Sophia Wang
The Manipulated Relations
Prompt: This project encourages students to think beyond video as a sequence of moving images, by considering sound and installation as essential aspects of the viewer’s experience. How does the soundscape of a film effect the way a sense of time is understood. How can it place the viewer in the context of a film. How does video installation (as opposed to watching video or film on a screen or in the theatre) create a different time-based experience for the viewer to navigate? How can watching video works become an embodied experience? The final product is to create this 3-minute video with soundscape or video installation.
In this project, I wish to present the concept of manipulated time by using audio. The entire video is audio driven, suggesting that the pace of the flash light varies on each separate set accordingly to the character speaking. The dialogue is an excerpt taken from the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. I found the play interesting as the plot and the movement of time is driven by characters blindly manipulated by love. In the video, the scenography work I created of the forest is multiplied.
The center frame being the pace controller, playing in a constant speed. The frame on the left representing Hermia and the right representing Helena. When one is speaking, they’re corresponding frame’s spotlight speeds up. The forest trees are formed with distorted hands, further symbolizing for manipulation.
The audio of the recorded dialogue is processed by adding some studio reverb. Moreover, the single channel audio was worked to achieve the effect of two, left and right channels. Panner keyframes were added to do so. In addition, I also layered the audio of light rain on top of the background music, in order to help advocate the central conflict between the two female characters. Lastly, when watching the video, the audiences would have to first close their eyes. This is to allow the audience to better immerse and feel embodied within the video.