Project two provided me with the opportunity to not only go above and beyond the specifications, but also to demonstrate my abilities while working and collaborating with students in the film industry. Throughout this project, I was required to present a chosen emotion through the use of interactive media. By interactive media, I am referring to a piece of media that presents my chosen emotion to the viewer through an audio and video aspect. My chosen emotion for this project was fear, and the aim to achive this was to create a sense of suspension for the viewer. Before starting the project brainstorm, I carried out a bit of research on my chosen emotion and diffrent methods I could use to present it to the viewer. Having prior experience in audio, film, and the production industry, I was able to collaborate with a friend of mine in Canada linked to the film industry to create the video and filming aspects of this project.
My chosen piece is about a girl who is lost and feels like she is being followed but is unsure who is following her. She moves from floor to floor until she understands and identifies a shadow in the background from a floor that she had missed. She then, eventually, identifies the person who is following her and realises that she is her twin. The reason why I decided to use a tempo which gradually changes throughout the development of the video piece was to enable me to express the required emotions of what I was aiming to express within this project. The use of relatively darker colours effect throughout the camera lighting enabled me to express the visual emotion and element aspect of the recorded project. In order to ensure that the effect was represented to the best of its capability, I also decided to use colors such as warm whites, blues, blacks, and yellows in terms of colors on the live sets.
In terms of the audio aspect, the way in which I personally felt best represented the chosen emotion of fear was through the use of lively and fast-tempoed instruments. In addition, the way in which I decided to enhance the audio side of the project, I decided to use a gradual build of instruments in a major key throughout the progression of the scene. In order to achieve this, I used instruments such as bass guitars, synths, violins, and drums. In order to close the project and pull everything together, I decided to add a variety of different sound effects, such as the elevator clicks and the background noises, which were added to create suspense for the viewer.
I found this project really interesting and extremely informative. It was a fantastic learning experience to discover how lighting, sound effects, and background tracks can aid in the communication of emotions. This project was also completed through the support of in-and out-of-class research materials, which enabled me to further understand the way in which different aspects of productions can affect the emotions being communicated. This was a project that I completed over 2 weeks whereby I used multiple layers of audio clips and effects to create my final project. At the beginning of the whole process, I found it difficult to decide on an idea that I wanted to present due to how I was going to successfully present this selected emtion but at the same time exceed the specification.
In future projects, what I think I can do differently is obtain feedback from Kevin and my peers before the submission date. The use of feedback will allow me to improve my work but also develop my communication and project skills. In addition, another aspect of this project that did not go as expected was the research part, as I found that there was very limited resources available in regards to movie production and communicating to an audience.
When reflecting on the transferable skills that I learnt with the completion of this project, I honestly feel like the two strongest skills were critical thinking and the ability to learn from criticism.
Ability to accept and learn from criticism: I feel that this was one of the strongest skills learnt during this project due to having to accept and improve on the feedback provided by my lecturer and peers while keeping in mind the emtion I was aiming to present.
Critical Thinking: In terms of critical thinking, the way in which I feel I demonstrated this skill was during the editing and collaborative feedback part of this project. The editing section of this project demanded me to critically think about solutions to problems encountered but also solve problems when the actors were not happy with an edited or recreated section of my final project. I was required to virtually also collaborate with camera and lighting students onset to successfully achieve my desired outcome. Unfortunately, I was also required to work on this project remotely, which was challenging at times due to time differences and delayed responses.
Free FX Stock Video Footage - (538 free downloads). Videezy. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.videezy.com/free-video/fx
YouTube. (2019, March 27). Suspension music suspenseful dramatically. YouTube. Retrieved December 10, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFNgdO4e0U0
YouTube. (2021, March 16). Elevator. YouTube. Retrieved December 9, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpVmMzv9sm4&t=48s