Films

Editing

I am glad that I allowed for the editing time that I have had for this project, I knew that it would take some time to do but what I didn’t realise is that each time it will be little changes that are wrong. Just like I struggle with proof reading, going through edits is exactly the same. I find it difficult to see things that are wrong in something that I have practically memorised, you almost see from memory and not what is in front of you, this is why I have relied on feedback from my family and also have a break in between viewing each of the films. Small changes have been my biggest problem throughout. I would think that everything seems okay on the computer, export it off or put it onto a disc only to see when I get home that actually there is something wrong with it. I have done this a few times, and although it is tiring I feel it is a process that I have to go through personally because this is also how I proof read any writing that I do. 

After editing the main sections of the films together from the notes and storyboards that I made up a few weeks ago, I added in the subtitles with the various different fonts as this was something that I felt had worked from when I watched the original testers. One of the other problems I have had is that on the computer screens at college, the size of the text and the style looks and feels very different from when it is on the screen, often what is just the right size on the computer is too small when it comes to the old TV sets, this is also another reason why I have had to go through and change various aspects many times. This week I have been trying to finalise the films to get them to a stage that I am happy with, this is proving harder than I thought. I feel that if there is something I am unsure about then I have to change it. After the first wave of edits I realised that some of the subtitles needed to have a darker shadow around the outside of the lettering to allow for it to stand out from the white, and some had to be bigger. My main concerns are that the audience will be able to read the text and also that the subtitles all flow together although they are slightly different. 

After what I thought were the final changes for these, I now realise that there are a few things wrong with one of the films where the media hadn’t loaded properly which is the fault of the computer. The films are practically finished at this stage however my next aim is to sit with my mum and watch them altogether just to check if there is anything else out of place that I can change on Monday along with some of the media that hadn’t loaded properly. My main concern is some of the subtitles as I feel a few might still be too small, however this actually changes depending on the screen, so I think perhaps I might only have to change the size of the subtitles on the one screen to make sure that I am happy with what they look like now that I have got the TV positions finalised. I plan to get my mum to watch the films with the sound off to make sure that she can read all of the subtitles from the distance that the chairs will be placed. It will then be a case of making these few final changes at the beginning of next week and getting some copies of the DVDs made. 

The films on the screens

My main concern with the TV screens was the quality of the image. Some screens produced an image that was incredibly bright and clear, which is something that was completely unexpected of such old TVs. I wanted to make sure that there was a balance between the four and that none were out of place, this involved swapping a few of the TVs round and seeing what ones had the better images. I am finally happy with what TVs I have chosen as the images work well on all of these and there isn’t one that stands out because it is too bright or too dark. I have adjusted the settings on all of the screens to also try to make them work together as closely as possible. Another concern was that on some of the TVs the film is shown with the screen cut so that it fits horizontally. I felt that it really didn’t work when one of them did not do this as it looked out of place when they were all put together, I realised this evening that this was not the TV screens but the DVD players. Therefore I was able to change to one with a better quality image that also meant that there was an equal number of silver and black TVs, which wasn’t necessarily a problem for me but it was something that was noticeable. 

The sound is something that I will have to set in the studio as it will travel differently compared to my living room where I am testing these out for the final week. I don’t want them to be loud enough that you can clearly distinguish the words that are being said or disrupt any other work in the show, but I definitely want the audience to be able to tell that the sound is these people talking, almost like a low murmur throughout the room, much like how it is when we are in the studio. 

