05-08/11-12 Reflection: Montage Music & Listening to Lines

            Today, I spent some more time looking for music, this time collaborating with Ran the editor and Ethelia the director for what would work well with the footage we captured in our first shoot, namely the montage scene. I was leaning towards Secret Garden’s songs, as they were calm, almost tranquil, yet sad songs that would work well with a montage of a love-drunk girl. After Ran had completed an assembly edit of the montage, I looked through it and found that the footage did indeed match that solemn mood of Secret Garden’s melodies. I decided on Cantoluna as the song that would play during the montage, and Ran taught me the settings for converting the song into an AIFF format. Using an online converter, I simply pasted in the YouTube URL of the song, changed it to 48000hz, and converted it. I then took the converted file and placed it in the computer’s public DropBox so that Ran could retrieve it from a different computer, thereby maximizing efficiency between looking for music and sounds, and editing the actual film. From this process, I was able to practice working efficiently with Ran, and also learned how easy it was to convert a song into an AIFF file. Collaborating with classmates is an extremely important skill, both in school and in the “real world”, especially in projects that have many people working towards the same goal, for example the gaming industry.

            In this lesson, we were also able to record a few of Jonathan’s lines as a waiter. After practicing his lines in Cantonese for the past week, it was time to record it. We asked Mr. Chang for a Canon HF300 simply as a recording device, and then a boom-microphone to record the sound, as well as the microphone stand outside Mr. Chang’s office. We then asked Dr. Lau if he could open one of the music practice rooms for us to use. Once inside, I spent the next ten minutes trying to make sure the cable connecting the boom-microphone to the camera stayed connected, using my earphones to make sure sound was recording. Finally ready, we were going to start recording, only to realize that we needed a reference for Jonathan, to make sure his lines would match up with the video. I used my iPhone to record the coffee shop scene played on the Mac. It was poor quality, but it served its purpose. When we began recording, we found that Jonathan did not say enough “watermelons” on set, and that he didn’t have enough time to deliver all of his lines. Ethelia was able to cut some of his lines to have them fit, but this taught me the complications of relying on post-production reconstruction of audio, and the importance of recording sound on location. 

05-01-12 Reflection: First Shoot

            At this shooting session, we filmed footage for a montage, as well as scenes at a coffee shop at the start of the story. As sound director, I did not have much to do during the actual filming of the footage for the montage as music would be playing over the background and would cover any sound captured on set. In addition, the boom-pole attachment broke off, and so sound captured through a hand-held boom-microphone would have been mediocre at best. Instead, I bounced ideas off of Matthew, the director of cinematography, as I had been DP for the past two units. During the second section of the shoot at the coffee shop, I once again did not have that much to do. This was due to the fact that, as mentioned above, sound captured would have been mediocre at best, the actor for the waiter was not ready to deliver lines in Cantonese, and the restaurant was quite noisy. Instead of spending extra time maneuvering the microphone around the area and trying to get as close to the actor as possible to capture the best sound, we decided that we could record the lines at a later date in a controlled environment and edit them in during the post-production stage. To make this possible, actors had to say “watermelon” over and over again – a word that forces your lips to form common shapes that surprisingly fit most sentences.

            The primary problems during this session were that I could not use the boom pole, lines were not ready, and we were in a noisy environment. This session taught me to be prepared for the worst, and to be flexible – especially as technology and editing techniques are so advanced today. I could have been a more productive sound director had I studied the script and knew which lines were coming next. In this way, I would have perhaps been able to move the microphone between the two people without disrupting the flow of the actors or the camera operator. If the lines had been recorded on set, time would not have been spent on recording the lines in a studio and editing them in.

04-27-12 Reflection: Preparation

            I spent today’s class learning more about a sound director’s duties in preparation of the shoot over the holiday. Watching a few videos on recording ambient sound, and even details like the sound of footsteps on gravel, or the sound of a seatbelt buckled in made a great difference in the audience’s experience. Before this investigation, I had no idea that deliberate actions had to be taken into recording such fine details that construct the overall experience of being “in” the movie.

            In retrospect, I could have spent some time looking over the script again or at least the parts that were scheduled to be shot over the holiday, so that I could plan what some of the above mentioned details may need to be recorded. Some precautions or contingency plans could have been written for the slim possibility that part of the boom-pole gets lost in the harbor, or if the restaurant is too noisy or crowded for good sound quality. For the next shoot, I will do my best to pay more attention to details, and create some plan of what sounds need to be recorded on set. 

04-25-12 Reflection: Searching

            Today I continued on with what I was doing last class – searching for music that would fit the film. Continuing with my method from last class, I looked up the different artists that contributed to the 2046 Wong Kar Wai film on YouTube and listened to other works they produced. I did not want to use the exact songs that Wong Kar Wai used, because that would be plagiarism or at the very least uncreative of me. Some of the artists that particularly caught my attention were Peer Raben, Xavier Cugat, Dean Martin, and Secret Garden. Peer Raben’s Dark Chariot was a dark piano piece, and I could already picture many Wong Kar Wai-esque shots playing to this music. Xavier Cugat and Dean Martin’s songs were both upbeat and fun to listen to, and I could imagine Xavier Cugat’s rendition of Siboney playing in one of Wong Kar Wai’s solo-happy scenes. Secret Garden caught my attention due to the fact that I own one of their albums, and often listen to it before I sleep. I was unable to use the above listed songs, because of the aforementioned plagiarism and lack of creativity.

