Process Piece

When making our process piece, Madi and I wanted to represent a character moving from a more chaotic, stressful place to a relaxing one. It's a simple story. A character starts indoors, hearing music and people talking, and decides to leave. He makes his way through the street to a place where he can take a break and feel peace for a few minutes.

As for the process of actually making it, though it's a simple idea, we had to record in five or six different locations to capture the different sounds—the ducks, people, music, foley, traffic, etc. The clip is under two minutes, but the actual process takes closer to ten to complete. At one point near the end, there are four audio tracks overlapped. But because the main idea of the piece was about getting in touch with nature, we tried to make the stitches transparent. Using fades and other transitions we tried to make it sound as natural and seamless as possible.

Over the last week I watched and read a lot about processes being performed. During discussions in class, I thought about a documentary I saw recently called Leviathan, which covers the fishing industry and has almost no dialogue. There’s not a story per say, but instead visual after visual as the cameras delve into the perspective of workers, the fish, or even inanimate objects. I think that in a way, by not setting out to create a strict narrative, it manages to say even more in a very poetic but unpretentious way. 

Among a lot of other videos I watched, I love the clip of Jack White making a “guitar” at the beginning of It Might Get Loud. There is something about observing someone make something they are passionate about—it’s fascinating to watch even when there isn’t much happening on screen in terms of drama. I really appreciated the discussions from this last week. We naturally appreciate something more when we are part of the process of its creation—whether as a participant or simply as a viewer. All those things came together to reinforce the same idea: that the process of creation can be art just as much as the end product.