Regarding Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag has been an influential figure to both my studio practice over the past few years and my dissertation, I was incredibly excited when I found out that the documentary Regarding Susan Sontag was being shown at the ICA with a Q&A with the film director Nancy Kates. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I found myself being much more immersed in the way that the film was made and put together because of my involvement with film and editing over the last few months. This is something I have noticed myself doing much more often, however it was much more prominent when watching a film such as this. Nancy Kate spoke of Sontag’s love for beauty and being surround by beauty, and so she set out to make certain aspects of the film beautiful which to some would have seemed abstractly out of place within the film. There were times when the image was of a jar filling with sand with Sontag’s picture in it, and a play with water, images and distortion. Not only did this give you a sense of time passing, age, and fragility but Nancy Kate also mentioned Sontag’s love for photography and how we rely so heavily on images, this was an attempt to play with this idea, and distort the image of Sontag, perhaps in order to remember more closely the person, not the photograph.

What fascinated me was having the opportunity to understand more about Sontag’s life, and predominately, her personal life. Although I love her writing, this is a side of Sontag that I never really knew much about. What was done so fantastically was the subtle use of comedy throughout. There was something about the way in which the people interviewed and Sontag herself were so straight talking, which often made certain situations quite funny, it was great to watch. What amazed me throughout was Sontag’s will to continue living, and this was highlighted within the film.  She was truly an amazing woman, and perhaps her desire to achieve what was virtually impossible is what made it quite sad. It was great listening to Nancy speak about the film and how difficult it was to make, and to gather sources, this is something that I have been going through over the last few months so I was intrigued as to what the pressure of this would be on a much larger scale. 

I enjoyed the film immensely and Nancy Kate mentioned that she wished for the audience to see a side of Sontag that they might have not necessarily known much about, this was certainly something that this film did. 

Making

This week has been a race to get the table all sorted as the date that we have to be out of the studio is fast approaching, I am ahead of schedule but hoped to spend a few days taking some decent photographs of my work before it goes into the show as time then will be very limited. The challenge has been sorting out all of the finer details of the table like edging and the painting. 

The first thing I wanted to get sorted was attaching the legs to the table. Once I had attached the plates the legs simply screw off, therefore this means that the table will be easy to move around the studio and store. I am pleased that I attached the legs myself, as I am not much of a maker and haven’t spend much time in the workshop over the past three years. I marked out the placement for the brackets and carried the wood down into the workshop to attach them. I was unsure about how many legs to attach as I felt that eight might have been far too many and that they would have been too close together, however any other positioning would have been too complicated and if I chose to have six then there could again be a problem with bowing from the weight of the TVs. I finally decided to keep to the idea of the eight and once they were attached I was pleased with how they look as it didn’t feel like they were too close and crowded and also the legs stood directly under each TV, not only giving me a pointer for where I would place the TVs each time but they also become a part of the TVs, turning them into standing figures that begun to take on more of a human quality. This allied closely with the subjects of the films as the TVs became a body as the limbs were attached. 

My next concern was the shelves for underneath the table that will hold the DVD players. I wanted to get this done fairly quickly as this is something that I would require help with and also I needed to see if they would look right with the DVD players in. The shelves were quite simple, and David, one of the technicians at the institute, put them together quickly from the designs I had made. It took the two of us to attach them to the underneath of the table as this was quite fiddly. Once they were attached I was concerned about how clearly you could see the DVD players, at that time I felt that it would look much more refined if they were hidden. I played around with different ideas to cover up the front of the shelves, as I needed to be able to access them but I didn’t want the DVD players to be seen. This all got increasingly complicated and it wasn’t until I had painting the table that I realised that I didn’t really need to cover them up at all. The black took the edge off of seeing the DVD players, and disguised them a bit more than the plain wood did. I also realised that one of main ideas of this piece was transparency, I didn’t want to hide parts of the work, and again I realised that this was true with the DVD players. If I had wanted to hide them from the beginning I would have found a way that didn’t involve having shelves hanging underneath the TVs. 

