Aesthetic Part Three: Post-production Notes

After hooking up my camera and importing the footage, I promptly gave it back to my friend who would return it to the window in the morning, upon which it would be promptly checked out to a reserved user, meaining there would be none left for checkout. This basically meant that I couldn't take any reshoots within a resonable amount of time, and whatever I hadn't already reshot would just be used as is or not at all. I tended towards the latter. I really dislike not having my own camera anymore, but such is life when it's not yours exclusively. The Art Department, however, has really nice cameras for being in such small packages and their picture quality is superb, though they have the most confusing user interfaces. What really takes the cake are their selection of microphones and video tripods, which are also great. What is not-so-great is the fact that everything has too quick a check-out turnaround. That's not too great for spontaneous capture. So this is just another thing to think about when doing my last two pieces, or in general. Stick to a schedule for a reason.

It all looked good, and I basically rendered everything sequentially as I listed out in my production notes. First was the drawn-out sequence of making tea, which I didn't draw out too much. I made it flow and took out the extraneous parts, like turning on the kettle, watching it steam it, turning it off, picking it up, pouring it out, putting it down, etc. Instead it was all implied, boiling water, pouring water. it's all that simple. The same feel I tried to employ with the tea part, trimming that shot down to about half and making incontinuous cuts. Then I got right to it, depicting the ill-fated attempt at paper writing. It begins with an empty screen, but suddenly, words! Which are being deleted. and replaced. and sip of tea. even more procrastination, or perhaps inspiration with a little music. Very little actual paper writing actually takes place after a while, and I wanted that suggestion to come about very quickly in the narrative.

When the music starts, it doesn't stop, with some very essential exceptions. I chose the Postal Service - "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" because it has such an upbeat feel to it but reading the lyrics, is ironically depressing and deals with loneliness, appropriate enough for our solo student. It was also this song, during it's series of electronic blips that I looked up at my computer while laying my head down in the process of writing a paper and basically felt small and powerless compared to this thing in front of me. It was a great bonding moment, me and my computer. And that's why I tried to capture it. It's implied that the subject is listening to to song, perhaps over and over again, but it provides the only bit of continuity besides the fact that nothing meaningful is being put onto electronic paper. I could have chopped up the album the song was off of, which is also ironically titled Give Up, to make it seem like he was listening to a series of songs to give it temporal correctness and not just one. But I kept it simple and stuck to one song and it's qualities to invoke a concise, music video-type feeling.

As for the subject's downfall, I used the bodily detail shots more and more, to suggest some sort of encroachment on the camera's part on the subject's personal space. It hopefully would suggest a lot of discomfort on his part of being encroached. Also on par with a downfall motif, I use the blurrier shots as time goes on, just check out the clock and also how stable the image gets. The hand-held, mobile shots of what time it is again evoke the fact that the ability to focus and see straight is a linear relation to how late it is. Also, most shots to begin with are at eye level with the subject but are then framed from above, to suggest that the subject has been overpowered or has shrunk physically, psychologically, mentally, etc.

As the subject is looking at a skewed angle up from the desk at the computer, I employed a lot of super-soft focuses in post through iMovie's wonderful effects palettes. They didn't look as well as a wanted at first, so as I tried to revert the changes done to the shots to their original form, but I ended up just layering the new effect on top of the old one I didn't want. This is why those shots look super washed out. I kept them because they're so washed out, they're ridiculously altered, but so is the subject in some form (i.e. tired, NOT on drugs). At night everything just seems that much brighter if it's emitting some sort of light.

As the subject is out in the hallway, I increase the introspective subtext of the shot by framing the subject closer and closer. I also cut the music completely to begin with, but on the advice of one of my critiquers, I only subdued it to barely audible at the 8% limit that iMovie allows. The suggestion is that it is still playing somewhere in the background, perhaps in the room whose wall the subject is slumped up against. The music, as a consistent component of the piece, serves as the reminding thread that the situation at hand still exists, i.e. he has a paper to write. I use a parallel structure with the computer, which as a counterpoint, is shot from below and is visibly larger and as the shots progress, bigger than the subject, especially the blinking cursor that indicates where words should be written.

The last suggestion is that this has given the subject a new hope for completion, the raising of the head from the desk, the last hurrah of a swig from the travel mug, and the chatter of typing. Naturally, this is just exposition for the ultimate shot, the slamming of the computer lid, upon which the music stops, and the constant sense that something must be done.

I ended with the only title in the movie, "The Aesthetic Process," itself a reference to the fact that I went through the same process as the subject to do this process. I used the typing effect to display the text, as if this too is being typed up in some form (which it is).

The biggest consideration here was sound. I amplified everything that was pertinent and able, the sound of boiling water, pouring water, the rustle of an opening tea bag, typing, the slamming of the computer lid, and of course, the music. All of those sounds had to be considerably louder than the music, which itself was amplified above normal. In contrast, I blocked out the sound on anything that had ben in it for myriad reasons. For one thing, I was shouting motivations at him and had him play "District Sleeps Alone Tonight" while he was acting to put him in the right mindset, so I couldn't use the sound. Especially him swallowing pills or blowing his nose was disappointing I couldn't use. I figured it wasn't a problem, and where he was visibly typing at the end, I just took the audio from another of my typing exploits and pasted it over its audio. Basically, there is a hierarchy of sound with the subject. If he is sitting at the computer, the only essential sounds are those of him interacting with it, i.e. typing, or slamming it's lid shut. This fits well with the theme that the computer is an overbearing presence in the subject's existence.

So after I implemented all of this, I watched it a couple of times and was satisfied enough to put it on DVD...