Hi Dan, thanks for all the really thoughtful and great ideas. I also found it's really useful when you say things like "this is the scene where usually what happens is..." It helps provide a starting place for the scene and allows me to think whether we're following the norm or departing from it. Also, I think you understand the functioning of the audio perfectly. The audio really is serving to enhance meaning and provide additional information as well as doing traditional soundtrack things. What makes this video a little odd is the use of language... there isn't any spoken language! So the text displayed on the screen together with the audio is working to provide meaning.
On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12:06 AM, ron saito wrote:
Camera opens on things that Ben reads on his break. Perpetual motion pamphlet. Sandwich. Coffee.
This would seem to be mostly foley (or production sound---are you going to generate any production sound?). Should there be some sort of sonic indicator when the camera's showing something significant? That would be the traditional job of the music, but perhaps the blandness of incidental sounds coupled with visual emphasis on important items would set the tone more effectively.
The emphasis here is setting the tone of the entire piece., of easing into Ben's world. This scene takes place in the same space as the printing press, so perhaps the audio would be similar.
Then we see Ben at his printing press. Printing and printing.
What is he printing? Is this related to the material he's reading or just an ordinary job? I guess what I'm asking is if the printing has import? If it's just his job, then perhaps a repetitive realistic sound would emphasize a kind of static effort (meaning that it's not a developmental effort with narrative import, but a sort of visual and sonic statement about the mechanistic world or some such). If it has import, then the printing press sound could progress in its various appearances.
This is Ben's job. The backstory is that part of the reason BEn is interested in perpetual motion is that he's trying to find an easier way of doing his job. This section needs to be repetitious. However, it shouldn't sound like drudgery. It's a repetitive job that allows Ben to think. So he likes it. Repetitive, but engaging in a sort of meditative way. Seems like there should be some sort of ka-chunk or spinning noise. BTW, I actually have this printing press if it would be useful to hear it or sample it.
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual... takes off his jacket, puts the mail down, etc. Then he checks in on his device which is spinning slowly in the foreground. Time-lapse transiton.
Clearly the device needs an emblematic sound of some kind (maybe it has a technical relationship to the printing press sound but magical instead mundane). This emblematic sound could then develop over its various appearances where the printing press would remain static. What does the device sound like? Is it softly whirling and a little "tinkly" or more industrial than that? What are you thinking of for the time-lapse transition? I could carry over the device sound into the transition and morph it into the printing press sound (or layer in the printing press sound).
Device noise: totally open. THe main thing is that it shouldn't have to much "weight" and shouldn't be too dramatic. Time lapse transition. Truthfully, the first thing that came to mind was Philip Glass but no real ideas about this either.
Next day. Ben at his printing press. Audio for this printing press section could be half sound design, half foley. I like the idea of a radio playing in the background, some conspiracy stuff like Art Bell (artbell.com) but all distorted, like it's being tuned, along with sounds of the press turning.
Does your audio suggestion here imply that the function of the printing press is developmental? If not, then it might be possible to maintain the mundane mechanistic character of the press but change the atmosphere around it---perhaps generated by processing the radio sound. This would give the radio sound a sense of being an actor in changing Ben's worldview by slowly becoming more surreal (all the while the printing press is chugging away in its mundanity).
These printing press scenes should be static I think. No sense of development. They should be different enough visually and musically that they don't look like a loop. But other than that, I think they need to be very similar. They're sort of like an anchor. The main thing is to provide strong sonic distinction between work and home. Work should probably sound more mundane than home. That is, home can sound more musically dense and strange since that's the place where the perpetual motion is happening. Work shouldn't be too interesting. Perhaps, sonically poorer and thinner.
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual. Checks on his device again. Still spinning. Time-lapse.
Next day: Ben at his printing press again. Comes home. Goes through his ritual. Looks at his device. Still spinning. This time he notices a grainy texture. Puts it under the microcscope. The grains look like five-pointed stars. Part crystalline and part organic. Time lapse. But time, the audio should be slightly different with some beepy bird time noises. Is it birds or is it some kind of weird satellite?
The material should probably have some emblematic sound (perhaps an extension of part of the device sound). The time-lapse could then be an opportunity to morph this sound (particularly if it's the tinkly characteristic of the device) into the bird/satellite sound. [There's a scene from Solaris that I should show you sometime. Whenever something weird happens at the space station, there this tinkly bell-like sound. I'm thinking of that as the sound element from the device that becomes the sound element for the matter]
Sounds interesting. I actually rented Solaris on your recommendation. I should look at it again.
Next day. Ben at his press again. Comes home. But this time his ritual is interrupted. The device stopped. Ben examines it. Tries to fix it. But it doesn't work. Then Ben remembers his video camera. He looks at the video of his spinner for the past few hours and makes out something hazy. But he can't tell whether it's anything or just a shadow or a smudge. hmmmm.
Does the video footage have audio? If so, we could take the room and device sound make it mono and carve out the bottom end so it sounds sort of lo-fi. Also, the shadow could come across sonically as a "shadow" on the audio---a brief suppression of the high-end followed by a sudden silence (or does the device "spin down"?).
