Film Mark 2 is Finally Done –

I really hated my first film so much!  The audio was way too noisy and my voiceover audio really wasn’t great either.  However, after making a second film, even though I still had clips missing  I was feeling more satisfied.  In my last tutorial, Jonathan gave me some great pointers regarding music and sound. Looking back over some of my videos, it’s now changed my whole view of them.  I think if I was doing them again and adding music, I would take a much more subtle approach.  I now find myself taking so much more notice of sound and audio when watching films.  This whole film making exercise has been a real ‘eye opener’ for me!

Jonathan suggested that possibly tweaking the music in my film might improve it.  He gave me a particular tip that I really wanted to try.  I went back to the drawing board and I tweaked the latter part of the audio.  I slowed down the music to echo the darkening tone of the narrative.  I’d never really considered the jungly tone of the piano before, but slowing down the audio really did seem to add impact.  The pace was slower and the dip in tempo allowed the darker narrative to flow better.  It actually took me a while to get a more or less seamless transition with the slower audio but I really do think it was worth the effort.

As well as the audio I needed to shoot a couple of clips that were still missing.  At first I had intended to simply fill in the blanks to my film.  However, in the end I decided to fully augment the Balance of Power book that I wrote to accompany my mobile. What started out as a two minute job eventually spiralled into a full weekend of work.  I’m actually really glad that it did, because I ended up with a third and much more experimental film.  Details of how this happened can be found in my Balance of Power Book blogpost.

I won’t be submitting my third video as my final film.  My third film although a useful addition to my Balance of Power mobile and overall body of work was more of an experiment.  I now find sound and audio fascinating so I tried to be much more experimental in my approach this time.  I decided to add muffled voices, ambient noise and a wide variety of sounds into this video.  I wanted to emphasise the idea of hidden voices through the use of sound.  It was lots of fun to do.  If I wasn’t feeling so ill, I’d probably progress my third film further.  Perhaps even to the point that it would be my actual submission.  However, after asking family and friends the vote was unanimous – people much preferred my second film.  Therefore film number two it is….This will be my final submission…

Five Minute Film