bonniescottasu2-blog

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Final ASU2 Piece

I have removed the narration, added subtitles, a few more recordings from my field recording session to enhance the sound experience and made the video just a little smaller as I felt the image was still a little too clear to convey the distance memory vibe I wanted from it.

I think this is my final piece. It perfectly conveys what I wanted out of this project - a personal sound piece with visuals that pinpoints a very particular form of unclear memories I have from my high school years.

All in all, I am incredibly pleased with the work I have accomplished in this project. I believe that I have not only accomplished what was required in the brief, but created a very personal piece of art for myself and a nice homage to the work of Derek Jarman.

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Final Piece with Narration (no subtitles yet)

As mentioned previously, I am not particularly fond of the narration in this as I feel it takes away from the sound recordings and music, and makes it seem somewhat amateur in the way it’s put together.

I shall try perhaps simply taking out the narration, and adding subtitles as I still want my screenplay to come across, just perhaps not in this current manner.

Other than that however, I really like the way this piece is turning out. I feel the sounds convey the realistic elements of a walk, but also aid the story and help to convey the emotions.

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Field Recordings and Narration

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/sets/walking-sounds/s-6JUIf 

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/narration/s-qHUry

Both the field recordings taken for the final piece, and the narration. 

Overall, I really like the recordings I got. It was important to me to get the sounds of city life such as cars and birds mixed together. I also succeeded in getting a good clip of the sound of my own footsteps, and heavy breathing. It was important to me that I be the one to be on the recordings as it is a very personal piece. 

For the narration, I’m less pleased - though I’m not sure if that’s simply because I am not fond of the sound of my own voice. As mentioned previously, it’s important that I am the one saying the words, but I am not sure if I like the way the narration sounds as I find it to be a little mechanical-sounding. I will see how it looks in the final piece and make more decisions from there. 

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Filming

For my piece, I have decided to record the footage on my phone once again to try and capture that candid, home-video feel that I want to achieve for the piece.

I will be taking the entire walk from my old home to school, stopping just before I arrive as the walk is what’s important rather than the destination. 

It is my intention to make the video small in the frame, and have the field recording sounds and narration with the Where is my Mind music piece overlaid onto it. I also still wish to add subtitles.

I look forward to accomplishing the filming and recording process to see how the piece turns out!

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Sound Ideas

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/where-is-my-mind-pixies-cover-slowed/s-ThJYK

Another slowed song, again of a memory trigger song - though this time it’s a cover. 

I really like this piece, the slowed down nature of it hides a little of what it is, but I feel if one is familiar with the song they might recognise it. I also like that it sounds rather melancholy, which is the tone I’m looking for in my work. 

I think I shall be using this in my work, though I cannot know for certain until I begin to assemble it. 

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Sound Ideas

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/bobby-viton-im-mr-lonely-slow/s-iuyMx

Another slowed song, this time with one of my memory trigger songs ‘Mr Lonely’ by Bobby Viton. This one I like a lot, but am not sure if it’s too on the nose with the lyrics. I want my piece to be somewhat abstract. I will consider using this in my final piece.

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Sound ideas

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/song-slowed-combo/s-m9brp

Using Audition, I took a few intros from songs I associate with high school years and slowed them down to the point where they are unrecognisable. 

Although I very much like the effect this has on the songs, I feel like none of the songs selected here are effective for what I want in the piece. 

Preferably I want the piece to be slow and sad to match the screenplay, and therefore will be exploring this idea further, but with different songs.

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Film Tests

Just using footage from my walks to create different visual ideas. Using Jarman’s ‘Blue’ as inspiration, I want the visuals to be very unclear and limited and therefore have decided to use a blur filter and/or a smaller image inside the frame to give the impression of blurred, old memories that you can barely see. 

Of the three ideas I have created here, I find myself drawn to the 3rd more than the others. Although the other two are effective, I find the first to be a little too simple and the second to be a little too complicated. As I also want to include a plethora of sounds and a narration on top (possibly with subtitles), I feel the third idea works best as I don’t want the senses to be too overloaded by watching it. I also think the huge black border around the video will make a nice homage to ‘Blue’ which has large quantities of empty space.