The most time consuming element of the table was the painting, and I am glad that I started this earlier than I anticipated as it would have been a nightmare to paint the table whilst everyone was clearing out the studio, the table is large and there are not many spaces that fit it, I certainly couldn’t take it home. I decided that I wanted the wood to be gloss black. There were a few reasons for this, one that the black reflected what I liked about the original black wracking, it allowed the TV’s to become one with the table. I wanted it to be gloss because there was something about the shiny quality of the wood that reflected the natural aesthetic of the four TVs and created something more dynamic than a plain matte black table top would have done. It made the table become a part of the piece itself, not something for the TVs to sit on. I tested out the paint on a small piece of the same wood as the table, and knew that I would have to do quite a few coats of emulsion underneath, this was what was time consuming. I had to wait for each layer to dry and so tried to paint early in the morning so that there was the possibility of carrying on later in the afternoon. The gloss was relatively difficult to paint, it was satisfying but time consuming and I was concerned about painting in the studios as not everyone is considerate of other peoples work and there were a few times where someone would almost touch or knock the fresh paint, this meant that I spent a lot of time sitting around the table whilst it was drying to make sure that it wasn’t knocked in any way! I was overall incredibly pleased with the paint, it had come out exactly as I had planned and I was glad that the gloss paint had worked. 

I was concerned after that my tutor mentioned that the edges of the table could do with tidying up. I was worried as I had just painted the entire table top and I felt any changes now could possibly ruin all of that work. I struggled to find a way to edge the table and many people threw about different ideas, however I went and found some thing wood pieces that were the exact height of the edge of the table so they could be cut to size and attached quite easily. This is something that I had never previously tried, as I am not a maker, and I was concerned as I had no choice in the end but to do it myself as no one was really available to help. The wood was cut to the length required, I then drilled in some pilot holes for pins along the edges of the wood and painted them completely in a matte black so that when they were attached it would be a clean matte finish. The wood was easy to attach to the table and afterwards I painted over the edging in gloss. I feel that it did finish off the table better than it was previously, however, I understand that it was not the best that it could have been, mainly because I could only do to the best of my ability. I personally am proud of what I have managed to achieve with the table as it is something that I never believed I would be able to do. 

My aim for the upcoming week is to do any last minute touch ups and work on finalising the films which is something that I had to put on hold because of the limited studio time. 

Presentation

After realising that the editing of the films was going to be a smaller task than I originally anticipated, which was mostly due to having taken the time to do the transcripts of the interviews at the beginning, I realised that I needed to invest my time now in working out exactly how I am going to present the work in a way that I not only like but is also at a professional standard. This week I focused on this task and looking back the main reasons why I was having problems was because I was overcomplicating it and failing to look past what I was seeing in front of me to the possibilities of what the work could be. I am going to outline some of the stages I went through regarding the presentation of the piece throughout the week. It was particularly turbulent but now I feel happy and excited because I know that I have come to the right conclusion about how I want the work to look and most importantly how the audience will engage with it. 

My original intention for the TVs was to build a wooden structure that would hold them and hide any extra cables or DVD players that might be used in the work, I planned for this to be black and certain areas blocked out with wood. I had come to the conclusion a few weeks back that I felt splitting the TVs up created a separation with the work that I didn’t want, and that the idea of having the four collected together felt like it worked much better than any of the other ways I tried on that morning. With this in mind I aimed to present this idea to my tutor Jane to see her thoughts on the quantity of the screens and the presentation. Early on in the week I was drafting my PDP presentation which discusses our practice, who we are and what we will be doing after the degree and in the future. I was speaking of Susan Sontag and the way in which her writings had been a significant influence on not only my dissertation but also my studio practice. It was whilst I was picking out something from one of her books to include in the presentation that I came across one if my favourite quotes from her essay ‘Against Interpretation’ which was ‘Transparency is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparency means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are.’ I was thinking about my work and felt that the films themselves were incredibly honest and the way in which these people had revealed parts of themselves to me was something that I wanted to respect. I realised that by hiding all of the components I am taking away this honesty that I feel is in the work itself, it needed to be transparent much like Sontag suggests. This meant that I presented to Jane the two ideas of having the built in structure or maybe having the TVs on a structure like the plastic racking.

