If you didn't know this about me, I am a university student. I am studying a Bachelor of creative media production at Massey University in Wellington. One of my classes this past semester was called Intermedia. It was a fascinating class, one that I had been looking forward to since I saw the exhibition put on by the students last year. This year it was my turn to create an installation using a range of different media types. So today, I am going to reflect upon my most successful contribution to this piece.
To me, my most successful contribution was the argument audio clip. This installation was based around the idea of an unhappy childhood. So part of this was having a clip of parents arguing as if they were in another room. Now, I can't claim credit for this idea. That was Hannah, our project lead. However, as the writer of the group, and someone familiar with audio recording and editing, I was placed in charge of this element of the installation.
When writing the script, I decided I really wanted to play up all the classic tropes of unhappy marriages you find in movies, especially from the 70s time period. The father spends to much time in the office, the mother has too cook and clean and raise the children, the father is having an affair with his secretary, it was a shotgun wedding, so on and so forth. It was truly a hyperbole of an unhappy marriage in a way that made it relate to no-one but also everyone. I feel that this also made it easier for the audience to understand the message of the argument, considering they are listening to it while also watching a video. You don't need to catch every line of the argument to understand how unhappily married these two people are because every line is as bad as the last.
When recording, it took a fair few run throughs until I was happy with the take. This is because I wanted the actors to be angry and yelling through the whole thing and it took a while for them to work up to that. I did this because it was important to me that the audience are able to understand they are arguing simply by the tone of their voice, and not by having to hear what they say. Also, in the context of the piece, the audience is hearing this from the other room, so it needed to be loud to make sense.
When editing the piece, I had to split many lines and put more space in between because our video was significantly longer than the argument. However, I think this turned out for the better. Having more space between lines made it easier for the audience to follow both the video and the argument. I also put a high pass filter on the clip while editing, this muffled the clip and made it sound like it was coming from the other room. Furthermore, I made it so that volume of the clip would gradually get louder so that the audience would slowly become aware of the argument. This also imitated the rising tension of an argument and matched the rising tension of the video.
This contribution to the piece turned out to be very effective and was crucial to the tone and narrative structure. Many people did not realize right away that the argument was a part of the installation, they though it was real people talking outside. This means that my methods of simulating it coming from another room worked, as well as making the audience slowly aware of it. Many people would notice it and look around the room to try find out where it was coming from. This was a great outcome because it made people slightly uncomfortable and creeped out, adding to our intended tone.
Comments