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Screenplay

She’s immediately filled with dread as she steps out of the door. It’s a warm morning, and she can already feel the makeup caked onto her blotched skin begin to melt.

She lets her imagination wander as best she can, ignoring the nervous thumping of her heart as she considers the day ahead of her. She curses her mother for refusing to let her stay home.

Nothing noteworthy is going to happen, but she knows it’s going to be a bad day. It’s always a bad day.

Many years in the future she shall take this dreaded walk again and marvel at how short it feels. But for now, it takes forever, unaided by her reluctant feet. She envies the adults walking around her, beginning their days. What would a day in which can do whatever you want feel like?

A gust of wind blows the scent of secondhand-smoke coming from her school jumper her way, and she swings her backpack around – rootling for an almost-empty bottle of cheap body spray which she douses herself with; filled with sense of unfairness that she should have to deal with the repercussions of a bad habit she didn’t have. She’s used to the jeering that comes with smelling strange, but it doesn’t make it any less painful to deal with.

She crosses the road, not paying attention to the car which is headed straight towards her. It jerks to a stop, the horn beeping so loudly that she jumps out of her skin and back onto the path behind her. Inside the car, she sees the driver yelling at her – she can’t hear him, but feels the familiar fear that comes with being shouted at. She stands helplessly as he finishes shouting and drives away, and blinks back tears.

It’s only when the car is out of sight that she begins to wonder what would have happened should she have been hit by it. Would she have died? Probably not, at that speed; just maybe broken a limb or two. This idea sounds perversely appealing, and she ponders on it as she walks. Broken limbs brought justified time off school that nobody would question – not to mention sympathy and attention, two things she coveted above all. As another car drives past, she contemplates jumping in front of it before a rush of fear makes her hands shake – she’s too afraid of pain to do it deliberately.

As she reaches the main part of town, she looks around for her friends before she remembers that they no longer wait for her. She’s always too late for their liking. She can’t help but remember the last time they had promised to wait for her, and then stood around the corner laughing as she waited in the arranged spot for over half an hour. This memory was painful and she pushed it down, reminding herself that it was just a joke, that she was being too sensitive.

She crosses the road and starts to see other late stragglers on their way to school also; she always gives them a wide-berth – no doubt she’ll see half of them in after-school detention later anyway.

This is the part of the walk she hates the most. The part that sends her constant reminders of her destination. Here comes the boredom, here comes the torment, here comes to wishing she were anywhere else.

And now she’s at the last stretch. This is the time when she remembers the homework she’s forgotten, or the missing PE kit in her bag. Someone in uniform passes her on the path as she’s walking too slowly for most. As he passes, he flashes her a dirty look which urges her to pull the body spray bottle from her bag again and feverishly douse herself in whatever is left in the bottle. She savors the sickly-sweet smell on her clothing before it quickly dissipates.

She wonders, as she traipses up the small incline which feels like a mountain to her, which teacher will be waiting at the top to chide her for her lateness. She always wondered why they bothered at this point, surely, they didn’t care that much.

And then she reaches the top of the hill, at the high-gated entrance that puts her in mind of the abandoned factories she’d seen around her home. She hears her peers past the gates, talking, walking, laughing. She hates them for it, and she hates herself. And she wonders what it will be like when all this is over.

She can’t wait.

My Screenplay. I have taken small memories noted during my walks through my hometown and added them together to create a full idea of an average walk I did to school.

Originally, I used first person in the writing, but quickly changed it to third. The reason for this change is that I want to convey the difference between myself and my past self - as I feel they are two completely different entities despite both being me. 

Overall, I feel that this will be a good way to convey my feelings - and will go well with the visuals I intend to use. As mentioned before, I will be narrating this part and adding it to the field recordings and foley I will create later.