The audio needs to be carrying part of load here. You know that backwards/forwards -sounding high-pitched stereotypical rewinding kind of noise but perhaps transformed and enhanced. in some way. I love this audio shadow idea.
****
By now, Ben's kind of forgotten about his device. He could never get it to work again. So now we come to a sequence of images showing his life. He gets married and maybe has a baby. Everyday, home and vacation type photos. The photos are attached to a kind of rotating device that spins them slowly.
***
I gather the rotating device is not meant to be a real device, so probably no sound for it. Or perhaps an ambient sound with occasional hints of the special material sound or the bird satellite sound. This would normally be the moment for a music-video segment---it might be interesting to work explicitly against that.
Yes, the rotating device is not a 'real' device. My original thought for the segment was 60's Easy Listening. Go to Itunes and listen to "put your head on my shoulder" by The Letterman if you want to know what I mean. Of course this would be unbearably cheesy. That's why I originally thought of the 'grinding' idea...remember that? I like the idea of audio that still has the remnants of easy listening music or similar but is somehow transformed in some strange way. Whatever this sounds like, it needs to function as a sort of break and not sound too serious.
Now Ben's back at work again. This time, the audio should sound as 'realistic' as possible. As he prints, ben notices something on the newsletter he's printing. Something looks like his spinning device is in the background. Dissolve to a church (a paper model) which has the spinner displayed on it somehow (not sure how this will work).
In a visual that's a metaphor for Ben searching through the church, Ben opens up the paper church and within, we see photos describing his search. Somehow his search takes him to...
I'm not sure I understand the church. Is it an actual church? Or is a metaphor of some kind? This might be a time to bring in a new, more musical element that could be part of an arc or expanding sounds through the rest of the video. One traditional thing to do would be bring in something serene and vocal-like (I think I can do this without being cheesy). However, I think I need to understand the church's function better.
Apparently, every artist has to have some new term. Like big art group's "Real-time Film." (I was thinking about this. They should actually call it real-time TV since the piece was primarily dialogue-driven just like TV. But they need the pretension of aspiring to film I guess). Anyway, the concept here I am officially naming is "Micro-performance." This refers to theatrical devices that require amplification to come across. Traditional theater is 'broad' because of the necessity of amplification. But, like close-up magic, there are many worthwhile theatrical ideas that take place in intimate settings. I'd like to exploit that. At any rate, the church is a clue. The idea is that Ben looks at the photo in the newsletter. Somehow, he sees a connection between the spinner and a church. Then he visits the church and gains additional info which takes him to the library as he continues his research. The unfolding church model represents his search through the church and gives us a rough idea of how we get to the library.
Part of this is a bit of a satire of certain film conventions. There's always some kind of gratuitous clue-finding to take up time. Like the dart in Star Wars episode II that takes us to the Water planet. The use of a church is because these churches can be old and start to bring in those spiritual/religious affiliations. Part of the reason this idea doesn't work as well as it once did is that it's not set up as well as originally. Originally, Ben's house burned down by now. That was a small folding model so we'd be used to seeing models by now. However, there wasn't enough build to the end scene, so I moved the burning to the end. But now the church may be too abrupt. It's possible I may need to make this less whole scene less abstract.
I guess imagine this as a horror movie--searching through a church. A cat jumps out of the darkness! The main character continues to look around. High strings getting eerier. The charcter stumbles across clue after clue after clue. Scary scary!
***
The library. Ben's reading. Instead of cutaways as shown, probably the images will be projected onto Ben's face. Arcane, scary and medievalimages. Some of them look like the spinner. Then the bird-beeping noise. Then he hears a thud. Looks up. Probably nothing. Then a huge, almost machine gun like sound event like dozens and dozens of thuds. He looks at the window. It's cracked in a million places. Then we see a bloodied bird. Apparently a huge flock of birds flew into the window. Weird and scary.
Oooh, fun audio possibilities here! Apart from the clear sound design ideas, I think that dense and perhaps processed text would be great to accompany the images projected onto Ben's face.
Yes, I actually got the idea for the bird flock from that Trevor Wishart piece you played for me that sounds like millions of birds. I think I commented that it was neat that there was an explosion of sound, but without the massive reverb which would be typical. This idea also comes from Chinese fireworks. In Hawaii, every New Year's, they burn these long strings of fire crackers. They go poppity pop pop all the way until the end of the string when they hit this hexagonal box of compressed firecrackers. Then, in an incredible flamming noise, thousands of fireworks go off within about 3 seconds. It's a really interesting audio event to me. I like the idea of this text accompanying Ben's face images. I think out-of-sync would work well here. I was thinking that the projections onto Ben's face would be sporadic. Nothing. Then a bunch of flashes of stuff. Then nothing again. Then more flashes. I like the idea where the audio also appears in spurts, but sort of out-of-sync with the visuals, almost like a conversation with the visuals. It would be sort of like the text becomes not only the info fromt he book, but Ben's thinking or understanding or something. BTW, this general idea comes from Umberto Eco's medieval aesthetics. According to Eco, the medievals felt that illuminated books were literally illuminated, as if spiritually incandescent somehow. I like the idea of using a light bright enough that would cause Ben to squint slightly, implying that there is a force to the information streaming from the book.