We spoke a lot about this and there were many positives and negatives I found. I felt that the racking was made of the wrong material, it didn’t look refined enough and felt messy to me. The plastic of the shelves was also bowing in the places where the TVs were sitting which was a serious problem for me as it made the TVs fall into each other and was not completely safe. I really liked the colour of the racking and the way the cylindrical poles down the edges contrasted to the squares of the TVs, I also liked how you could see around the edges of the work and I liked the way that the wires were tumbling down the back and when it was away from the wall you could see all of these interconnecting much like many of the things mentioned in the films. The racking though was at just the wrong height as from standing you were looking down on it and when sitting you were looking up. There was something about this that wasn’t quite right and I realise now that I was being blinded by what I was seeing and couldn’t look past it. We discussed many ways of making the shelves stronger and adding new materials as well as using found objects. However, I felt that if I was to do any of these I would be adding an aesthetic to the piece that I did not want, and I felt harsh materials would be disrespectful to the what is being said in the work. 

After discussing this for a long time I was at a stage where I was getting really concerned about how the TVs were going to look for the show as at this point my ideas were all over the place. My friend Sarah asked me what is it that I really want the audience to get from the work, what do I really want it to be able. I said that I want the audience to engage with the films and enjoy looking at what the different artists think and perhaps come to various conclusions in their own minds about the topics discussed. Sarah suggested that this then was what I needed to achieve, and to do this I would have to take it down to basics. At this stage I knew I wanted the audience sat down as I feel that this means they will stay for longer and therefore engage more fully with what was in front of them. I played around with doing various positioning with the TVs and desks and placing the chairs in front of them and seeing what that felt like to watch. I focused more closely on the experience of viewing the films that I did to what it looked like at this stage. I know now that the racking was becoming sculptural and something more than the films, refining it like this made sure that this wouldn’t happen. 

This is the final set up that I came up with for the TVs. After playing around with the tables I realised that I wanted them to be on one long table as this way they could still be seen separate but they were still a part of the whole. The space for the TVs made it easier to view the films as you were not immediately distracted by the other TV sets directly beside it, it also meant that I could choose the TV screens with better colour as I no longer had to worry about the shape and size of the TVs. They will be placed next to each other on a table and in front will be four chairs with no backs, I want the chairs to be indiscreet so that they do not start looking like furniture as this is something that I wanted to avoid, and something I also felt was a problem with the racking. As for the DVD players, although I still liked the way all of the wires were on show on the floor and running down the back of the table, I felt these could be hidden in small slots attached to the bottom of the table so they you can still operate them but they could not be seen. As for the viewing height of the work, the table at that height and chairs meant that the screens were directly in front of the viewers face. I felt that the chairs meant that you gave the audience no option other than to pick one of the four films and watch it, it felt like you became a part of the interview and the conversation between the people shown on screen. I think its all a weird experience when the same thing is happening to another three people next to you, some of which you may not know. I have ordered 8 legs for the table, that are standard worktop legs, and I will attached these under each TV to bring stability and avoid any bowing issues as this was one of my concerns with the racking. I could have had six but there would have been a possibility of the wood bending after a period of time because of the weight of the TVs. The legs as well as rounded, much like the edge of the frame of the racking which I felt contrasted well with the square shape of the TVs, this is another element from this format that is reflected in a more refined way in the new style of presentation. As for the colour of the table and the style of the chairs, I am going to first attach the black legs and then go from there as to whether I will paint the table or not. I think this is something that I will not know until this stage, and I have gathered pieces of wood similar to the cut that I have so that I can test different kinds of paint on it. I wondered as well about including a larger piece of writing in the work that is something I definitely wanted to do, however I know that giving the audience a booklet when watching the films will distract them and also adding a fifth place with a book would be pointless and look too intentional, therefore I am going to have it attached to the wall near my work so that people can go through it as a longer artist statement. 

