After being inducted on the Super 8’s and renting the sound equipment, my group and I went off to the top floors of a car park in Plymouth. I know that sound is important, but because we were using Super 8’s and were focusing on space and architecture rather than action I knew it would be VERY important in order to give the film some narrative. The life and action of the film would have to come through sound rather than visuals.
Floor 6 of the car park was almost totally empty. A large desolate space of emptiness characterised by a crepuscular glow from the lights, intermittent drips into puddles and pillars that harshly divide the space. Sounds pretty brutalist, right? Despite feeling slight uncomfortable by the bleakness of the space it had a tranquillity to it. Surrounded by an overwhelming and bustling city, this span of open nothingness brings a stillness to the atmosphere and a stillness to me. We decided that this is what we wanted to emphasise, the other worldliness of such a bog standard and probably overlooked location in this city. So, we recorded sounds from inside the carpark; the drips into the puddle, light footsteps, echoes up the stairwell and the sounds of birds as they fly close by. In the final film we want to contrast it with the outside fuss and so recorded traffic and other cityscape sounds to contrast. In the edit I would like to play with altering the audio so it sounds more abstract and overwhelming, so it is more a reflection of the busy chaos of the outside city rather than a literal representation.
PCA Isobel Wilkinson - BA Film 