***
Now, an abstract dance. Ben is in limbo now. He doesn't know what to believe. Is he being chased by someone or something? Is it his imagination? He's not sure what to do. Maybe this scene is a puppet or maybe it's ben. This audio could be custom-controlled electronic instrument.
***
This would be an interesting place to do a interactive instrument as you describe (that audio generated by the performance could potentially be augmented in post-production. We'd need to talk a bunch about this to figure out just what sensors would be needed, etc. Maybe this is the place where the dance/performance triggers off meaningful sound (the new material emblem, the spinning sound, the satellite sound, etc.)---the performance then would be a kind of visualization/sonification of the thought process that leads to the discovery of the conspiracy. I sort of like the idea of Ben doing it rather than a puppet or something more abstract. In a commercial tv/movie this would be another music video scene with some mournful music playing and Ben moodily walking the streets and thinking (or driving and thinking). The idea of a person actual physicalizing the thought process (in some way other than moodily walking) and having those physical gestures create the sound is really appealing to me. There are other examples of a character going through great anguish where the music provides the continuity (I'm thinking of the scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen's character goes nuts and punches the mirror). If the dance here is to be one of anguish then the triggered audio would sort of work against that stereotype as well.
I agree that this should likely be a 'dance' piece. The whole thing needs some action! Your ideas sound great here. I probably wouldn't make it too anguished. I think Ben has some ideas about this.
New scene. Back at the house where he's assembled all the papers. Now we read the conspiracy theory he's put together. Newton, Matter. Blah blah. Then the beeping noise. But this time it's synchronized with the image of a satellite. We zoom into Ben's room and then into the electric outlet. Short circuit. Fire! Everything's destoyed.
***
The traditional movie thing here would have building, dramatic music leading to the reveal. I think the reveal needs some sonic setup. Perhaps a building collage of the spinning noise, the new material emblem sound, the printing press, the church sound, the library text voices, etc. and then a dramatic cut back in sound at the reveal that let's the satellite sound be heard. (perhaps that collage has its origins in the "dance"). Do you plan a big reveal? or will it be understated?
This seems like the climax of the video---the discovery of the conspiracy followed by burning down. Is the big reveal the creation of matter? or is it the Newton as diversion angle? or? I think the audience needs to be set up early so that what is revealed has obvious import. Maybe one place to emphasize this would be the point at which he discovers the new matter in the microscope----at that point a flashback (or whatever device you think would be appropriate) would show again some of the material that he was reading at the beginning and the import of the violation of this law of physics. My only worry is that the creation of matter may not seem like that big a deal to most people unless it's stated upfront as the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. You talked about using conspiracy radio at one point---perhaps at the beginning of the video he's listening to the equivalent of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The transition then from science radio to crackpot radio offers another way into understanding the changes in thought process that he's going through.
Tell me what you think of this idea... My initial thinking on this section is that I want the vocabularies of video/audio to imply climax and fear while the information remains understated. Do you remember when you were a kid, and sometimes your parents would be discussing things in hushed tones. And you knew something was up, but you weren't sure what? And somehow, that was really scary.... feeling that there was something so bad happening that no one would even tell you about it? So here, I'd like the pace to go faster, faster 'cutting' more 'exciting' shots, faster audio. As an audience we know something is happening. But unless you're sharp, you're not going to know exactly what happened.
BTW... satellite noise. This is the one thing I have a really specific idea about. I really like that beeping noise Ussachevksy uses in Wireless Fantasy. It's a very iconic sound. It's also used in the begnning of Planet Claire by the B-52's. I don't know if it's morse code or what. If it's some kind of code, this would be another opportunity to weave in more information. I also have a definite satellite image in mind. It looks like Sputnik.
What happened to Ben? DId he die? Did the fire (and all the peculiar and frigtening events) -really- have something to do with the satellite? Were these all just concidences? New scene. We push in through window to see Ben. He's typing up his newsletter about what he learned about Newton.and the global conspiracy. Then he thinks. Kind of a blank look. A bit of fear overcomes him. He rewrites what he's typing into something blander and less specific then uploads, one star among millions.
Will there be some sort of surreal transition between these scenes? It would be an interesting place to rehash in a diffuse and reverse way (getting less dense) the collage that leads to the reveal.
Maybe instead of blander and less specific, maybe he changes the writing to be more crackpot conspiratorial in tone. There's a sort of version of this in the movie Men in Black (did you see that?) where the veteran agent picks up a bunch of tabloid papers to figure out what's actually going on declaring something like "the best news reporting on the planet." Not that I'm suggesting you emulate it, but it did remind me of that idea.
Accompanying the the blank look (perhaps triggering the frightened look) could be a "mental" version of the satellite sound---I know, how about lot's of reverb to show it as part of his thoughts... ; ) The moment of upload might be an interesting point to bring back the new material emblem and maybe the spinning device sound.
