This week I received the sound track from the musician (my Brother) which he had made based on the phone meeting we had about it and the specifications I sent in an email to him (see previous post) and I also sent him the finished edit as it stood at the time. He sent me the finished sound track so I added this onto my edit and reviewed it. I was really happy with the sound track as it used a lot of sounds I asked for and flowed with the emotions of the piece the way I wanted it to. He also specifically gave the dress motif a sound motif to go with it which worked well along with having other sounds come in for certain objects to make it match the visuals well and flow with the visuals. I also liked the way that it defiantly comes across as a sound track that is working with the visuals as opposed to just adding a music track to it. I was very happy with this soundtrack so I then moved on to begin looking into the visuals.
I began by making minor changes simply refining some timings between shots and some transitions however I had to make sure to do this in a way which kept the overall timing of the piece the same so that it still fitted within the music track well. I then moved on to look at things which I had received feedback about from tutors and colleges and also people who knew nothing about my piece. I decided that the sunflower did seem like the least fitting visual within the overall piece due to its colour being a lot warmer and its shape being very different and the naturalness of it, therefore it juxtaposing too much. I decided to remove some sunflower shots and shorten others. I removed the second ink drop on sunflower visual as this was not necessaries it wasn't adding to the piece. I then stretched the visuals each side to cover this gap so that I didn't mess up the timing. I also then shortened some of my other sunflower shots slightly to make it flow within the piece more.
I then looked into some of my reversed visuals I have at the end of the piece as I felt there was too many and therefore they lost power. I decided that the reverse shot of the dress then being folded back up at the end would have more power and significance if it were the only reverse shot. Therefore I decided to take away my other reverse shot which was of the ring jumping back up off the table. It had been observed by some people that this shot didn't fit in visual well amongst the shots anyway. Instead in order to still have a ring shot that did fit in I added a basic shot of the ring spinning and instead made it really slowly and gently fade to away so that were just left with a white background. This work a lot better as it now visual fits within the piece and doesn't distract from the important dress shot.
I then looked into the bathroom facial shots as these didn't always flow due to the background being white however not as stark and bright white as the infinity table. I had the bright white infinity table and the black background in the body shots and then the face submerged shots which were a duller white bathtub background. I was unable to brighten the background effectively as I was still unable to get it to match the infinity table and this was coating my face to look too pale and therefore it didn't match the skin tones in the movement shots which was a previous issue I had solved by colour correcting these visuals to make the skin tones match. Instead it occurred to me that I could try and soften the edges and potentially use a vignette to darken and blur out the background. I tried this and it worked a lot better as I was able to make the background look a lot deliberately darker around the face which not only added more focus to my face but also made the background less notable as simply just a bathtub and this is what I wanted. The bathtub was too recognisable to work effectively within the rest of the abstract unidentifiable spaces so this effect is much better and now it doesn't stand out amongst the other spaces and coloured backgrounds. By removing the shots which weren't fitting in smoothly and adjusting others to make them flow better I feel the piece comes across much more powerfully allowing viewers to absorb the visuals and the emotions of these strong shots as they flow, making these visuals more memorable now hopefully resonating with an audience more.
I then spent a lot of time colour correcting and grading my piece so that it flowed much more seamlessly and so that all shots matched each other better. I pulled up the exposure a lot on the infinity table shots to eliminate any distracting shadows in the table and make them all match in brightness and therefore effect. I also used focused on the sunflowers again as there colours were very bright compared to a lot of other objects so I desaturated them slightly to make them fit in better. I was much happier with it now being coloured correctly as nothing jarred colour wise on screen and it does seem more professional now and the way I envisioned it being.
I was now really happy with the piece overall and felt like I had reached the point were I was happy with it as it was showing the emotions and memories I wanted to interpret with this poetic language that I have worked so hard to achieve. It has developed much further than I could have originally planned as it has shifted from originally an artistic installation to a refined poetic short film which can have multiple outcomes in the future too. Its themes have developed a lot more intellectually from simply showing the childhood trauma and situation of my parents divorce to instead thinking more deeply about these memories and how they have developed in my mind and developed me as I have grown up and this psychological process and effects. It uses interpretations of my memories through the atmosphere at the time and the way I felt about it and how I feel and think back on it now and makes a tangible poetic film from intangible things that have erected me for a very long time and still effect me now.
The next stage was to add in credits and titles which I wanted to keep as simple and basic as possible. I decided I did not want a title at the beginning of my piece as I want people to view it with no preconceptions or guidance so instead I decided to have my title at the end. The only reason I am having a title at all is because I want to use a title which will define the process of memory and they process this piece takes. Therefore after listing down titles and having many conversations with people and lots more research (see previous post) I settled with the title 'Engrammic'. This is the adjective of the word Engram. Its definition is 'the physical basis of an individual memory in the brain'. This title has the most meaning within the piece and resonates with me the most as it is a term that has inspired me, thinking about the way my memories have developed yet never giving much consideration to the physicalness of memories before which is also why its so interesting and defiantly adds to the piece. As well as having just this title I also added the definition of this word into the end title screen too as I knew that it wasn't going to be a word that a lot of people would commonly know and the definition is the key part of this. I then had this fade and the credits simply appear, not in any particular fancy way just fading from credit to credit so not to distract at all from the film but just give thanks to all involved. Now that I have titles and credits I then exported my final piece ready for testing which is my next step.
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