            Realizing that Wong Kar Wai used Secret Garden in his films before, I jumped right on it. Having listened to the album multiple times before, I already knew many of the melodies already, saving me quite a bit of time. Some of my personal favorites are Papillion, Songs from a Secret Garden, Serenade, Heartstrings, and Cantoluna. Through this process, I realized that because music is one of my passions, the role of sound director is made easier. By extension, I learned that one should do the things one enjoys, because not only will he/she enjoy it, he/she will be good at it.

04-19-12 Reflection: Wong Kar Wai Love

            In today’s lesson, we were assigned our film groups and split up to run through the respective director/writer’s scripts. I was in a group with Ethelia, Ran, Matthew, and Jonathan, and we were using the script Ethelia wrote. The run through of the script went a lot smoother than the one I tried to organize in the last unit, and having seen the work my team members had created in the past year, I was excited to work with them.

Immediately, we found that the script was too long, so after we completed a run through, Ethelia and Matthew began debating which scenes could be cut, and brainstorming ideas for alternate endings. I, as the sound director, began my search for music by looking on Wong Kar Wai’s Wikipedia page, scrolling down to his list of works, and looking at each of his films. The part I was interested in was the soundtrack list. The film I found with the most information in this regard was 2046 (2004). From this investigative experience, I learned that there were methodical and logical steps that could be taken even in the artistic department, and that I did not need to begin my search completely from scratch. This was particularly true seeing as the stories are inspired by Wong Kar Wai’s works.

I was active student in today’s class, participating in the run through of the script, and after dividing up into our individual roles, working hard to find suitable music for our film.

04-17-12 Reflection: Assessment!

            After Easter Break, we were welcomed back to school with an in-class assessment. Using the scripts we wrote for homework two weeks ago, we had to explain how our stories were inspired by Wong Kar Wai, taking into account theme, locations, characters, lighting, and even costumes. Apart from the fact that it was an assessment on our first lesson back from the break, I had positive feelings about the assessment. I found it was a good reflective experience of analyzing our own work, and breaking it down to its foundations and investigating how the story is related to Wong Kar Wai’s work. The section I had most difficulty with in this assessment was the question regarding costumes, simply because I had not thought of this aspect of Wong Kar Wai’s films. Part of this would be because costumes were not mentioned in the previous lesson, and I had not taken note of it while watching The Hand, or really any other of his films that I watched over the Easter break. This taught me to not rely solely on the teacher’s lectures, but to also make my own observations, particularly in the Arts division where there is no definite “right” or “wrong” answer.

            The activity I enjoyed most in this lesson was the storyboarding section of the assessment, where we storyboard a scene we choose from our scripts. I enjoyed this activity, because I do not normally put so much effort into storyboarding, and I am proud of the images I created and how I was able to put my vision onto paper. I also feel that this is an effective exercise, as it forces us to storyboard at least a section of our script and not leave it to last minute chores. Overall, apart from the fact that it was scheduled for the first lesson back from Easter Break, the assessment went smoothly, and I even enjoyed it at times!

03-29-12 Reflection: Wong Kar Wai

            Today, we began a new unit on Wong Kar Wai, a famous Hong Kong Film maker. To kick-start the unit, we watched one of his short films, The Hand from the Eros series. While watching, I noticed the following aspects:

·         Paintings, interesting source of color

·         Plays with lighting – bloom

·         Uses stills

·         The sick person is never seen

·         Many different symbols – flowers, diamonds, mirrors

·         Face avoided sometimes, focused sometimes

I wasn’t really sure what to be looking for in Wong Kar Wai’s films, which is why I found Ms. Wong’s presentation on it so informative. From it, I learned of a few reasons why Wong Kar Wai is so difficult to “get”, how Wong Kar Wai makes special use of cinematography in his films, some characteristics and styles specific to Wong Kar Wai, and the themes most used in his films.

Many don’t “get” Wong Kar Wai, because:

·         His movies are in the grey area between a feature film and a montage;

·         The story lines are vague – nothing is spoon-fed to the audience, they must come to their own conclusions;

·         Characters, both main and supportive, come and go indefinitely;

·         Cinematography is artistic, but may make viewing the events difficult;

·         Makes the audience aware that they are watching a film;

·         Makes audience active participants by making them come to their own conclusions

·         Uncommonly number of voice-overs

·         Oddball images

·         Subverts genre conventions

·         Deliberately urges viewers to consider the beauty of the everyday

Themes often apparent in Wong Kar Wai’s films:

·         Unrequited love

·         Being alone

·         Preoccupation with time and memory

·         Importance of character individuality

·         Romantic love as national identity

·         Hong Kong’s history

As mentioned before, this lesson was extremely informative, and by playing a spectator role, I was able to learn a lot from it. I’m sure this information will be important throughout this unit, even more so since our homework task is to write a script of a story inspired by Wong Kar Wai. I look forward to completing this task, as I have not fully written a script before and doing so will be a good film experience.