I never thought of this audio flashback idea. Could work really well. This ending scene is supposed to have the feel of a pax Romana, a somber romanticism. It's purposefully played in a different way than a typical film. The typical movie ending: Ben would be dead (60's movie) or Ben would strike back (90's movie). In this case, Ben is supposed to be well-adjusted. He knows what he's up against. He knows 'the truth' of things, but he's become self-censoring. So I'm not sure exactly what he writes on the webpage, but generally speaking, self-censoring makes things blander and more general in my thinking.
Audio in general... Rather than pure post, I see this being a mix of pre and post production audio. That is, Ben needs to have some kind of control over the audio. Sometimes he is 'playing' audio something,at other times, he is merely triggering it. This triggering can be implied (eg., when Ben moves his hand, this is a signal to add audio A in post) and literal (the audio actually starts playing on stage. Since there's no live audio, everything can be streamed in some kind of multi-track format and post would consist primarily of mixing/sweetening as needed. But I think overall, Ben needs to have some important and fundamental control over audio events. Also, I think it would be both interesting (and maybe kind of amusing) to have a kind of live digital foley idea in appropriate places. So maybe there are sensors in the printing press. And each turn triggers a sample. Or Ben has some kind of motion sensor. So if he turns around quickly, the correct sample ("whoosh") or audio event is triggered. This just strikes me as being really funny, tho it would probably be backgrounded and therefore 'invisible' to the audience.
Thanks for all the good comments. Schedule... any short themes or examples, or musical demos you could provide by mid summer, even short ones would give us something to play with. I'm hoping that by Christmas maybe we'll be doing some sort of dress rehearsal of at least part of it. I don't know if that's too accelerated a schedule. Let me know how things fit with you. I know you have that German piece as well as some other comissions.
Ron
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Some initial ideas for sound approaches:
1. Performer performs to precorded audio segment.
2. Performer signals.
Performer does a designated gesture indicating that something should be turned on in post.
Ex. Ben points to his eye. This is the cue to start a drone during post.
3. Performer signals (hidden)
Performer triggers a switch unseen which marks a point in time, eg., in SMPTE. This indicates something to be added in post.
4. Performer starts audio.
Ex. Performer turns on a tape recorder. Output is split--to monitor so Ben can hear it during performance, and to multitrack deck for later mixing.
5. Motivated live performance.
Performer plays an actual instrument (e.g. poles, or percussion) that is, in peripheral way, motivated by the story. Take care that this doesn't become 'Stomp'
Ex. Performer is going out so he puts on a hat. But this hat has weird "feelers" on it. Whenever performer turns his head, the feelers hit little gamelans.So maybe, as performer looks around at various phenomena, he ends up playing a weird tune.
5. live foley
Performer triggers a sound that accompanies action
Ex. audio triggers on feet trigger samples of footsteps.Could be used to imply different spaces (e.g., sloshy footsteps).
6. Electronic instrument
Performer uses gestures/ etc., to play an electronic instrument
7. On/off ambient loop
An ambience or loop is constantly running during the performance. Certain movements make it audible. Good for defining one space from another.
Ex. Performer has foil on each foot connected by a wire in the inseam. Audio is routed through two long strips of foil on the floor. When performer steps on both strips, he connects the circuit turning on the ambience for an area. Going to different areas triggers different ambiences. Maybe the trigger would fade in/out so transitions wouldn't be so harsh.
8. The high tech equivalent of the above is to use visual, IR, or other sensors which are triggered by Ben when he enters certain spaces to start ambience.
9. Post production
Import sync events are done standard post-production style.
Note:
The idea behind these isn't to be restrictive, but to be expressive. If any of these ideas sounds restrictive, it needs to be rethought. The overall shape of the piece is most important rather than any kind of underlying system. Probably the most important general concept is that the entire stage/set is kind of instrument that the performer plays/follows/leads as required.
2. Performer signals.
Performer does a designated gesture indicating that something should be turned on in post.
Ex. Ben points to his eye. This is the cue to start a drone during post.
3. Performer signals (hidden)
Performer triggers a switch unseen which marks a point in time, eg., in SMPTE. This indicates something to be added in post.
4. Performer starts audio.
Ex. Performer turns on a tape recorder. Output is split--to monitor so Ben can hear it during performance, and to multitrack deck for later mixing.
5. Motivated live performance.
Performer plays an actual instrument (e.g. poles, or percussion) that is, in peripheral way, motivated by the story. Take care that this doesn't become 'Stomp'
Ex. Performer is going out so he puts on a hat. But this hat has weird "feelers" on it. Whenever performer turns his head, the feelers hit little gamelans.So maybe, as performer looks around at various phenomena, he ends up playing a weird tune.
5. live foley
Performer triggers a sound that accompanies action
Ex. audio triggers on feet trigger samples of footsteps.Could be used to imply different spaces (e.g., sloshy footsteps).
