PWM

Hi Everyone,

I'm finally getting around to putting up some stuff! here goes...

On 25th February 2010 I took part in a jam session at the Toilet Gallery called ‘LEAVE YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR’. PWM was created from film and recordings taken of my violin playing during that jam session. I created 4 separate films of 2, 3, 5 and 7 minutes long, to be played simultaneously.

I wanted to try and recreate the improvisation, using films of different lengths playing on a continuous loop. Using prime numbers to determine the length of the films ensured that the piece would be constantly changing for 210 minutes.

The films were created from the movement captured on camera during playing in the jam session. The first edit was done without sound, using only sections of the film where there was visible movement. This approach was chosen to represent and mirror the unpredictable nature of improvising in a group.

The films were presented as a video installation at the Toilet Gallery in April 2010. As the films loop and repeat the sounds change and grow, recreating the experience of the Jam session distilled through a single instrument and point of view.

This 5 minute excerpt is an example of how the project worked, using a screen capture of a jitter version – the video quality s a bit fuzzy but you get the idea.

By the way, it’s all just violin. I mucked about with the sound to give it different textures..

Hope you enjoy it!

Maria

EraseAllMessages (Second Term Project)

You can watch it on youtube following this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1uYsSKnDA8

Notes from the commentary: The current multimedia project is a conceptual piece consisting of two parts: music and film. The elements and ideas of the concept are scattered throughout the whole project and invite the viewer/listener to fit them together in a multimedia jigsaw puzzle. In this project I decided not to score a film, not to compose music considering the limitations of the moving image medium but to follow the exact opposite route: Film was made to fill the context blanks and reinforce the connotations of music. Using a Greek folk song as my launching pad, I worked on a context and a composition level, using, later, both elements to form the image.

The current project could also be considered as an attempt to define and establish the Greek term ksenitia (ξενιτιά) through the use of a Greek folk song, my sound treatment and my compositional part on it. There is no literal English translation for the term ksenitia but the closest to the original meaning would be migration. Though it is often used to describe this phenomenon, the term migration lacks the historical and emotional connotations that the term ksenitia (referring to a foreign land) is charged with. Ksenitia means not only migration but also to be deprived of family, home and the feeling of familiarity as well as to experience the violent division of the family and the distance from the loved ones.

In some cases in the migration songs, bad news are delivered through ships, in other, through letters, even the wind, birds or dogs undertake to deliver the bad news. In this particular song, the man sends his own eyes to his beloved. The eyes have to find his beloved and explain to her the reason of his prolonged stay in the foreign land. Guy Saunier in The Folk Song: Songs of Exile quotes: ‘The prolonged remain of him [the migrate] in the foreign land despite his will and his hopes, whatever his fate and reason for this extension, was for him, his family and the whole of the folk society an unjust and inexplicable state… …:witchcraft was the only explanation’ (p.160-161, translation by the author). So, the eyes blame a witch, who’s power is even more strengthened by the fact that she is a descendant of another witch and is stated by examples of this power practiced on the elements of nature. She is so powerful that she can make the birds stop singing and the rivers stop flowing. A power of that range can only justify the non-coming back migrant.

Fly with me

Hello everyone.
This is my first term project, music for this documenary made by three MA students of "Digital Documentary".
There are some archive images deleted due to authorship rights issues and their montage is not exactly the same I did. Despite these details you can get an idea. Comments are wellcome!

Cheaper parcel post

While browsing the very extensive creative commons site archive.org I found this delightful 1935 film made by Len Lye to a commission from the GPO (General Post Office). In that era, the GPO film unit initiated a series of remarkable shorts and documentaries. Anyway, I liked it so much I decided to synchronise my new (equally brief) trio for clarinet, cello and piano, to it. I wrote a bit more about what I did on my personal blog.

Myspace page with links to youtube

Hi Ed, and students/former students,

My name is Tom Reid. I took the Composing for Film & Media course last year.

