This post is a continuation of the Video Project part 1 post.  After creating our storyboard, we had to actually shoot some video.  Then edit it into a rough cut.  Then show that rough cut to the class.  Then refine the editing into a final cut.  Oh, and add the audio.  And refine that, too.  We had our work cut out for us.

We started by shooting the office scene and the coffee scene.  We reserved a room on the ITP floor and transformed the space into an office.  We thought it would take a couple hours; it took four and we didn’t even get to the coffee.  We’d only begun and were already behind.  In the week that followed we kept to a very aggressive shooting and editing schedule.  We shot the coffee scene and the sandwich scene at the ITP House and elevator scene on the floor.  Everywhere we went we had to carry a lighting kit or two, the camera, and at least one tripod.  The scenes took hours to shoot.  We were constantly adjusting the lighting and, because we knew we wanted so many cuts and different perspectives, we had to act each scene all the way through over and over again from each camera angle.  Adding to this was the fact that none of us had any experience with the camera or the lights.  We’d set something up, review it, change it, record some stuff, realize it looked bad, scrap the setup and start over.  Occasionally, we’d hit upon a setup that worked.  As the shooting continued, we became better at figuring out how things should be setup.  We were learning…

We felt continually grateful that we’d decided not to shoot in a public space or with professional/aspiring actors.  We were able to control most of what was going on and didn’t need to worry about upsetting any individuals who are just trying to get their laundry done or unnecessarily wasting the precious time of other Tisch students.

After completing the shooting of a few scenes, we started to edit using Premiere Pro.  Even though we were all new to Premiere, because we had thought carefully about the scenes during the storyboarding and shooting process, the editing for the rough cut went well.  Our movie was starting to come together.

Despite our best efforts, we still didn’t get everything done.  The rough cut we presented to our class had only four scenes and we’d originally envisioned six or even seven.  The feedback from our class was good and everyone felt like it was long enough, that we didn’t need to add any more scenes.  Although we liked the concept with the additional scenes, we were glad to move on from the shooting and dig our heels deeper into the editing and adding the audio.  We had thought we’d put a song over the entire movie, but a couple tests in class showed us that it would look better if we added sound effects instead.  Music seemed to drive the emotion too much and take away from the acting.

We spent the next week putting final touches on the video editing and adding sound.  The sound work took much longer than we had expected and we were kicking ourselves for not using a zoom recorder to capture sound as we were filming.  We had some success finding sound files on freesound.org but, for the most part, we re-created the sounds we wanted to use in the video.

Even though we knew it wasn’t exactly perfect, we had a final cut to show in class.  When we heard it through speakers (instead of earbuds) for the first time, we recognized the areas that needed sharpening.  Some scenes were much louder than others and a few effects were so loud it seemed like the props were made from concrete.  Those things aside, the response from the class was good and we felt good about our work.  Gabe suggested that we add music in addition to the sound effects — a classical piece over the entire thing that builds to the crescendo at the end.  So, we took another week, fine tuned the sound, made some edits to the video, and added music over the whole thing.

Here’s the final piece for your viewing pleasure!  We feel pretty good about how it turned out.  A month ago, we knew nothing about shooting or editing video, but we were able to make this!

Our second (and final) project for Comm Lab: Video and Sound was to make a short movie (2-5 minutes) in small groups.  We had three weeks to complete all of the work.  Jonas, Paty and I were assigned to a group.

Our first task was to develop a story and create a storyboard.  We decided it would be best to take an existing story and develop it into a movie.  In our brainstorm session, we kept coming back to stories that had a New York theme — things that happen in the City, experiences common to New Yorkers, dealing with the love/hate relationship that many people have toward NYC.  This led us to the NY Times Metropolitan Diary column, where individuals contribute short anecdotes about NYC.  The stories are usually optimistic and humorous, which worked well for us since we wanted to create a funny or lighthearted movie.  We also thought it was really important to choose a story that could be communicated without using words.  We knew our chances of working with professional-level actors were very slim and poorly delivered dialog would kill the movie immediately.

Our original inspiration was A Waltz at the Laundromat, a story about a couple who bring some passion to the mundane task of folding laundry.  We drew the story out a bit and storyboaded a movie that included coordinated folding and a full-blown dance scene.  We were really excited about the concept and presented the storyboard in class.  However, when we started to look for places to shoot, we came up dry.  We called and visited a number of laundromats around NYU and in our neighborhoods.  All of them either said we couldn’t use their location or they gave us the run-around (many managers were out of town).  Adding to our frustration was the thought of setting up all of the equipment and spending hours shooting in a public place where a lot of things (number of people doing their laundry, lighting levels, etc) were totally out of our control. None of us had any experience using a video camera or lights and we were becoming fearful that we’d quickly get on the nerves of any laundromat owner or customers.  We considering using a laundry room in an apartment building to have better control over some of these things, and even did some location scouting in an NYU dorm, but NYU has a strict student film policy and laundry rooms are not on the list of approved spaces.  Without a resolution to the location situation, we decided to kill that idea and develop a new story.

We went back to Metropolitan Diary this time with new criteria in mind.  In addition to being self-contained, humorous, and not requiring dialog, this new story also needed a public or replicable setting.  No more private spaces for us!  We eventually landed on Street Crossing Time Trials, a story about elderly Upper East Siders who use the countdown crosswalk signs to record their own personal best crossing times.  We modified the story to be about two office workers.  We re-drew the storyboard and met with Gabe to review it.  Gabe pushed us to build out the story more — he felt that it needed something else, additional or repeated competitions and, of course, an ending. After hours of brainstorming and refining, we developed a series of competitions in which our two office workers would engage throughout the day.  We drew a third storyboard which came to be the basis of our shooting and editing.  We used a large piece of paper and did the best we could with stick figures and arrows.  The result in in this PDF: Friendly Competition Storyboard.

