editing and presenting

My aim for last week was to attempt to make the five tester DVDs so that I could experiment with how the images work together and the various ways in which I could format the films. I have been gathering TV’s and DVD players from various different sources to attempt to find the TVs that not only work well technically but also visually work with what I want to achieve. My aim is to have about seven TVs so that I will have enough for the main piece as well as some insurance TVs in case something goes wrong throughout the testing and installation or during the exhibition. There have been a few places where I have sourced TVs and DVD players: local boot sales have been great for getting cheap technology, providing that it actually works when you get it home. I have gathered two working TV’s, one with a DVD player, and two DVD players and hope to continue to visit these over the next few weeks. More successfully, local trash for nothing sites have helped me gather the large bulk of the TVs, where people are looking for ways to get rid of old items, I have been able to pick up four TVs locally for free from these sites, it was just a case of looking at the recent posts on the site regularly. I have borrowed a few TVs, DVD players and scart leads from family and friends who happened to have kept them. I have been surprised at how much I have been able to get for free from these kind of sites and very cheaply from boot sales, gathering the technology has been one of the easier things so far this project, which is something that I did not expect. I have learnt that something that someone is throwing away could be of use to somebody, just like these TVs have been of use to me. People have been particularly happy to help when I mention that I am an art student and am sourcing these TVs for my final degree project.   

The making of the tester films has been important, as I wanted to explore the way that they work together and how the film itself could eventually look. I wanted to get them done relatively quickly as I am aware of the lack of time that I have and felt that I needed to see if anything really wasn’t working just in case I needed to make some drastic changes to the project, as well as then allowing for more time to edit. It has been important for me to continue sourcing the TVs and looking at ideas for presentation as I have been editing these as they will all be working together and each aspect has to be right and each part is equally important, particularly as I still have to build the structure within which the TVs will sit. There were a two things I wanted the testers to achieve, the first was the actual image itself, the subtitles, the colours, the cutting and the way in which they blend and connect. The second was the way in which the individual films will work together, how they combine and work as a whole and to see how the work should be presented. The testers were based on the answers to the one question, with a few people pictured in each one, to get a sense of the looping, the links and the time span. The question was: Why are you an artist? I felt it was a nice question to start with. I went through the transcripts and found the different answers to these questions and cut through the film to pick out these parts. I experimented with using different colour filters, leaving the colour of the image as it is and changing them to black and white. I found that it really depended on the image itself as to whether these filters positively effected the footage. 

With footage like Alison and Polly’s where the colour is very important and bright, turning it black and white lost that part of it, it took what was visually interesting away from the image. Whereas the footage of TK for example looked much better in black and white because the bright sunlight coming through the windows made the footage too bright, the black and white made this softer and easier on the eye.

I also explored ways in which I cut to different clips of the students working instead of the straight footage of them talking to the camera.

This was effective as it made the films more interesting than the still camera, and also gave that insight into the students working and being active in the studio which will directly relate to the work that they will have in the show which will then reflect back again in my work. This is something that I definitely wish to play with as I think it is incredibly effective, I plan to focus on gathering more footage of students working for this purpose, it is exciting to get up close to what the students are doing.

I also thought a lot about the words, although what I had cut wasn’t exactly right, there were certain things said by the students that I thought were particularly important and I considered ways in which I could highlight these moments. What is said for me is the most vital element of this piece, and this is something that I wanted to make sure is clear, hopefully by publishing the full transcripts along with the work. When I do focus closely on the editing I plan to not look at the footage but think about what is said and how the conversation connects initially instead of the visual image. Sarah said something in her interview that I had included in one of the testers that I felt was a really interesting point that I wanted it to stand out. I experimented with taking the image away and just having the conversation and the words, I felt that the blank screen highlighted the text and drew the eye, more than if I had included both in this example. I also hope to use silence and the image in a similar way, highlighting something by taking part of it away. This is something that I think will be the next stage following the initial cutting of the footage for the films. Another very important element is the subtitles. I come to the conclusion that I wanted to subtitle all of the films not only because it is visually interesting but also as a way of engaging the audience better, in addition to solving any issues I may have had with sound. I tried out different fonts that I thought could be interesting as well as standard professional fonts that I researched. Some were very effective, but others really didn't work well with the footage. Again this is something that depends greatly on what the footage is behind the subtitles, but I will talk about the effects of the subtitles a bit later. I also tried out how mixing black and white footage with colour would work, as this is something that the essay film format does, and so I felt that it was important to test this further as I wasn’t sure how well this could be incorporated in my work. This would depend on how they would all work together when played.

Monday was a particularly important day for the progress of my final project. After finishing off the tester films I wanted to see them playing all together so that I could sit for a period of time and watch all of these. It was great to see them all at once, I already felt that there was a lot of information in the work and that was only the one question. Seeing them as a whole was a lot more powerful than I ever thought it would be. They seemed to connect easily together, and from that moment onwards the idea to separate the numbers didn’t feel right, nevertheless I wanted to give it a go and see what it would look like visually. 

