Tunnel Vision

By Pejk Malinovski 

The subject of this pieces were men talking about seeing girls on the tube and the amount of people they have had sex with. 

Tunnel Vision was a lot different to the other pieces that we listened to during our seminar. There is use of atmos ambient noise to create the sense of being on the tube underground. You can here a quiet beat form the train so this would suggest its not that busy. This could be due to the fact that some contributors wouldn’t openly talk about sex and looking at women on the tube, with people surrounding them.  You also get the illusion that the train was moving and they were travelling along the underground as near the end you hear the breaks screech. Indicating the end of that journey, and our journey into their mind and thoughts.

What made this piece feel really realistic was the fact that the mistakes in the voiceovers were not edited out. The ermm’s and arrh’s were left in which shows a more relaxed and casual feel to the piece, almost as if you were in a conversation with them yourself.  This almost implies that the men had to think carefully about what they were saying, almost embarrassed, making them seem that much more realistic to the listener.

Child of Ardoyne

Click here to listen to Child of Ardoyne

Produced by Alan Hall

This piece is the story told by the adults that were kids in the 1980's during 'The Troubles" and the children that  live there today. This give a contrast on what has changed in time regarding the fighting in rural Ireland. 

Unlike the previous piece, Meat Factory Ear Worms, this didn’t have the same personal sense about it as it was told from a group of people rather then an individual story. There was a range of elements used such as the use of speech, from pre-recorded sound bites and newly recorded interviews, and atmos for example the kids and cars in street. All these elements help create the sense of a space in Ardoyne. The voice over of the list of people and the age in which they were killed in Ardoyne highlights the realistic narrative within this piece, creating sympathy in the listener. As it is cut in between the recording of the villagers create the illusion that the lists is that much longer as it is broken down.

 They also use a wide range of contributors, i.e. young, old, male and female. This helps create a whole over view of the place, which is a different approach to the first piece, The Curious Ear, Meat Factory Earworms, as that was focused on one person’s opinions and views not a groups. I think they took this less individual approach due to the fact that they didn't want to tell the story from the one person and their experiences of 'the troubles' but instead the incidences that occurred in the entire town.

Curious Ear: Meat Factory Ear Worms

Click here to listen to Meat Factory Ear Worms

Director: Richie Beirne 
Producer: Ronan Kelly. 

The narrative for this piece is the story of an Irish man who is stuck in his job at a meat factory who uses songs that get stuck in his head, Ear Worms, to keep him going through the day at work and escape.  

This piece is very authentic and personal, I really like the variety of different sounds layered up to create the different emotions, for example the use of speech, atmos, music and moments of silence. The uses of each of there elements all work together to create the overall feeling of the piece and with out one there wouldn’t be a continual narrative. Even the music was part of the narrative and not to just fill gaps and time. There is a lot of use of repetition throughout the piece indicating the repetitiveness of his days. 

There is really strong juxtaposition in this piece. Throughout you have the ambience of people working in the factory, machines working and the harsh sounds of knife being sharpened to build up the image of an unsavoury working environment. In Contrast to this you have his voice over as if you can hear him in your head, much like an ear worm, with his soft and warming voice and the romantic ballads. 

Another Draft, or 2

This third draft was manly changes that Dom suggested during out tutorial. I went and adapted the sequences to create a better pacing throughout the entire film. As Dom suggested cutting down the beginning as there was a lot of unnecessary shot that although they looked nice meant nothing to the narrative so these got cut down or out entirely. As the editing was done on my Mac the footage, up till this point, was still the footage that I copied of Ed, this meant it wasn't very good quality. So I went through and replaced it with the higher quality footage I had from when we uploaded the initial footage.  

Once we had agree that this new pacing work I went through and colour corrected it making the colours in the sequences more contrasting. I really liked this as all the greens and brown from the trees, grass and leaves look more vibrant. I watched a short film called 'Colour Bleed' by Peter Szewczyk and really like the use of colour and how he has managed to portray emotions through the use of dull, eery settings agains vibrant colours of the girls hair and cloths. As ours has such vibrant colours with the greens and brown the white plastic bag stands out that much more. This is good as we was trying to make a point that a man made plastic bag doesn't fit in with all the natural beauty of the peak district.

This is the last Draft that we have done before we submit it, the only things I change is the titles slightly but other then that this is our finished piece. Both Ed and I are really pleased with how its turned out as wasn't sure whether our storyline would be clear but I think we have managed to portray it in a very understandable manner while still capturing creative and artistic shots with the use of depth of field and rack focus.

Second Draft

As Ed had created a first draft i copied this version and developed it further using Final Cut Pro. The main changes I made were in the sequence at the pub and the ending. During the pub scene I just rearranged the shots in order to make the sequence flow better and show that the character  has been drinking in the pub for a while. While uploading the footage there was a short sequence that didn't upload so I went in on Wednesday and uploaded this footage in order to be able to show the bags floating off together. This then gave us our Second Draft to show Dominic in out tutorial on Friday.

During our tutorial Dominic gave us good feed back about the narrative and that it was very effective. The only criticism is that the opening sequence leading up to the pub scene was slightly to long. He said about thinking about the shoots and whether they were actually important to the narrative rather then just a shot that looks nice. He mentioned about the pace of the piece and that we should try and create three different paces, one for the intro, one at the pub then a third pace towards the end. Also he mentioned about just making a few tweaks to the edit but other then that he liked it. 

First Draft

On Monday 31st Oct Ed and I took the equipment back to stores and while in uni we uses the edit suite to upload and review our footage. looking back at our footage i feel please with what we have and i think we have a lot that we can work with that should hopefully make our narrative clear to the viewers.

After uploading all our footage Ed created a first draft of our finished piece in order to get a sense of what the finished piece would look like. looking at this shows a clear narrative following the plastic bag. i was pleased with this as i was unsure whether the narrative would be clear enough for viewer to follow, but watching the draft indicates that it is.

Ed came up with the title "The Existential life of a Plastic Bag". I thought this goes well as has the meaning behind it as it relates to the reasoning for the existence of a plastic bag and the whole concept that plastic canvas bags are suppose to be better for the environment rather then plastic bags.

Parashoot

Prior to our shoot we have to fill out a Parashoot Risk Assessment regarding all aspects of out shoot. Here is a copy of ours that I filled out before filming: