Find Them is a short anti-film, used as an experiment to show how sound can effect the whole story of a film, without there necessarily being any story.
The whole trail of thought for starting off the individual project started when I came up with the idea for a collection of short anti-films, that would expose the clichés of modern (especially Hollywood) cinema. In the end, this project never came about due to the high production values involved, but the simple ideal of an anti-film, which goes against the norm of present day filming making still appealed to me and I somehow wanted to incorporate this into my final major project.
I have always been curious about sound in cinema and the way it affects a person’s experience of a film. So much so that the lead question in my dissertation was, “Why Does the General Public View Vision as a More Dominant Sense than Sound in Film?” In my dissertation I looked at the ways sound affected the unknowing viewer subconsciously and the fact that sound can actually alter the whole illusion and tone of the film, something which Michel Chion described as “added value”.
“Stop! Let us rewind Bergman's film to the beginning and simply cut out the sound, try to forget what we've seen before, and watch the film afresh. Now we see something quite different. First, the shot of the nail impaling the hand: played silent, it turns out to have consisted of three separate shots where we had seen one, because they had been linked by sound. What's more, the nailed hand in silence is abstract, whereas with sound, it is terrifying, real...”
(Chion, 1994, p.4)
This interested me greatly and after I finished my dissertation, I played around with the sound of some past projects by adding or removing certain elements of the sound design and this altered the whole feel & look of the film and even changed the perception of the story in some cases.
I knew I wanted to go ahead and feature a kind of experiment in my individual project, where the sound affects the viewer in certain ways, and that’s when I decided to fuse the idea of an experiment with sound and the anti-film concept.
It was then that I conceived the story (or non-story) of a film following someone as they go about their day, doing regular normal actives such as, making breakfast, having a shower, commuting to work etc, but having the sound design tell a different story. I wanted the sound design to make the audience feel on edge, like there was something not quite right or normal about these regular activities when in reality on the video, nothing unusual is happening at all. That is where I saw the two concepts of the experiment and the anti-film, collide because unlike modern cinema, the sound is betraying the actual story that is being told through the cinematography, which makes it an experimental anti-film.
After getting the whole ball rolling with the story and the concept, I then spoke to cameraman Jim Dinsdale, about turning the idea into reality. We discussed the idea, and decided that to keep the viewer interested, we would add an element in of the main character with a map walking round London, looking for someone or something. The tension here could be built up massively through the sound design, but the catch here is that actually the main character is actually just looking for his lost pair of keys, and so all the that apprehension made by the sound design was just leading the viewer into believing something far worse or exciting was going to happen. We also decided that the main character’s face should not be shown, so that the characters anonymity will help keep the suspense up and the viewer interested.
Once I had the idea set in stone, I then set off to hunt for locations with a DSLR camera to take photos to show Jim. I needed to find locations that were not just visually pleasing, but also the locations had to have good room for sound design. I traveled to areas around London Bridge looking for alleyways and good viewpoints of The Shard and the City of London. Then I traveled on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) to Canary Wharf, and analysed the potential of filming on the DLR with out any permit. Once I arrived at Canary Wharf I continued to walk down the Isle of Dogs peninsula finding more locations until I reached Greenwich via the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
The locations I decided on in the end were included because they had room for great sound design, places such as the pier on the Thames, South Quay DLR station and Greenwich Foot Tunnel all looked amazing visually and I could make great sound design for them too.
A challenging part of the filming was on the DLR, because as mentioned before, we didn’t have a permit, so we had to keep the filming on the down-low. Also trying to secure a front seat on the train to acquire the shots we wanted proved difficult as many of the commuters always wanted to sit in the front seats. We eventually got the shots we need though by travelling up and down the line several times throughout the day.
Once the days shoot had finished, Jim took all the video footage and edited and colour graded it while I started gathering sounds for post-production. For the edit I decided that it should be quick, jump cuts between each shot so it keeps the viewers interest, and the edit of the first scene in the house was based on the hip-hop montages seen in Darren Aronofsky’s films, which all needed great sound design to have maximum effect.