6. Electronic instrument
Performer uses gestures/ etc., to play an electronic instrument
7. On/off ambient loop
An ambience or loop is constantly running during the performance. Certain movements make it audible. Good for defining one space from another.
Ex. Performer has foil on each foot connected by a wire in the inseam. Audio is routed through two long strips of foil on the floor. When performer steps on both strips, he connects the circuit turning on the ambience for an area. Going to different areas triggers different ambiences. Maybe the trigger would fade in/out so transitions wouldn't be so harsh.
8. The high tech equivalent of the above is to use visual, IR, or other sensors which are triggered by Ben when he enters certain spaces to start ambience.
9. Post production
Import sync events are done standard post-production style.
Note:
The idea behind these isn't to be restrictive, but to be expressive. If any of these ideas sounds restrictive, it needs to be rethought. The overall shape of the piece is most important rather than any kind of underlying system. Probably the most important general concept is that the entire stage/set is kind of instrument that the performer plays/follows/leads as required.
From Dan
Hi Ron,
Here are my quick notes on the sound:
On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12:06 AM, ron saito wrote:
Camera opens on things that Ben reads on his break. Perpetual motion pamphlet. Sandwich. Coffee.
This would seem to be mostly foley (or production sound---are you going to generate any production sound?). Should there be some sort of sonic indicator when the camera's showing something significant? That would be the traditional job of the music, but perhaps the blandness of incidental sounds coupled with visual emphasis on important items would set the tone more effectively.
Then we see Ben at his printing press. Printing and printing.
What is he printing? Is this related to the material he's reading or just an ordinary job? I guess what I'm asking is if the printing has import? If it's just his job, then perhaps a repetitive realistic sound would emphasize a kind of static effort (meaning that it's not a developmental effort with narrative import, but a sort of visual and sonic statement about the mechanistic world or some such). If it has import, then the printing press sound could progress in its various appearances.
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual... takes off his jacket, puts the mail down, etc. Then he checks in on his device which is spinning slowly in the foreground. Time-lapse transiton.
Clearly the device needs an emblematic sound of some kind (maybe it has a technical relationship to the printing press sound but magical instead mundane). This emblematic sound could then develop over its various appearances where the printing press would remain static. What does the device sound like? Is it softly whirling and a little "tinkly" or more industrial than that? What are you thinking of for the time-lapse transition? I could carry over the device sound into the transition and morph it into the printing press sound (or layer in the printing press sound).
Next day. Ben at his printing press. Audio for this printing press section could be half sound design, half foley. I like the idea of a radio playing in the background, some conspiracy stuff like Art Bell (artbell.com) but all distorted, like it's being tuned, along with sounds of the press turning.
Does your audio suggestion here imply that the function of the printing press is developmental? If not, then it might be possible to maintain the mundane mechanistic character of the press but change the atmosphere around it---perhaps generated by processing the radio sound. This would give the radio sound a sense of being an actor in changing Ben's worldview by slowly becoming more surreal (all the while the printing press is chugging away in its mundanity).
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual. Checks on his device again. Still spinning. Time-lapse.
Next day: Ben at his printing press again. Comes home. Goes through his ritual. Looks at his device. Still spinning. This time he notices a grainy texture. Puts it under the microcscope. The grains look like five-pointed stars. Part crystalline and part organic. Time lapse. But time, the audio should be slightly different with some beepy bird time noises. Is it birds or is it some kind of weird satellite?
The material should probably have some emblematic sound (perhaps an extension of part of the device sound). The time-lapse could then be an opportunity to morph this sound (particularly if it's the tinkly characteristic of the device) into the bird/satellite sound. [There's a scene from Solaris that I should show you sometime. Whenever something weird happens at the space station, there this tinkly bell-like sound. I'm thinking of that as the sound element from the device that becomes the sound element for the matter]
Next day. Ben at his press again. Comes home. But this time his ritual is interrupted. The device stopped. Ben examines it. Tries to fix it. But it doesn't work. Then Ben remembers his video camera. He looks at the video of his spinner for the past few hours and makes out something hazy. But he can't tell whether it's anything or just a shadow or a smudge. hmmmm.
Does the video footage have audio? If so, we could take the room and device sound make it mono and carve out the bottom end so it sounds sort of lo-fi. Also, the shadow could come across sonically as a "shadow" on the audio---a brief suppression of the high-end followed by a sudden silence (or does the device "spin down"?).
****
By now, Ben's kind of forgotten about his device. He could never get it to work again. So now we come to a sequence of images showing his life. He gets married and maybe has a baby. Everyday, home and vacation type photos. The photos are attached to a kind of rotating device that spins them slowly.
***
I gather the rotating device is not meant to be a real device, so probably no sound for it. Or perhaps an ambient sound with occasional hints of the special material sound or the bird satellite sound. This would normally be the moment for a music-video segment---it might be interesting to work explicitly against that.
Now Ben's back at work again. This time, the audio should sound as 'realistic' as possible. As he prints, ben notices something on the newsletter he's printing. Something looks like his spinning device is in the background. Dissolve to a church (a paper model) which has the spinner displayed on it somehow (not sure how this will work).