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Walking through Hometown Part 5

The majority of my memories in my Hometown seemed to revolve around high school. And therefore I think I want to centre my piece on that aspect, particularly the walk to school as I have many, many memories regarding that particular time. I think it’s important to concentrate on the walking to school rather than from it, as that contains more importance to me - it was a much more negative time and therefore more interesting to explore in my opinion. 

I shall explore this idea further, and solidify an idea as I go.

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Walking through Hometown Part 4

A compilation of clips from myself walking through my hometown (sped up slightly for time and file size purposes). Although it was only because I was taking videos at random whilst I walked, I actually found that I really like the candid nature of these videos. By taking them from a phone and without thought for composition, I feel they have the look of a typical home-video - which is a video made purely for the purpose of capturing memories, this is very relevant to what I have been looking at so far. 

This may be interesting to explore with my final piece.

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Walking through Hometown Part 3

A Few stills from videos I took whilst walking around my hometown. One thing I observed is how odd it is that something which contains so much meaning and memory for myself looks utterly ordinary and mundane. It’s as if my own mind made them seem more important than they actually are.

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Walking through Hometown Part 2

Whilst walking, I did small voice memos of memories whenever they struck. Rather than post the actual memos, I shall transcribe them instead. 

SCHOOL WALK - ‘First observations: everything seems smaller, so much smaller. The walk is a lot less strenuous than I remember it to be. I remember the hill was a lot steeper, but it’s not steep at all. Maybe I’m just healthier now.’

SCHOOL WALK 2 - ‘The school looks exactly the same save for one extension. It’s starting to really dawn on me that it’s been 10 years since I’ve been here.’

GRAVEYARD NEXT TO SCHOOL WALK - ‘I used to come here alone a lot, I remember now. I used to use this route to avoid people, and I remember worrying that I’d seem macabre because I’d spend a lot of time here.’

GRAVEYARD NEXT TO SCHOOL WALK 2 - ‘It used to take me longer to get home, but I’d walk through here. And because there were trees, I used to pretend I was walking somewhere fairytale-like. I used to not have music to listen to, so I’d quietly sing to myself as I walked - if I was alone obviously.’

TOWN WALK - ‘I remember being the high-school-friend-equivalent of stood up, right near the council building. I waited for half an hour whilst my ‘friends’ waited around the corner and laughed at me without my knowledge. I’d managed to completely forget about that until now.’

TOWN WALK 2 - ‘Getting home seemed to take forever when I was younger, but it’s literally only a 25 minute walk as far as I can tell. Did everything feel longer because I hated it, or because I was smaller? Or maybe I was just lazy. Not sure.’

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WALKING THROUGH HOMETOWN PART 1

Some recordings of feelings during my visit to my hometown - mostly memories and feelings. I kept the writing rather poetic as I wanted to be able to potentially use it for a screenplay later on. 

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Memories

After going through my own memories and memory triggers, I am quickly discovering how much of it is linked to my teenager years, particularly in relation to high school. This makes a lot of sense as I spent the majority of said teenage years in high school, and it is logical that it sticks in my memory as it was a very negative time for me as a teenager. 

As I have discovered though, I struggled to make complete memories regarding high school - though this may simply be due to a repression. This could be interesting to delve further into - perhaps visiting my old hometown and trying to dig up memories. 

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Museum Field Recordings

https://soundcloud.com/bonniescott/sets/museum-field-recordings/s-Akwex

As I want to create field recordings, I thought it would be prudent to practice with the equipment. I chose to record sound in the Norwich Castle Museum as it’s a rather large, echoing building with access to lots of different types of voices and would create the most interesting sounds.

Working with the equipment, I found it to be very sensitive, and so if I would want to use it in situations where I’m carrying it, I will have to be very careful so as to not pick up the sound of the actual recorder, and my own footsteps. I will also have to make sure to listen to the sounds as I go, as it can pick up much more than my own ears can. 

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MEMORY TRIGGERS

Stoned in Love ft Tom Jones - Chicane

A song I had on repeat during one of the first holidays I had as a person old enough to remember all the details. It reminds me of the beach, and the first time I had spent a week without my parents.