Once the edit had been sent to me, I went into the studio to record all of the Foley for the literal sound design. I needed make sure I captured all the literal Foley in order to present the film as very realistic and normal but also when the special effects were added, it would create this blend of reality meeting the unknown. I also returned to the DLR to record carriage ambiences and the sounds of the train approaching and leaving the station. Again I had to be very careful here when walking round with a big fluffy on my Sennheiser 416 microphone and all my pre-amps and recorder hanging round my neck, as I did not have permission to record, so I had to be as covert as possible.
When it came to the sound design I wanted to create this narrative arc of the sound building up the tension, and then cutting to almost complete silence, and this would continue in a cycle throughout the piece. The main points where I did this are in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, exiting the DLR, and in the cemetery right at the end. I did this because it gives the impression to the viewer that something significant is about to happen, when again nothing really happens.
In-between the rises I added the sounds of swishes and grinding metal to give the impression of something surreal happening, and these would continue throughout the piece. The main rise in the film is right at the end in the cemetery. As this is the final scene and climax to the whole film, I had to step up the tension here, as the viewer is about to discover what the “Hood” is looking for. So I designed a long crescendo of sound rising up to unbearable levels of tension for the viewer. The sounds I used in this were a reversed washing machine with an automated EQ that brings out more of the high-end frequencies as the rise progresses to make it even more intolerable. I also used distorted jet engines and I added a bass rumble to add to the power of the rise.
Arriving at the mixing stage, I didn’t want the special effects to overpower the Foley (accept on the rises), so when the hood is walking round different locations, I kept the normal Foley quite high in the mix (especially the footsteps), to give that feeling of realism, which then contrasts with the odd strange sounds that tells the viewer something significant is going to happen. One of the problems I had in mixing was on the large rise at the end, where I had to try and balance between dynamics and power while trying not to make the sound clip. I solved this by using tools such as limiting and compression to reduce the clipping.
A lot of panning was also used on the swish sound effects, to add depth to the stereo field and add to add the whole mysterious feel of the film.
Overall I feel that the experimentation on the sound I made with this film has paid off, and I feel the sound has stopped it from becoming a boring uninteresting piece, as it has the potential to become like this. Though I feel the sound is not the sole storyteller, it is there to complement the piece and ultimately without the sound design the film would be meaningless.
The whole trail of thought for starting off the individual project started when I came up with the idea for a collection of short anti-films, that would expose the clichés of modern (especially Hollywood) cinema. In the end, this project never came about due to the high production values involved, but the simple ideal of an anti-film, which goes against the norm of present day filming making still appealed to me and I somehow wanted to incorporate this into my final major project.
I have always been curious about sound in cinema and the way it affects a person’s experience of a film. So much so that the lead question in my dissertation was, “Why Does the General Public View Vision as a More Dominant Sense than Sound in Film?” In my dissertation I looked at the ways sound affected the unknowing viewer subconsciously and the fact that sound can actually alter the whole illusion and tone of the film, something which Michel Chion described as “added value”.
“Stop! Let us rewind Bergman's film to the beginning and simply cut out the sound, try to forget what we've seen before, and watch the film afresh. Now we see something quite different. First, the shot of the nail impaling the hand: played silent, it turns out to have consisted of three separate shots where we had seen one, because they had been linked by sound. What's more, the nailed hand in silence is abstract, whereas with sound, it is terrifying, real...”
(Chion, 1994, p.4)
This interested me greatly and after I finished my dissertation, I played around with the sound of some past projects by adding or removing certain elements of the sound design and this altered the whole feel & look of the film and even changed the perception of the story in some cases.
I knew I wanted to go ahead and feature a kind of experiment in my individual project, where the sound affects the viewer in certain ways, and that’s when I decided to fuse the idea of an experiment with sound and the anti-film concept.
It was then that I conceived the story (or non-story) of a film following someone as they go about their day, doing regular normal actives such as, making breakfast, having a shower, commuting to work etc, but having the sound design tell a different story. I wanted the sound design to make the audience feel on edge, like there was something not quite right or normal about these regular activities when in reality on the video, nothing unusual is happening at all. That is where I saw the two concepts of the experiment and the anti-film, collide because unlike modern cinema, the sound is betraying the actual story that is being told through the cinematography, which makes it an experimental anti-film.