In a visual that's a metaphor for Ben searching through the church, Ben opens up the paper church and within, we see photos describing his search. Somehow his search takes him to...
I'm not sure I understand the church. Is it an actual church? Or is a metaphor of some kind? This might be a time to bring in a new, more musical element that could be part of an arc or expanding sounds through the rest of the video. One traditional thing to do would be bring in something serene and vocal-like (I think I can do this without being cheesy). However, I think I need to understand the church's function better.
***
The library. Ben's reading. Instead of cutaways as shown, probably the images will be projected onto Ben's face. Arcane, scary and medievalimages. Some of them look like the spinner. Then the bird-beeping noise. Then he hears a thud. Looks up. Probably nothing. Then a huge, almost machine gun like sound event like dozens and dozens of thuds. He looks at the window. It's cracked in a million places. Then we see a bloodied bird. Apparently a huge flock of birds flew into the window. Weird and scary.
Oooh, fun audio possibilities here! Apart from the clear sound design ideas, I think that dense and perhaps processed text would be great to accompany the images projected onto Ben's face.
***
Now, an abstract dance. Ben is in limbo now. He doesn't know what to believe. Is he being chased by someone or something? Is it his imagination? He's not sure what to do. Maybe this scene is a puppet or maybe it's ben. This audio could be custom-controlled electronic instrument.
***
This would be an interesting place to do a interactive instrument as you describe (that audio generated by the performance could potentially be augmented in post-production. We'd need to talk a bunch about this to figure out just what sensors would be needed, etc. Maybe this is the place where the dance/performance triggers off meaningful sound (the new material emblem, the spinning sound, the satellite sound, etc.)---the performance then would be a kind of visualization/sonification of the thought process that leads to the discovery of the conspiracy. I sort of like the idea of Ben doing it rather than a puppet or something more abstract. In a commercial tv/movie this would be another music video scene with some mournful music playing and Ben moodily walking the streets and thinking (or driving and thinking). The idea of a person actual physicalizing the thought process (in some way other than moodily walking) and having those physical gestures create the sound is really appealing to me. There are other examples of a character going through great anguish where the music provides the continuity (I'm thinking of the scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen's character goes nuts and punches the mirror). If the dance here is to be one of anguish then the triggered audio would sort of work against that stereotype as well.
New scene. Back at the house where he's assembled all the papers. Now we read the conspiracy theory he's put together. Newton, Matter. Blah blah. Then the beeping noise. But this time it's synchronized with the image of a satellite. We zoom into Ben's room and then into the electric outlet. Short circuit. Fire! Everything's destoyed.
***
The traditional movie thing here would have building, dramatic music leading to the reveal. I think the reveal needs some sonic setup. Perhaps a building collage of the spinning noise, the new material emblem sound, the printing press, the church sound, the library text voices, etc. and then a dramatic cut back in sound at the reveal that let's the satellite sound be heard. (perhaps that collage has its origins in the "dance"). Do you plan a big reveal? or will it be understated?
This seems like the climax of the video---the discovery of the conspiracy followed by burning down. Is the big reveal the creation of matter? or is it the Newton as diversion angle? or? I think the audience needs to be set up early so that what is revealed has obvious import. Maybe one place to emphasize this would be the point at which he discovers the new matter in the microscope----at that point a flashback (or whatever device you think would be appropriate) would show again some of the material that he was reading at the beginning and the import of the violation of this law of physics. My only worry is that the creation of matter may not seem like that big a deal to most people unless it's stated upfront as the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. You talked about using conspiracy radio at one point---perhaps at the beginning of the video he's listening to the equivalent of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The transition then from science radio to crackpot radio offers another way into understanding the changes in thought process that he's going through.
What happened to Ben? DId he die? Did the fire (and all the peculiar and frigtening events) -really- have something to do with the satellite? Were these all just concidences? New scene. We push in through window to see Ben. He's typing up his newsletter about what he learned about Newton.and the global conspiracy. Then he thinks. Kind of a blank look. A bit of fear overcomes him. He rewrites what he's typing into something blander and less specific then uploads, one star among millions.
Will there be some sort of surreal transition between these scenes? It would be an interesting place to rehash in a diffuse and reverse way (getting less dense) the collage that leads to the reveal.
Maybe instead of blander and less specific, maybe he changes the writing to be more crackpot conspiratorial in tone. There's a sort of version of this in the movie Men in Black (did you see that?) where the veteran agent picks up a bunch of tabloid papers to figure out what's actually going on declaring something like "the best news reporting on the planet." Not that I'm suggesting you emulate it, but it did remind me of that idea.
Accompanying the the blank look (perhaps triggering the frightened look) could be a "mental" version of the satellite sound---I know, how about lot's of reverb to show it as part of his thoughts... ; ) The moment of upload might be an interesting point to bring back the new material emblem and maybe the spinning device sound.
Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too incoherent. So looking over my own notes I seem to be suggesting an approach whereby sound emblems with specific import are introduced, brought back, and build up into a kind of semantic collage that mirrors the collage/assemblage that Ben constructs to reveal the conspiracy. I like this idea that there's a kind of run of the mill foley, etc. sound track intermingled with sounds and sound collages that carrying some of the meaning of the story (this is not exactly revolutionary, but I think it could be pretty effective).
I think this is going to be a really great project! Not to get ahead of myself, but do you have any particular timeline in mind for the various phases of the project.
I hope this is interesting and/or useful!
Talk to you soon.
--Dan
Here are my quick notes on the sound:
On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12:06 AM, ron saito wrote:
Camera opens on things that Ben reads on his break. Perpetual motion pamphlet. Sandwich. Coffee.
This would seem to be mostly foley (or production sound---are you going to generate any production sound?). Should there be some sort of sonic indicator when the camera's showing something significant? That would be the traditional job of the music, but perhaps the blandness of incidental sounds coupled with visual emphasis on important items would set the tone more effectively.
Then we see Ben at his printing press. Printing and printing.
What is he printing? Is this related to the material he's reading or just an ordinary job? I guess what I'm asking is if the printing has import? If it's just his job, then perhaps a repetitive realistic sound would emphasize a kind of static effort (meaning that it's not a developmental effort with narrative import, but a sort of visual and sonic statement about the mechanistic world or some such). If it has import, then the printing press sound could progress in its various appearances.
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual... takes off his jacket, puts the mail down, etc. Then he checks in on his device which is spinning slowly in the foreground. Time-lapse transiton.
Clearly the device needs an emblematic sound of some kind (maybe it has a technical relationship to the printing press sound but magical instead mundane). This emblematic sound could then develop over its various appearances where the printing press would remain static. What does the device sound like? Is it softly whirling and a little "tinkly" or more industrial than that? What are you thinking of for the time-lapse transition? I could carry over the device sound into the transition and morph it into the printing press sound (or layer in the printing press sound).
Next day. Ben at his printing press. Audio for this printing press section could be half sound design, half foley. I like the idea of a radio playing in the background, some conspiracy stuff like Art Bell (artbell.com) but all distorted, like it's being tuned, along with sounds of the press turning.
Does your audio suggestion here imply that the function of the printing press is developmental? If not, then it might be possible to maintain the mundane mechanistic character of the press but change the atmosphere around it---perhaps generated by processing the radio sound. This would give the radio sound a sense of being an actor in changing Ben's worldview by slowly becoming more surreal (all the while the printing press is chugging away in its mundanity).
Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual. Checks on his device again. Still spinning. Time-lapse.
Next day: Ben at his printing press again. Comes home. Goes through his ritual. Looks at his device. Still spinning. This time he notices a grainy texture. Puts it under the microcscope. The grains look like five-pointed stars. Part crystalline and part organic. Time lapse. But time, the audio should be slightly different with some beepy bird time noises. Is it birds or is it some kind of weird satellite?
The material should probably have some emblematic sound (perhaps an extension of part of the device sound). The time-lapse could then be an opportunity to morph this sound (particularly if it's the tinkly characteristic of the device) into the bird/satellite sound. [There's a scene from Solaris that I should show you sometime. Whenever something weird happens at the space station, there this tinkly bell-like sound. I'm thinking of that as the sound element from the device that becomes the sound element for the matter]
Next day. Ben at his press again. Comes home. But this time his ritual is interrupted. The device stopped. Ben examines it. Tries to fix it. But it doesn't work. Then Ben remembers his video camera. He looks at the video of his spinner for the past few hours and makes out something hazy. But he can't tell whether it's anything or just a shadow or a smudge. hmmmm.
Does the video footage have audio? If so, we could take the room and device sound make it mono and carve out the bottom end so it sounds sort of lo-fi. Also, the shadow could come across sonically as a "shadow" on the audio---a brief suppression of the high-end followed by a sudden silence (or does the device "spin down"?).
****
By now, Ben's kind of forgotten about his device. He could never get it to work again. So now we come to a sequence of images showing his life. He gets married and maybe has a baby. Everyday, home and vacation type photos. The photos are attached to a kind of rotating device that spins them slowly.
***
I gather the rotating device is not meant to be a real device, so probably no sound for it. Or perhaps an ambient sound with occasional hints of the special material sound or the bird satellite sound. This would normally be the moment for a music-video segment---it might be interesting to work explicitly against that.
Now Ben's back at work again. This time, the audio should sound as 'realistic' as possible. As he prints, ben notices something on the newsletter he's printing. Something looks like his spinning device is in the background. Dissolve to a church (a paper model) which has the spinner displayed on it somehow (not sure how this will work).
In a visual that's a metaphor for Ben searching through the church, Ben opens up the paper church and within, we see photos describing his search. Somehow his search takes him to...
I'm not sure I understand the church. Is it an actual church? Or is a metaphor of some kind? This might be a time to bring in a new, more musical element that could be part of an arc or expanding sounds through the rest of the video. One traditional thing to do would be bring in something serene and vocal-like (I think I can do this without being cheesy). However, I think I need to understand the church's function better.