Although it took a very long time to think through the story and create the storyboard, it really paid off.  We relied on and referred to the storyboard throughout the shooting and editing.  Those processes were still time consuming, but at least there was no indecision; we came to know every scene, look, and cut inside and out.

Our first assignment for Comm Lab: Video and Sound was to create a short audio piece. Sergio, Wajma and I worked together.  After considerable brainstorming, we decided to create an underwater piece.  We wanted to think about and experiment with the sounds you hear if you’re underwater: Which sounds are unique to animals that live in the ocean?  How are sounds produced outside of the water distorted or changed if you perceive them while underwater?  The original idea was to travel from the ocean into the air and eventually into outer space using sounds but, as with many projects, the initial idea proved too ambitious and we scaled it back to meet our abilities and timeframe.

We began by researching underwater sounds — fish and whale noises, tectonic movement and volcanoes, sounds made by humans and industry.  Then we developed a simple narrative: a pod of whales is swimming calmly when a boat comes by and disturbs them.  As the boat departs, the pod returns to normal.  Because we couldn’t actually record whales or boats or tectonic plates, we instead recorded sounds around us and distorted them to meet our purposes.  (If you don’t want your initial listening experience to be tainted by this knowledge, come back to this part after you hear the short piece.)  Voices and garbage trucks became whales, a chair moving across the floor and the purring of a cat became boat horns and motors, a piece of flimsy cardboard became moving water.

We recorded all of the sounds using a zoom recorder and mini shotgun mic.  Then we used ProTools to modify the sounds and mix them into this short piece (it’s quiet so you might want to use headphones to hear it best):  Final Audio Piece: From Mar to Mar

I’d never used any audio recording equipment or editing tools prior, so this project was a lot of learning by doing.  Working in a group also aided the learning process (and made the work more enjoyable and rewarding — it’s nice to share your accomplishments with others!).

Spending so much time composing this minute-and-a-half of sound gave me a greater appreciation for the orchestrated sounds we hear everyday (in television and movies, on talk radio, in artistic capacities) and I feel like I’m hearing the world in a whole new way.  I’ve begun to think of every bit sound, every noise as a building block which can be manipulated and turned into something else, something larger.  I really enjoyed this project.  I’m excited to continue working with sound and expanding my recording and editing skills.

The concept of context is integral to the argument in each of these articles and videos. Meaning arises from context or lack of context. As Lethem demonstrates with the story of his youth, context doesn’t only lie around a sign, it also comes from within each person; an interpreter of a sign brings his or her own cultural literacy, life experience, etc to any interaction. Creating variation in context inevitably changes the way in which a sign is interpreted. Is removing the sign from its original context (if any context can, in fact, be called original) or changing the context in which the sign sits an act of creativity? Should the resulting work be considered original?

Before continuing, I’d like to provide some context for this short response. As the articles and videos to which we’ve been asked to respond concentrate on art and, to some extent, technology I should note that my response is also limited in scope. I do not mean these questions or this discussion to be applied to political speeches or witness testimonies, for example. Modifying context is a tricky business which, as we all know, does not always have a creative or positive intent. Despite differences in opinion regarding applications of recontextualizing signs (or decontextualizing as Meiselas puts it), the authors agree that this is a creative process which enables an audience to reinterpret signs and share in a modified perspective. The authors don’t deny the importance of influence from previously existing works of art and the individuals who created those works. Inspiration is a part of the creative process. I also conclude that they all agree that subsequent works should be considered original. There does seem to be disagreement, however, about the responsibility that an artist has to his or her subjects and audience.

In his TED talk, Ferguson demonstrates that the extent to which patent law is currently being used is in contradiction to its original intent “to promote the progress of useful arts” (Ferguson 2012). Lethem takes this further by arguing that denying artists the ability to modify context and claim the result as original without repercussion is to the detriment of our society, that “the loser is the collective public imagination” (Lethem 2007). Meiselas presents a differing opinion: that artists must work to reclaim context. She states that “we owe this debt of specificity not just to one another but to our subjects” (Garnett and Meiselas 2007, 58).

In my mind, these two viewpoints can stand in concert, the core issue is the intention of the artist. Meiselas uses her photography to document human rights issues. From this perspective, her art can be likened to journalism; the audience expects the context to be true to the sign and, as she states, her “hope as a photographer is to contextualize an image” (Ibid., 56). Garnett’s subsequent painting recontextualizes the sign in order to present it in a series of “images of figures in extreme emotional or physical states” (Ibid., 53). While I hesitate to speak about the personal intentions of others, especially those with whom I’m unfamiliar or far removed, I will permit myself to generalize based on statements in the Garnett and Meiselas article for the sake of argument: Garnett does not intended to communicate the details of the original context but instead to communicate an emotion as represented by the image of this individual. Both artists are acting responsibly toward their subject and audience; responsibility is linked to intention. And intention is as highly nuanced as context is multi-faceted; both concepts are difficult to completely understand and fully apply to any one work.  Perhaps this is one reason why issues of plagiarism, originality, and ownership are in constant debate.

Christie, Drew. “Allergy to Originality.” New York Times, July 31, 2012. Accessed September 12, 2012.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/opinion/allergy-to-originality.html?_r=1

Ferguson, Kriby. “Embrace the Remix.” TED talk, June 2012. Accessed from YouTube on September 12, 2012.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1s_PybOuY0&feature=player_embedded#!

Garnett, Joy and Susan Meiselas. “On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context.” Harper’s Magazine, February 2007: 53-58.

Lethem, Johathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” Harper’s Magazine, February 2007. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387