Creative Media Project Development End of Semester 1 Evaluation

With the Sense of Space assignment concept, the films Phone booth (2002) & Taken (2008) was my inspiration of creating my Phone Call sound project. Both films have the main characters on their mobile phones and this helps the narrative move along as the characters use these as helping aids. With developing the idea of recording the phone call, I had a conversation with a number of people and focused on the background noises from the other person’s end; I would say everyday life was other inspiration of mine to create the project as I use my phone regularly. My target audience was for people aged 14-35 as this age group is the ones who use their mobile phones frequently throughout the day. As my project was about Sense of Space, I wanted to focus on the space of two people having a conversation on their phones in different parts of the world.

With the experimental film Voices, my influence to make a film like this is from the 2013 film Hummingbird. The Jason Statham’s character in the story has a hint of mental illness, which makes him hear and see things that are not really there. The target audience for this project is for people 18+ as the short film features mental illness ‘Schizophrenia’ that could offend or upset an individual. My partner and myself wanted to explore the illness and make people aware of it. Our aim was to get the message across that people should seek help if in any doubt they have the condition or anyone they know.

As I listen to the Phone Call as a completed piece, there is many things I would change to make it seem believable to the listener. I feel the way I (I voiced the main person on the phone) projected my voice in certain parts did not seem convincing that the character was on the phone. When I look back on the recording part, I think I should’ve recorded myself with a phone up to my ear so it felt that I was talking to someone.  The most positive part of the clip was the opening, the way the conversation gets started, and the background noise of the person on the other end. You can hear the static noise coming from the other person’s phone. I think if a member of the audience randomly started listening without any background of the project, that he or her would understand what the project is about and what it’s trying to achieve.

With Voices, I feel that we should’ve added scenes where it showed ‘destruction’ of something or scenes of unusual objects; something to make the short film a little more thrilling than it already is. I feel that the male voice is more ‘in your head’ direct than the female voice, which seems a cry for help. I guess the way my partner wanted it to be portrayed with the female character crying for help, as many people do tend to suffer in silence about the condition because they are too embarrassed to seek help.

With Phone Call I was the sound recorder.  My role was to capture ambiance sound and also record the voices of the characters. I felt that everything went to plan when it came down to audio. For this project, I did not have any problems with creating the project.

With Voices, I was the sound recorder of project. As there was an incident with my accommodation, I had to come home which affected the production days already planned. My partner and myself applied for an extension for this project because of the unseen circumstances. Our hand in date changed from 19^th December to 22^nd December. On 19^th December 2014, I was unable to book out any sound equipment as the department was closed for the Christmas Period. I had to use an alternative device to record sound but there was no problem with the other device.

With the Phone Call project, I have learned many techniques on how to use the Zoom H4N and what to do to get quality sounds. As the sound recorder, I captured many sound clips of surroundings so my sound designer had many clips to create the piece. I believe capturing a number of sounds is a good way of playing it safe. From experience, I know that you should not capture loud noises because it can distort the audio; I did this with some of the sounds and the clip ‘peaked’.

With Voices, we decided to record the visuals first and the audio after. After we finished filming the footage, we edited together so I had a sense of what the people should say basing on the two characters face expressions and camera movement. I watched it with no sound and started to pinpoint where we would put the audio clips in certain moments. Doing the audio afterwards was practical as I did not want to waste my time getting audio that did not seem to belong to the video.

Phone Call was all perfect teamwork. We both had important roles to do and we both relied on each other to fulfill the roles we picked ourselves. I feel that me and my partner worked professionally to get the product finished. Voices was again a pleasant experience with my team member. I felt that our subject matter was very strong but we managed to tone it down for audiences.