Non-Narrative Live Performance Piece?

Whereas our narrative piece about a man with a briefcase being followed to a multi-story car park and being subsequently shot requires live sound recordings to give it 'cinematic realism', our non-narrative piece has become something of a massive experiment. Whether this is going to pay off is to be seen.

The original idea was to take three themes and produce sounds that that could be perceived in a variety of ways depending on the image that you associated them with. We decided to reduce three themes to one central theme (the decline of traditional community), using a selection of nine individual looping images that reveal themselves over the 3+ minute duration of the film. All the while, a long, evolving tracking shot provides the constant. The more we thought and spoke about the idea of rhythm (visually and aurally), the more we began to think about the piece from as much of a musical standpoint as a filmmaking one.

We were always going to visually edit in a very rhythmic way, with the creation and eventual progression of sound following suit. For the sake of experimentation, we began to think: why not foley all of the sound in a real-time environment as a kind of multi-layered performance? It's bold and experimental sure, but isn't that what learning is all about? Trying new things? Seeing if they work? Being able to explain yourself if they don't?

With our narrative project's sound design taking shape in a more calculated, traditionally cinematic way, for the sake of expansive practice it only seems fruitful (in the long run) to consider the polar opposite approach to a project which is a non-narrative compliment to our more versed narrative submission.

This idea is last-minute, I will admit. Having sat through group crits though, and seeing the similarities in a lot of people's projects, the artist in me wants to be noticeably different in the way I present my creative personality through my work. Sure, we may fall flat on our faces undertaking something we've never tried before. But if we don't try, then we won't know what we are potentially capable of creating. And that's the most exciting thing about any art, music, or film.