I feel that this way of presenting the TVs is respectful to what the people have said within the films, it looks refined and complete, it is not too complicated and not trying to say too many things all at once. I also feel that it is not giving off any other ulterior concepts because of how basic the set up is. Most importantly I think that this will fully engage the viewer and put them in a situation where they will sit and consider what the videos are trying to say. Not only will it be about watching the films but it will also be an experience. I hope to get some more feedback on this set up after I have finished the films. My aim for next week is to get the legs attached to the table and also the holders for the DVD players, then begin to consider paints and other finishing touches. I also plan to attempt to completely finish all of the films, maybe except for a few extra clips of footage that I may need to gather at a later time. I hope to continue to critique the films by sitting and watching through them for longer periods of time in order to see if anything doesn’t work quite right. 

Editing

My aim for this week was to ambitiously attempt to cut together the base of each of the films, without any subtitles or extra footage, working on creating storyboards and the narrative that I want the final films to have. I managed to get all of this done by the end of the week, which is something that I wanted to do so that I could focus on gathering some of the extra footage and looking into the subtitles as well as allowing for time to think about the presentation of the work. 

One problem I have had is that I am still unsure about how many TV’s that I will be using and the way that I will be setting this up. After experimenting with this last week I feel that four will be the correct amount, however I still need to get feedback from my tutor on this idea which is something that I will be doing on Wednesday morning. Nevertheless, I made the base of the films to fit the format of four as I like the way in which they worked together when displayed this way, and it is the quantity that felt right for me. It also meant that I had just the right amount of material to work with. The first step I took was going through all of the transcripts that I had and taking out any bits I thought I would work well. Although the transcriptions took a long time I am pleased that I made the effort at the beginning to go through all of the footage as it made the editing process so much easier! After picking out the parts that I felt worked well I then organised them into the different people and colour coded them so that they were organised into the various questions. I asked five questions during the interviews but they often merged together when having a conversation, because of the number of films I split the selection from the transcripts into four sections: why are you an artist, the audience and communication, motivations and student perception and arts function and the audience perception. It was difficult working out what should go into which section as like I mentioned they often overlapped. After organising what parts were going to be in each question I separated them and copied them into a grid so I could cut these out and visually be able to play around with the order of these and the structure of each film. What is important to mention is that I really focused on the words and what was said more so than the footage. By looking at what was said and creating a story board this meant that the words became the most important aspect of the piece, the footage is secondary. It has also made everything flow better, as the words connect. After working out the order in which I wanted the films to go it was a case of finding that specific part in the footage and cutting them together into one. The transcripts made it easy to pick out where the different sections were, so again this process was a lot faster than I initially thought  it would be. 

I am pleased with the way that the footage connects, however there were certain sections where the image didn’t work well and didn’t fit with what was being said. In these cases I deleted the footage from the film and plan to source some other smaller clips of people working in the studio, with materials or perhaps close-ups of peoples work. I have already started to gather these and I feel that it will make the film more interesting as there would be a balance between the stationary footage and the movement. Each of the films ended up being about 5 minutes long which is something that I did not plan for, it just happened. I have added a bit at the end of each film where it is just black as sometimes the DVD players have had a problem with the looping, however this is something I will fine tune at a later date. My aim was to cut all of the basic footage together and then play them all on the screens at the same time, however I realised that without the subtitles it is difficult to engage and see if something works well or not, therefore I will wait until I have finished the subtitles and added the extra footage in which will be my next step with the films. I know that adding the subtitles is going to take a while however I have gotten used to the process now which will mean that I will be able to do it fairly quickly. I need to get this done sooner rather than later so that I can check to see how they look visually, the looping, the size of the text, the readability and if there are any mistakes with the editing that I can go through and change. Next week I also have to focus closely on how I am going to present the work, as this is something that may also need time to fix any mistakes or problems.