Sound Design - Music Soundtrack

Just as with voice over it feels imperative to be conscious of the power of music to shape the mood and reaction of an audience to the film. In practical terms, this being a student film and therefore on a limited budget, the opportunity to freely select music is limited by economics as well. We feel fortunate in some regards because we found that the tone and flow of the visuals married well with the Classical Music genre. But it feels important to note that this wouldn't have been our first choice as in our minds the protagonist does inhabit a modern world with a modern taste in music, so compromise is necessary. The classical music genre has a longer history than most musical genres so there are more compositions that are license free with some performances coming under creative commons.

I used the website Musopen to explore options for the soundtrack. Musopen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on increasing access to music by creating free resources and educational materials. They provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions.

For the first drafts of the animatic, myself and Sadhbh chose Reverie by Debussy for the first act of the film before the Melancholic Wife chooses her own music. We felt this gave a good sense of the initial journey she embarks on. For the change moment we chose Wagner music, for the sense of drama and a journey, specifically from the opera Tannhauser. These two pieces acted as a starting point a placeholder to help visualise the film.

When it came time to consciously examine and choose the music, myself and Sadhbh decided to attempt to find female composers to try and rebalance the gender representation given the narrator is a male voice. Using Musopen again we discovered two compositions; for the main body of the film we selected a piece called Three Dramatic Etudes by Pandora Selfridge; for the change of tone we have picked a section from 4 Sketches, Op.15 by Amy Marcy Beach. We feel that the first composition is working well but that the second one may need further exploration as it may not represent enough of a positive tone shift.

Digital Background Textures

I am creating the photo album page backgrounds digitally using layer styles; pattern overlay techniques, this involves using scanned textures in imaging software and managing the noise levels, blending modes and opacity levels to create as realistic a paper look as possible; drop shadows, enabling the illusion of depth and a gap between 'paper' levels, again using blending modes, opacity and also distance and softness levels; inner shadows, using a screen blending mode instead of a multiply mode to help create the illusion of the edge of paper standing out, augmented again using opacity, distance and softness levels.

Snowfall.

We have selected and scanned a number of different paper textures and colours for use in creating the backgrounds, main characters and background characters.

Paper Textures.

We have decided on using different papers for different elements in the film. The backgrounds will use wallpaper textures, the main characters of Dwayne and his daughter will be textured with tissue paper and the background characters will use mulberry paper. This will hopefully make them distinct while related. 

Dwayne Film Colour Palettes

For the group film, we have split the work for the production of the short into its different areas and agreed tasks between one another. This was greatly helped by the previously posted production maps. I have taken on the production of the digital backgrounds for each of the album pages. This involves the further development of the previous page concepts I posted including internal frame backgrounds.

For the colour scheme we have chosen jewel tone palettes.

Background palette. 

Dwayne palette.

Melancholic Wife Animatic Version 11

With this animatic I've added an opening and closing sequence to the film. The opening uses the cover illustration from the first zine collection of the short stories. The font is from the cover and website as well. The ending sequence uses pages and panels from the comic to give a sense of the wider world in which the Melancholic Wife exists.

Sound Design - Voice Over

My short film employs a voice over narration to work with the visual storytelling. This narration is an adaptation of the text narration of the original comic. In collaborating with Sadhbh we have tried to be conscious of the power of having a voice describing the story of our protagonist. There is a distance that necessarily exists because she is not speaking directly to the audience of her experience. We further wanted to explore this distance by having a male voice speak the story. Our reasoning behind this is a desire to investigate and play with the conventional dominance of men telling women's stories. In societal terms the male voice can seem to lend an unconscious authority and we want to use this bias to support the telling of an unconventional story exploring the inner complexity of a woman's experience.

From the research into my extended essay on the Essay Film genre I have learned of the opinion that voice over can communicate as authoritarian in film. Dictating to the audience what they should think and how they should feel about the accompanying visuals. I also want to be conscious of this by pursuing a storytelling tone to the narration. There will hopefully be a neutrality to it, a separateness which leaves room for the visuals to occupy its own space and leaves a space in-between for the subjective reaction of an audience to reside in.

McVerry Trust Production Maps

The Melancholic Wife Storyboards - Fifth Sequence

The lights come on and the Melancholic Wife must pick herself up off the floor and contend with the darkness of her melancholy again. She has managed to bring one of the ghosts of her former self along with her into this new arena of contention, the ghost floats free, still dancing. The Melancholic Wife draws the spotlight into her, assimilating its energy inside herself. She uses this energy to access her creative self expression, beginning to dance, move and project the light into the darkness, taking ownership for the moment of the space. The light, the white transcends the black, the Melancholic Wife and the ghost disappear in the brilliance as they join together. She pauses for a moment, honouring the coming together, she can bring the lesson which the ghost had to teach her with her back into the unromantic walls of her real life through the door which appears from the last vestiges of light.

Extended Essay: Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Through my research into the essay film form I found examinations of the animated motion picture Waltz with Bashir and I decided to use it as an example to illustrate the essay topic.

Waltz with Bashir was made by the Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman. It recounts an investigation into his experiences during the First Lebanon War in 1982 through interviews with nine friends and is described by Corrigan as taking the form of an editorial essay.

As it attempts to explore the complexities of memory and the undertaking of a personal psychological journey through the protagonists experiences I feel it could be a valuable example to compare and contrast with my own film. It takes the examination of the experiences from a subjective viewpoint, trying as much as possible to stay conscious that they are telling the story from their own point of view and not trying to give a definitive account that would override the lived experiences of others. The story also exists in comic book form like my own film which I feel offers up opportunities to examine an ongoing dialogue of the issues the film raises. It resists an attempt to end the conversation, instead hopefully offering up new avenues to discuss the real life occurrences and themes explored.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

McVerry Trust Visual Development

Photo Album Cover 

Summer Album Page 

Autumn Album Page 

Spring Album Page

Essay Film Research

From the initial research for my extended essay I decided to further investigate essay films as a potential topic. I read the following definition in the book Essays on the Essay Film by Nora M. Alter  and Timothy Corrigan (2017);
"characteristics of the essay film include the blending of fact and fiction, the mixing of art- and documentary-film styles, the foregrounding of subjective points of view, a concentration on public life, a tension between acoustic and visual discourses, and a dialogic encounter with audiences."

The particular facets that struck a chord for me with my own film were the foregrounding of subjective points of view and a dialogic encounter with audiences. Though other elements also resonated including; the blending of fact and fiction and a tension between acoustic and visual discourses. I felt that approaching an investigation of my film through the lens of these aspects would help to advance the creative potential of the film.

So for further reading I researched other titles including; How the Essay Film Thinks by Laura Rascaroli; The Essay Film: From Montaigne after Marker by Timothy Corrigan; and journal articles; The Essay as Form by T.W. Adorno; and In Search of the Centaur: The Essay Film by Philip Loparte. Laura Rascaroli also had a number of relevant journal articles. 

McVerry Trust Animatic Second Draft

McVerry Trust Project Storyboards