to start as this was a very new area for me. I ended up having quite a few ideas of how I could make the piece an installation but not having any sort of thought of what I wanted to show behind it.
I was thinking along the lines of interaction for the audience as well, so what I was thinking was placing a giant map of the world on a wall and getting the audience to place a pin on where they're from. It would be displayed of course inside the uni, and there is a very diverse range of countries that are represented here so I was thinking it would be interesting to see how widespread it was.

It was inspired in a way by the work of Arem Bartholl, who did an interesting piece about maps and technology. He used large red map markers from Google maps and placed them in the spot that Google maps said the city centre was.

I found this an interesting notion and began to plan similar ideas. I quickly found however that I wasn't very invested or interested in this notion and realised that without those key feelings this would end up being a very dull project that I wouldn't be very motivated to complete.

Another issue with this idea is that it wasn't really an idea, there is no meaning behind it and it was a very shallow notion with no depth, so I quickly moved on.

I decided that I would probably produce something better if I 1) looked at subjects I find interesting and 2) considered collaborating with someone else so we could bounce ideas of each other, make filming easier and help spread out the work enabling us to do a better project.

So with that in mind I proposed the idea to Nicole who agreed with me and we decided to work together for the project.
We began by doing some mind maps around the theme and finding as many different possible directions we could go in as possible.

We spent some time thinking about what direction we wanted to go in from the theme, and decided networks/connections would be a really interesting route to go down as it's so broad and we could interpret it in so many different ways.
We came up with the concept of 'The Butterfly Effect'. This is the notion that tiny events can have large consequences - such as a butterfly flapping its wings creating changes in the atmosphere that eventually result in a hurricane. It is another name from a branch of mathematics called 'chaos theory'.
We originally thought of the sequence in the 2008 film 'Benjamin Button' as a perfect way to explain it.

Installation Artist Research

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist who takes quite a radical approach to her work, using her body as an instrument to get across her message. Through her work she explores the relationships betweent the artist and the audience and the limitations of body and mind.
In her work she often risks harm to herself.

In one such performance called Rhythm 5 also known as the firestar, Abramovic almost lost her life when she became so immersed in the piece, she ended up losing consciousness and had to be rescued by members of the audience. The idea of the piece was by burning the five pointed communist star, she was representing a mental and physical purification and addressing political issues of her past.

A piece I thought was really disturbing was a piece called Rhythm 0 in 1974. Abramovic placed on a table 72 objects to be used on her as she stood passively in the middle of the room. Some of the objects were items like honey, a feather, olive oil and a rose, and there were also items such as scissors, a scalpel, and a gun and a single bullet. By the end of the piece, her clothes had been cut, she'd had rose thorns dug into her skin and people had aimed the gun at her head.
Abramovic noted that at the start of the performance people were much more reserved and over time they became more aggressive.

Rest Energy

One of my favourite pieces of hers is an exhibition performance called 'The Artist is Present', where Abramovic sat on a chair in silence and members of the public came and sat opposite her for a few  minutes in silence, whilst maintaining eye contact. The piece attracted many different people, even some celebrities heard about it and came to take part. I think I like this piece the because we so rarely look at someone in the eye for more than a second without talking. There must be a very raw connection between two people who look one another in the eye with no conversation filling the silence.

Maps and Networks -  Everything Marina Abramovic does is about connection with the audience through her performance, and to me that links strongly with our theme, with connections and networks associating with each other.


Chris Milk

Chris Milk is an artist who experiments in many different mediums, beginning his career in music video and photography, and expanding out into more experimental territory. He investigates the possibilities available from using interactive technologies and arts and is CEO and Founder of several different virtual reality companies such as