Martin Scorsese on Hugo- Film4

I recently watched a programme on Film4 where Martin Scorsese talks about his latest directorial debut in Hugo. I found this very interesting to watch to see how such a film is made and what the effects are on the director. I had no idea that the film would be such a personal trip for Scorsese and in the way that he talks about it, it resembled a lot of his childhood. For example, in the film, the main character (a child) is a part of the world as though the child is 'on the outside looking in', this relates to Scorsese as he states that he 'contracted asthma as a child' and as a result was kept away from anything that aggravated this. The exciting part for him was to do something different that audiences hadn't seen before, to do something special, and in that way it didn't feel much like a job.


One of the things that he is passionate about when talking is that the film is not a fantasy film, but that fantasy is there in the child's imagination. I personally haven't seen the film but in a way i understand what he is saying as he states that his own 'daughter links him to the limitless imagination of children, that they expect and believe in anything.'


He then goes on to explain his choice of using 3D technology, stating that his fascination came from 'stereoscopic images that he saw as a child and when he saw them with a stereo device and the world that’s created in the image, particularly in the view masters, it was like looking in a box/ window, something that sparked in his imagination to create a world that wasn’t real'. He felt that  '3D had a strong responsibility to do something special'. He tried not let '3D overwhelm the story but by experimenting with new technology' he could create a special world through film. 


He goes onto state that film making is a major a part of his life which he found in the project. But it threw up some consequence that by using new technologies,  slightly made him worry about the preservation of current film making, however these new technologies open up new doors for future film makers.


Overall i found this short documentary enjoyable to watch as it gave a personal insight into the mind of a good director and also gave his personal views on how the film effected him, not only as a director but also as a person in how his personal experiences related to a story he was trying to create.

Sense of space

Unfortunately I miss this first session due to illness but i was able to get a copy of the notes from one of my peers, including the references that they were shown. One of the audio documentaries I could find from that session was The Curious Ear: Meat Factory Ear Worms d. Richie Beirne P. Ronan Kelly (2008)


http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/the-curious-ear-doconone-meat-factory-ear-worms.html


This piece is about a personal account worker on the killing line of a meat factory from the first time that he stepped foot into one


This is a combination of the person giving a detailed account of what he did on a daily basis, the sounds from the factory and music. All these together make the piece a bit uncomfortable to listen to as the character is so nonchalant about the day of work that lies ahead of him. The one character tells the story from getting picked up in the morning to go to work, and plays the character of the other people in the car, then back to playing the song. Then heading onto his days work.


One of the things that i like about this piece was the way that near the start of the documentary, the mix of the character singing along to a song and the music stopping and starting with him, is cut together nicely to give it nice continuity. 

I think that this film gives a good sense of space from the background noises it tries to use, plus the detailed account of everything that happens from the character. This is one of the main influences in our final piece idea.

Sense of space- edit

During the editing process, I wasn't able to get any screen shots, as for some reason Jacob decided that he was going to do all of the editing, leaving me no chance to get to the computer.

I did sit next to him through the whole process and we both listened to the sounds to see how they had all turned out and first named them all so that we would know which sound went where in the timeline. Jacob then did all of the playing around with the sounds. We had to change the EQ and volume on some of the clips and the one's of Amanda talking were too loud whereas the one's of myself talking were to quiet.

We followed our script really closely as it was a good way to get our piece to be as good as it could be. We  first started by putting the clock on the timeline, having to raise the volume on it as the clicking way quiet, we then had to use noise reduction to remove a background hum that was on the video. We then put the correct narrative on, followed by the sounds of the environment for that particular character.

Sound of Space- Gallery visit

As part of my research i visited the Site Gallery. There was a new exhibition on by Zoe Beloff called The Infernal Dream of Mutt & Jeff:

This exhibition was based on her archives of movement, taken from all kinds of art. In the first of the two exhibitions was an episode from one of the  series of old animations done by Mutt & Jeff. In this episode the characters were in a cabin and cold from the snow, soon finding themselves talking to a strange who happened to be the devil, sending them down with him. They were given the task to keep the last flame of hell alive as the rest was iced over. It ended with one of the characters waking up from a dream. I really enjoyed watching this piece as although they were silent, the characters movements were enough to tell the story, alongside the dubs. They are based around a series of human movements to give the initial movements of the characters. Plus a new film alongside two films from the 1950's based on the 'Gilbreth's time-motion studies and a case of contagious paranoia become strangely interlinked.' Throughout this exhibition she demonstrates the link between old cinema, as in the old anaimations, and new cinema in the mix of films from now and the 1950's. I personally didn't understand the meanings behind this exhibition but found that the film about the motion studies to be very clever. From the way that two screens with two characters on were saying exactly the same thing and the same time to be well done and it left your eyes wondering which way to look.

In the second exhibition were a series of drawings of her explaining how she though of the movements were created and how industrial ideas were effecting cinematic aspirations. Once again i found this exhibition to be a little hard to understand. But her drawings were very good.

Sense of space- Recording

We decided that we would split the recordings so that we both had something to record. We decided that I would record;

• The narrative of the two women (one done by myself and one by Amanda)
• The police sirens
• Traffic noise
• Inside of the car

And Jacob would record

• The narrative of the local man (done by himself)
• Gun sound
• Street sounds
• The 'injured' man breathing and dieing
• Inside the shop

On the day that I was recording I had no problems in getting all of my sounds. Amanda was nervous when recording, but listening back to the sounds and they were how we wanted them to be. One of the sounds that i struggled with more than the others was getting the police sirens, but thankfully i live near a police station and it didn't take long for me to get them. 