After getting the whole ball rolling with the story and the concept, I then spoke to cameraman Jim Dinsdale, about turning the idea into reality. We discussed the idea, and decided that to keep the viewer interested, we would add an element in of the main character with a map walking round London, looking for someone or something. The tension here could be built up massively through the sound design, but the catch here is that actually the main character is actually just looking for his lost pair of keys, and so all the that apprehension made by the sound design was just leading the viewer into believing something far worse or exciting was going to happen. We also decided that the main character’s face should not be shown, so that the characters anonymity will help keep the suspense up and the viewer interested.
Once I had the idea set in stone, I then set off to hunt for locations with a DSLR camera to take photos to show Jim. I needed to find locations that were not just visually pleasing, but also the locations had to have good room for sound design. I traveled to areas around London Bridge looking for alleyways and good viewpoints of The Shard and the City of London. Then I traveled on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) to Canary Wharf, and analysed the potential of filming on the DLR with out any permit. Once I arrived at Canary Wharf I continued to walk down the Isle of Dogs peninsula finding more locations until I reached Greenwich via the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.
The locations I decided on in the end were included because they had room for great sound design, places such as the pier on the Thames, South Quay DLR station and Greenwich Foot Tunnel all looked amazing visually and I could make great sound design for them too.
A challenging part of the filming was on the DLR, because as mentioned before, we didn’t have a permit, so we had to keep the filming on the down-low. Also trying to secure a front seat on the train to acquire the shots we wanted proved difficult as many of the commuters always wanted to sit in the front seats. We eventually got the shots we need though by travelling up and down the line several times throughout the day.
Once the days shoot had finished, Jim took all the video footage and edited and colour graded it while I started gathering sounds for post-production. For the edit I decided that it should be quick, jump cuts between each shot so it keeps the viewers interest, and the edit of the first scene in the house was based on the hip-hop montages seen in Darren Aronofsky’s films, which all needed great sound design to have maximum effect.
Once the edit had been sent to me, I went into the studio to record all of the Foley for the literal sound design. I needed make sure I captured all the literal Foley in order to present the film as very realistic and normal but also when the special effects were added, it would create this blend of reality meeting the unknown. I also returned to the DLR to record carriage ambiences and the sounds of the train approaching and leaving the station. Again I had to be very careful here when walking round with a big fluffy on my Sennheiser 416 microphone and all my pre-amps and recorder hanging round my neck, as I did not have permission to record, so I had to be as covert as possible.
When it came to the sound design I wanted to create this narrative arc of the sound building up the tension, and then cutting to almost complete silence, and this would continue in a cycle throughout the piece. The main points where I did this are in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, exiting the DLR, and in the cemetery right at the end. I did this because it gives the impression to the viewer that something significant is about to happen, when again nothing really happens.
In-between the rises I added the sounds of swishes and grinding metal to give the impression of something surreal happening, and these would continue throughout the piece. The main rise in the film is right at the end in the cemetery. As this is the final scene and climax to the whole film, I had to step up the tension here, as the viewer is about to discover what the “Hood” is looking for. So I designed a long crescendo of sound rising up to unbearable levels of tension for the viewer. The sounds I used in this were a reversed washing machine with an automated EQ that brings out more of the high-end frequencies as the rise progresses to make it even more intolerable. I also used distorted jet engines and I added a bass rumble to add to the power of the rise.
Arriving at the mixing stage, I didn’t want the special effects to overpower the Foley (accept on the rises), so when the hood is walking round different locations, I kept the normal Foley quite high in the mix (especially the footsteps), to give that feeling of realism, which then contrasts with the odd strange sounds that tells the viewer something significant is going to happen. One of the problems I had in mixing was on the large rise at the end, where I had to try and balance between dynamics and power while trying not to make the sound clip. I solved this by using tools such as limiting and compression to reduce the clipping.
A lot of panning was also used on the swish sound effects, to add depth to the stereo field and add to add the whole mysterious feel of the film.
Overall I feel that the experimentation on the sound I made with this film has paid off, and I feel the sound has stopped it from becoming a boring uninteresting piece, as it has the potential to become like this. Though I feel the sound is not the sole storyteller, it is there to complement the piece and ultimately without the sound design the film would be meaningless.
