Untitled film initial presentation

 Collating my ideas for a production which lasts the academic year was daunting. The important thing was to call on my interests in order to maintain interest and enthusiasm throughout my MA studies.

Design relating to sound has been at the forefront of my visual media and research. Therefore creating a visual spectacle to a piece of music was a given. My previous studies into visuals for electronic music performance will feed into my studies for this year as I continue to experiment with how sound can be processed more effectively with visual stimuli. 

Research in previous projects has led me to considering multimodality in film. Michel Chion's book, Audiovision: Sound on Screen provided me with different outlooks on sound design in film. 3 quotes drove some of the outputs I created on how to accompany music and visuals:

1. “Sound renders the perception of time in the image as exact, detailed, immediate”(Chion, M. and Gorbman, C.,p.13)

 2. “Sound vectorises or dramatises shots, orienting them toward a future, a goal, and creation of a feeling of imminence”

(Chion, M. and Gorbman, C.,p.14)

3. “Sound endows a shot with temporal linearisation”

(Chion, M. and Gorbman, C.,p.3)

Essentially these quotes drove my work to explore the spectrum of using audiovisual synthesis, ranging from exactly timed visual cues to fluid animations to accompany more drawn out, synthesised sonic noises.

My explorations will continue further into multimodality within my research and practice. This is a good starting point to influence my ways of thinking and practical outcomes (the visuals in the film which will be produced).

While looking at this topic as intellectualising its audiovisual backdrop, I will also be taking a narrative based approach to the film, while also working with music. Some elements I will have to question on this journey is how multimodality is something everyone engages with constantly with all sensory observations. Therefore this film will need to harness the way we think about it in some way. This will be achieved through a combination of secondary research and the methodologies of other practitioners in the same field alongside my own practice and findings which are gleaned from experimenting with how the topic works.

These slides demonstrate The initial research for the visual/narrative side of the film. The detail is yet to be established. To make it relevant, I have imagined a dystopian world which will address the Government's ethics during the pandemic in an exaggerated way. I feel encouraged to look more into ideas of Utopia and Dystopia from this.

Mock ups of a character in the film. While presenting, it was pointed out that the character has clothes covering his identity. This theme could be a good one for characters as it hints to the mask culture we are all familiar with now. As a side note, I always observed the lack of expressiveness one can give to as passer by with a mask on. This is an idea which could be explored in the film.

Notes:

- Multimodal and Sonic art/film

- How do professionals use music in animation?

- Utopias and Dystopias research to feed into visual style

- Graphic novel for style and themes (V for Vendetta, Sin City)