I initially wanted them separate so that they could be immersed much more in the other work of the show. However, together they feel like once piece and Sarah mentioned that together they feel like my work whereas separate they would look like individual comments on the work of others.  What was most interesting was the way that the subtitles worked. I tried out many different fonts and sizes so that I could easily compare them when together and work out which one I would rather for the final piece, I initially wanted one single subtitle format for all films, this is still an option although at this moment in time I am unsure. Gilbert Richards felt that the different subtitles visually showed that each person had an individual voice, and seeing them throughout and feeding into the different films had the same effect as the changing footage. I must admit that the more I watched the films the more I realised that he was in fact right about this, the subtitles were not out of place and it did not look odd that they were all different. I was thinking about the way in which I have had to combat the footage trying to look professional and failing, I felt that the different TVs did this but also so did the changing subtitles, it is something that I never considered but definitely will be when I reach that stage. It will just be a case of deciding what subtitles to use and when to use them. The changes in colour had a similar effect, I noticed that it was interesting to see the same footage repeated but it black and white, that effect of taking away the colour changed the film and this could be seen throughout when they were all playing together. I felt that the changes in colour of the film didn’t mean that they didn’t connect, in fact I feel that if it was all in colour or all in black and white then it would be quite boring. My approach to this will be if it works for the footage and what comes before and after it then that is what is important, I realised that they will naturally fall together anyway. One thing that I feel is important to mention is the way in which the screens change the image slightly, it did depend on each screen but it also changed depending on whether they were set to widescreen or not. Once I have decided exactly what screens I will be using I will be looking into this more closely to see if I can make changes or if I am okay with the way that this looks int he piece. The one part that is does effect is the readability of the subtitles as in some cases it made them a lot smaller than they should be. I think it is going to be a case of making the films, playing them all at once and then proofing, seeing what I need to change. The speed in which the films were changing didn’t feel too fast or slow, I think because you have a lot going on at one time this is not necessarily a problem, although perhaps it would be if I separated the screens. I was particularly pleased with the footage that I included that involved movement, and close up shots of people working, it definitely broke up the stationary figures and gave a flow and an energy to the films. I need to focus on gathering more of this type of footage for the final editing stages. I was pleased with the way in which you could make connections throughout. In some cases two screens would play the same people, and because the films run at different times the next time round this wouldn’t happened. I really enjoy this element of chance and it has been successful in some of the other things I have done with this project. I am not going to think about how long each film will be when I edit them. This could be effective however if I wanted to perhaps black out a few of the screens so that the audience would focus on just the one, if they were at different times it would work initially but then slowly come out of sync the longer that they were played. This is something that I feel will only add to this element of chance and happening, I like the way in which the conversation and the narration of the piece is constantly changing and connecting in different ways; it is very much like a Rhizome. 

My biggest issue on this Monday was deciding exactly how many TVs to use and where to place them. After seeing them all together play I felt that splitting them up would ruin that combination of narrations and the way in which the different texts bounced off each other. If I split them I think I might be risking taking that element of chance away that I find so interesting. These were all initial experiments however I did reach a stage that felt right for me but with feedback I am still not too sure. I built a plastic racking in my space so that I could try stacking the TVs and placing them in different positions easily to get a better idea about what I might want to build out of wood. I thought closely about different pairings I could do and placements. Whenever there was a three it felt like there was something missing in one of the gaps, there was a space that felt odd, and the way in which the films moved together seemed disjointed because of these spaces in between. The same went for when there was a five or the TVs were in a long vertical line (which was my initial plan, and one that I will definitely not be doing) the rhythm of the work went as your eyes followed a path that didn’t link clearly. It felt like you should be following the TVs closely in a round motion, like a constant connection, I didn’t want this to be difficult and when they were in a line this was. From the viewpoint of the audience it was not an easy thing to watch, I feel that you sometimes have to make things easy to enable someone to engage with the work. I have always been one to think in odd numbers which is why all my initial plans were odd. However, the longer I sat and watched the TVs the more I felt that there needed to be an even number. It is something about the squareness of the TVs and the aesthetic of them visually that leads to this assumption of even, and this is something that I quite liked about viewing them. The fact that everything is so symmetrical and even yet the footage, the TVs themselves and the subtitles are all disjointed, it is conflicting and it is this that makes it interesting. I still hope to get further feedback on this idea next week but for now I am stuck on the idea of having four TVs. Visually for me it was what felt right, it is possibly the first time that I got that feeling with a piece of my work that something is right. I have experienced this a lot also during editing. The four was harmonious, they worked together and it felt complete as one. 

I blacked out some of the open sections of the structure just to see what it would look like as wood. If I was to go through with this plan I would make the bottom and top half exactly square, the top would be solid at the front but in the back contain cupboards to store the DVD players, etc. The top would then be sectioned into four equal parts to size of the largest tv, and in it would sit the different TV’s. I would like the TVs to be at eye level, which I think will make them more engaging. What I did find interesting about exploring the different formats of presentation was the differing opinions of the other students. I asked people walking by what they thought of the different numbers of TVs and some said they liked them odd, some said they wanted five, others thought that there should be more, and some said six. What I found so fascinating was the way in which every opinion was different and this is something that is also reflected in the work itself.

I am still a tad unsure about how I exactly want to present the work, however I know that equipment will not be a problem, but I aim to have a solid view in my head by the end of next week of what I want it to look like. As for the films itself, I hope to use the transcripts and make storyboards of each of the films and attempt to cut together the basics of each of these, working from the writing and then considering the footage. The quicker I can get this done and right the longer I will have to add in more footage, include the subtitles and the final proofing and tweaking.