Sense of Space-Equipment/ location list

Equipment needed

• Marantz
• Rifle mic
• 3 actors; Myself, Jacob, Amanda
• Car
• Something to make a gun noise with 

Location

• Inside a car
• In a shop
• On the street

Sense of space- Template

We start in the morning on a suburban shopping street; there is some traffic on the roads and people talking as the morning rush hour is about to get underway. All this time there is the faint sound of a clock ticking in the background.

Local man: “I know this’ll sound a bit cliché, but it really was a day like any other. I remember it was the day before my sister’s birthday and I was going to the shop to get her a card, and some milk. It was my day off work so I thought I’d get a few things out of the way.”

As the man talks he goes into a shop, there is the sound of the interior of a shop, a till ringing and money being put on a counter. Noises of cans being moved on shelves and rustling of sweet wrappers.

Woman in car: “I was on my way to work, like I always am in the morning, and I was driving through this street which is usually very quiet, I’ve never known anything happen on it before. It was just a quick and easy way to avoid the busy main roads at that time of the morning.”

The woman is in her car on her way to work. There is the sound of the car as it travels along the road and there is a radio show on.

Radio presenter: “And now for the traffic report: It’s getting busy round St Mary’s roundabout, we’ve also had reports of an accident on Sharrow Vale Road so it’s a bit busy round there. If you see any other problems call us on the traffic line. Now for an update on the weather.”

As the ambient sounds continue the sound of the clock grows quicker and louder.

Woman 2 at home: “Not much was happening. I was off that day, just sitting around watching the telly with a drink and some food. Not planning on doing much.”

There are some more sounds of the street and the shop.

All: “And then, it happened.”

There is a gunshot, silencing all other sounds around it including the clock.

Local man: “For about ten seconds afterwards there was just this deafening silence.”

Woman in car: “Deadly, it was if someone had sucked all the sound out of the world.”

Woman 2 at home: “I just thought it was a car back firing, just something you hear every day, so I thought nothing of it.”

The sound slowly starts returning to the street, but along with it is some very shallow quick breathing.

Woman in car: “I got out of the car and, he was just there, lying on the pavement.”

Local man: “It looked like he’d been hit in the chest; he was breathing very shallowly, very rapidly. Didn’t look like he had much life left in him.”

Quick footsteps are heard as the harsh breathing continues. Along with three phone keypad tones.

Woman in car: “Covered in blood, I called 999, but really I didn’t have much hope for him.”

People start to talk again as the sharp breathing continues.

Woman 2 at home: “Then I heard the sirens. Looked out of my window, saw the police and an ambulance 

going past my house. And then it, just dawned on me what had happened and what that noise was.”

Sirens begin to fade in, growing louder and louder until they stop suddenly.

Local man: “The ambulance and the police arrived, and they began to resuscitate the guy.”

Paramedics are trying to resuscitate the man, the breathing slowly turns to a choking like noise, until the man breathes his last breath.

Woman in car: “There were all these questions: What did you see? Who did it? What’s this guy’s name? And no one knew, he was just walking down the road.”

Local man: “And then he was dead.”

Sense of space- Final idea

After struggling with the pub idea we were pretty stumped about what else we could do, so we went to Debbie to seek advice. What we quickly discovered was that Jacob and I were taking the brief too seriously in terms of doing an actual space. Whilst talking to her we came up with the idea to do individual people's experiences at the time that a particular event. Debbie suggested we met up again and brain stormed some more ideas, so we did.

We decided to use a recent shooting that happened on Spital Hill and two stage 3 people's where abouts at the time:

"Teenager shot dead at Sheffield birthday party

AN EMERGENCY community meeting was held in a Sheffield suburb after an 18-year-old was shot dead at a birthday party in the early hours of yesterday morning.
The youth, named by locals as Deeq Ali, was killed at 2.40am after an argument broke out among Somali youths at the Spital Hill Plaza on Spital Hill, Burngreave."

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/teenager_shot_dead_at_sheffield_birthday_party_1_3922350

Due to the little time we had left, we had to act in the piece ourselves including using my partner.  We also recorded some background sounds that were representative of the location on the day of the shooting.  

We first made a rough plan of what sounds we thought would suit the piece and the order we would like the events;

• Traffic
• People laughing
• have one person start the narrative
• feed other people into it- telling their account of the day
• Their daily routine
• gun shot
• Then they say 'it happened'
• Silence
• carry on with narrative
• police sirens
• resuscitating sounds
• 'and then he was dead'
• clock in the background 
• maybe add some universal music?
• Inside the car (engine sounds)

Sense of Space ideas

Once Jacob and I paired up, we met up and drafted a list of ideas. At first we struggled with idea but managed to come up with a few that would suit the brief.

1. The sense of the pub- Having a laugh with your friends, playing pool
2. Inside someone's head- The imaginary space of a person's processing mind
3. Uni- The atmosphere in university late at night
4. A journey- maybe the drive to work

After thinking about some of these ideas logically we realised that many other people would potentially have thought about doing it so decided to per-sue the idea of the pub. 

Idea 1- The pub

One of the idea that we decided to follow was the idea of showing the enjoyment of going to the pub and spending time with your friends. For this idea I went to a pub in the city centre with a group of my friends and made a list of the different sounds that i heard:

• Glasses
• People laughing
• playing pool
• beers being poured
• Smoking
• Music
• People chatting
• Person drinking
• doors squeaking 
• games machine

After meeting with Dom, the feedback that we were given was to try and add more of a narrative to the project so that it has a flow and doesn't just sound like a group of sounds. 

Unfortunately when we got together with a marantz we realised that the idea wouldn't work too well because there wasnt much of a narrative plus when we listened to the sounds back there was an over powering song in the background that we wouldnt be able to use due to copy right issues