I've just made a myspace page, with most of my recent music uploaded, and also with links to youtube and shootingpeople.org for my film scores.

www.myspace.com/tomreidcomposer

Hope you like it.

Thanks

Jean-Luc Godard

We had a good discussion in class today on unconventional uses of music and sound, including in Godard, notably 'Armide' from 'Aria', and 'Vivre Sa Vie'.

Isabel has just written the following:

This is the fragment I was trying to remember at class from Weekend:



I find the reflexions about music very funny, and I love the nonstopping camera.

Epa's website

Hello everyone!

I have created my new Website, http://fasianos.com, where you can get information about my work in the field of Musical Composition. Among all, there is a page which includes recent compositions of mine. I hope you all like it. Please feel free to give me feedback.

My e-mail address is: ef.facebook@hotmail.com

Regards,

Epa

Dan Elton (CFFM 2008-2009)

Hi everyone (both new and old students) doing CFFM and especially Ed,

I think the easiest way for anyone to see my 'film work' at the moment is to go to my MySpace account. All my films are there, including ones I made as a student, and you can find me under Viking Delta.

Please also feel free to email me at:

danielelton@vikingdelta.co.uk or danielguildford@yahoo.com

I also have a website:

http://www.vikingdelta.co.uk/ and you can of course find me on Facebook under Daniel Lewis Elton!
Dan

'Born Yesterday' by Maxine Sheppard

Maxine Sheppard (CFFM 2007-8) created her original film Born Yesterday as her end of year portfolio/dissertation project. Maxine worked with her family's archive footage (shot on super 8), and combined it with contemporary video footage of the same scenes revisited, to create a reflective piece on change and memory, in which music plays a key role in evoking the passage of time.

Little Things

An attempt to close-up and capture "domestic images" of my everyday life. Also an experiment on the amount of music an image filled with information can stand. What I discovered through that first project is that though the shots are still and silent (muted their sound), closing up on things on such a level, leaves little room for musical or any kind of sound information. The lower the register and the more the notes (and/or instruments), the less attention I was able to pay to the image.

Near the end of this short film I'm using my one and only moving shot in which I move around some coins. This moving shot is interrupted by bits of all the previous shots so the contrast between them is even more accentuated. The reversed notes used in that part are played on the bits of the "calm" shots that are already introduced and not on the moving coin shot, as one would expect, so that any stressful feeling will not be generated from the money moving around but from the accentuated contrast between that and the "calm" shots.

As very well pointed out in class, I chose the piano because a solo instrument, particularly (as I, that I played in the recording, am a pianist) the piano, gives a more "personal" tone to the film, it points out the fact that "these are my things, my everyday images", underlines the idea of possession and emotional bonding.

In any case, what you get from watching it is more a matter of interpretation than of my actual intentions.

The Waiting

Hello everybody!
Here I post the two versions of my first project. I don't know if appropriate to do, but I wanted to try how this blogg works.
Kind regards.

'An Art of Movement' by Doon MacDonald

Doon MacDonald (CFFM 2008-9) created 'An Art of Movement' by mounting a camcorder to her bicycle and filming her journey to work. She edited her film with Final Cut Express and created the music in Logic.

'Flat' by Robert Stillman

Robert Stillman (CFFM 2007-8) created this short film 'Flat' which observes the rooms he was living in at the time. A short, site-specific film and soundtrack that integrates abstract footage, found sounds, and composed music into an impressionistic ‘document’ of a living space. Drawing from theory of Jean Epstein, the soundtrack seeks to find a sonic equivalent of photogenie that reflects the intentions of the piece’s filming techniques. Robert's website.

Music for film and media

This new blog has been created specially for current and former students of the Composing for film and media MA courses in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. The aim is to provide a place to show and share work done as a result of the course. People are very welcome to discuss the processes involved in making their work, and to ask questions.

The blog is independent of Sussex University and all content is the responsibility of individuals who upload. Please do not infringe anyone's rights. If you have any concerns about any material please comment directly in the site, as the blog will be monitored regularly.