***
The library. Ben's reading. Instead of cutaways as shown, probably the images will be projected onto Ben's face. Arcane, scary and medievalimages. Some of them look like the spinner. Then the bird-beeping noise. Then he hears a thud. Looks up. Probably nothing. Then a huge, almost machine gun like sound event like dozens and dozens of thuds. He looks at the window. It's cracked in a million places. Then we see a bloodied bird. Apparently a huge flock of birds flew into the window. Weird and scary.
Oooh, fun audio possibilities here! Apart from the clear sound design ideas, I think that dense and perhaps processed text would be great to accompany the images projected onto Ben's face.
***
Now, an abstract dance. Ben is in limbo now. He doesn't know what to believe. Is he being chased by someone or something? Is it his imagination? He's not sure what to do. Maybe this scene is a puppet or maybe it's ben. This audio could be custom-controlled electronic instrument.
***
This would be an interesting place to do a interactive instrument as you describe (that audio generated by the performance could potentially be augmented in post-production. We'd need to talk a bunch about this to figure out just what sensors would be needed, etc. Maybe this is the place where the dance/performance triggers off meaningful sound (the new material emblem, the spinning sound, the satellite sound, etc.)---the performance then would be a kind of visualization/sonification of the thought process that leads to the discovery of the conspiracy. I sort of like the idea of Ben doing it rather than a puppet or something more abstract. In a commercial tv/movie this would be another music video scene with some mournful music playing and Ben moodily walking the streets and thinking (or driving and thinking). The idea of a person actual physicalizing the thought process (in some way other than moodily walking) and having those physical gestures create the sound is really appealing to me. There are other examples of a character going through great anguish where the music provides the continuity (I'm thinking of the scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen's character goes nuts and punches the mirror). If the dance here is to be one of anguish then the triggered audio would sort of work against that stereotype as well.
New scene. Back at the house where he's assembled all the papers. Now we read the conspiracy theory he's put together. Newton, Matter. Blah blah. Then the beeping noise. But this time it's synchronized with the image of a satellite. We zoom into Ben's room and then into the electric outlet. Short circuit. Fire! Everything's destoyed.
***
The traditional movie thing here would have building, dramatic music leading to the reveal. I think the reveal needs some sonic setup. Perhaps a building collage of the spinning noise, the new material emblem sound, the printing press, the church sound, the library text voices, etc. and then a dramatic cut back in sound at the reveal that let's the satellite sound be heard. (perhaps that collage has its origins in the "dance"). Do you plan a big reveal? or will it be understated?
This seems like the climax of the video---the discovery of the conspiracy followed by burning down. Is the big reveal the creation of matter? or is it the Newton as diversion angle? or? I think the audience needs to be set up early so that what is revealed has obvious import. Maybe one place to emphasize this would be the point at which he discovers the new matter in the microscope----at that point a flashback (or whatever device you think would be appropriate) would show again some of the material that he was reading at the beginning and the import of the violation of this law of physics. My only worry is that the creation of matter may not seem like that big a deal to most people unless it's stated upfront as the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. You talked about using conspiracy radio at one point---perhaps at the beginning of the video he's listening to the equivalent of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The transition then from science radio to crackpot radio offers another way into understanding the changes in thought process that he's going through.
What happened to Ben? DId he die? Did the fire (and all the peculiar and frigtening events) -really- have something to do with the satellite? Were these all just concidences? New scene. We push in through window to see Ben. He's typing up his newsletter about what he learned about Newton.and the global conspiracy. Then he thinks. Kind of a blank look. A bit of fear overcomes him. He rewrites what he's typing into something blander and less specific then uploads, one star among millions.
Will there be some sort of surreal transition between these scenes? It would be an interesting place to rehash in a diffuse and reverse way (getting less dense) the collage that leads to the reveal.
Maybe instead of blander and less specific, maybe he changes the writing to be more crackpot conspiratorial in tone. There's a sort of version of this in the movie Men in Black (did you see that?) where the veteran agent picks up a bunch of tabloid papers to figure out what's actually going on declaring something like "the best news reporting on the planet." Not that I'm suggesting you emulate it, but it did remind me of that idea.
Accompanying the the blank look (perhaps triggering the frightened look) could be a "mental" version of the satellite sound---I know, how about lot's of reverb to show it as part of his thoughts... ; ) The moment of upload might be an interesting point to bring back the new material emblem and maybe the spinning device sound.
Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too incoherent. So looking over my own notes I seem to be suggesting an approach whereby sound emblems with specific import are introduced, brought back, and build up into a kind of semantic collage that mirrors the collage/assemblage that Ben constructs to reveal the conspiracy. I like this idea that there's a kind of run of the mill foley, etc. sound track intermingled with sounds and sound collages that carrying some of the meaning of the story (this is not exactly revolutionary, but I think it could be pretty effective).
I think this is going to be a really great project! Not to get ahead of myself, but do you have any particular timeline in mind for the various phases of the project.
I hope this is interesting and/or useful!
Talk to you soon.
--Dan
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