Plans For Light And Sound Project

Ben and I ended up getting "She Continued Yelling From The Kitchen," as our soundscape. We liked this one because it was almost like a song. I liked how the sounds repeated and had a beat to it. We quickly realized however that our images would have nothing to do with women yelling from kitchens. Most of the photographs that people took were taken outside and were more natural. There were a couple that fit with the kitchen. So we decided to fit the images to the sounds. We tried to associate certain images with certain sounds so that it kinda matched the song a little more. We also tried to make some of the images have different effects placed on them, which turned out to be quite difficult to figure out actually. So many of the images were repeated when certain sounds came up, but we also tried to vary the images and change them in different ways. We have a lot of fast moving images, some that stand still, some that shake, and some that ripple. I think the film really flows well together yet it also has some things that clash with each other. This variety makes the film very interesting I think.

Painting With Sound

So as I've said before in this blog I was really excited to sit down and make a soundscape out of the sounds we recorded for class. My partner and I made sure to make a list of all the sounds that we were considering using. When we first started creating "Our Garden In A Shady Spot," I was only wanting to use nature sounds. I soon realized that there weren't all that many nature sounds that the groups recorded. So we began to play around with other sounds making them slower or faster. As we began to play around I realized that some of the sounds really sounded different when they were played at different speeds. The sounds of metal banging sounded completely different slowed down. A lot of these sounds I ended up really liking a whole lot. This made me really excited and I wanted to experiment even more with sounds. So we experimented with putting different sounds on top of each other and we discovered that different sounds would sound really good with each other and others didn't sound that great. As we continued making our soundscape we began to come up with a silly story to go along with it. Our story being that the person's "Ohm," disturbed the entire garden and created chaos. Since we didn't want this to be too narrative we tried not to make the story too blantant. I think it was more of something silly to keep us from going insane with 3 projects due on the same day. (:

Light Observations: Driving In The Dark

So this weekend I had a family situation I had to go to this weekend, which meant that I had to drive 2 hours in the dark Thursday night. While driving these boring 2 hours I noticed that there were a lot of different interesting things going on with the lights. I thought it was kind of funny seeing that every car had their own little bubble of light coming out from them. As cars came towards me their light bounced off my windshield and created a streak across the windshield. When someone came up behind me with their brights on I could see their lights reflecting in both my side and rearview mirrors-which I must say is very obnoxious. Also their bright lights would light up the inside of my car. I thought it was interesting seeing the different strange shadows the lights would make. The light from my headlights would bounce off the markers in the road, and the signs that I passed. I also noticed that whenever someone with their brights came up over a hill the light would illuminate the entire road before I could see the car. It's almost like a warning that says "Hello I have my brights on!"

Experiencing Sound

From the second we started this assignment I was really excited. I had so many ideas for different sounds to make. I wanted my group to have sounds that no other group had-which I think all the groups accomplished very different sounds. I had a lot of fun trying to think of all the different sounds. We tried many different things together to make different strange sounds. Our group started off really strong with getting sounds of my horse. I knew that the barn would be a great place to find different sounds. I was really disappointed that we couldn't get more sounds there-the neighbors have many animals that would have made for really good sounds, but he didn't let us go back there to record. As we kept trying to find sounds it got harder and harder to find things that were unnatural, and sounded really different. Also I think the ambient sound was really difficult to find because we wanted to find ambient sounds that were unique, but it seemed like all the ambient sounds would sound similar-or at least they did to me. Luckily we thought of doing some places that were different than what other people did so I think it turned out well.

When listening to all the sounds in class I was amazed at how different everyone's sound turned out. As I was listening I was trying to figure out which sounds I liked, and how they all fit together. I also must say that I am in love with the name my partner and I chose for our soundscape: Our Garden In A Shady Spot. I am super excited about creating our soundscape for this. I think it will be interesting to put all the sounds together to make a soundscape. I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone's soundscapes turn out.