Pressure Project 2: Audio Story
Posted: October 21, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Prompt
This Pressure Project was originally offered to me by my Professor, Aisling Kelliher:
Topic – narrative sound and music
Select a story of strong cultural significance. For example this can mean an epic story (e.g. The Odyssey), a fairytale (e.g. Red Riding Hood), an urban legend (e.g. The Kidney Heist) or a story that has particular cultural meaning to you (e.g. WWII for me, Cuchulainn for Kelliher).
Tell us that story using music and audio as the the primary media. You can use just audio or combine with images/movies if you like. You can use audio from your own personal collections, from online resources or created by you (the same with any accompanying visuals). You should aim to tell your story in under a minute.
You have 5 hours to work on this project.
Process
I interpreted the prompt as that “music and audio as the primary media” means that the audio can stand on its own or changes the meaning of the visual from what it would mean on its own.
I also was working on this project concurrently with a project for my Storytelling for Design class in which we were required to make a 30 second animation describing a how-to process. The thoughts and techniques employed in this project were directly influenced by hours of work on that project.
After the critique of that project, I had a very good sense for timing, sound, and creating related meeting from the composition of unrelated elements.
I blocked out five hours of time for my project and began with practicing on the narrative of Little Red Riding Hood. I used the sounds available from soundbible.com, a resource introduced in the previously mentioned Design class, to try to recreate this narrative from a straight-ahead viewpoint. After starting on my Little Red Riding Hood prototype, I found that I spend over thirty seconds introducing a foreshadowing of the wolf and that this story wouldn’t do.
I then moved on to other wolf-related stories including a prototype of The Three Little Pigs. My work with these animal noises brought me close to current recent life experiences. I had 2 friends test the story and then refined it, completing the assignment.
Result
The resulting recording (included below) told the story of a farmer defending his sheep from a wolf using only sound effects, no dialogue.
Critique
The most intriguing part of this project was not the work itself, but rather the final context in which the work existed on presentation day. Most of the other original stories were about large cultural issues. I presented last. I was struck while presenting the piece how much priming affects perception. From the previous examples, the class was primed for something large and culturally controversial or making a bold statement.
My piece was simple and different as it used no visuals and no words to tell the story. This simplicity was pretty much lost to a group that was primed for something large and controversial. I found the critique unsuccessful in that I did not receive feedback on the work I had created so much as the work I had not created.
From this exercise, I learned the importance of allowing time to contextualize your work and reset the mood when you are presenting a unique piece among a series of unique pieces. Our mind naturally desires to make connections between unconnected things; this is the root of creativity itself. So in the context of coursework, conference presentations, etc. and every interaction in the era where everything exists within a larger frame, it is vital to be clear about distinguishing work that is meant to be separate. This can often be achieved through means as simple as a Title and an Introduction. Giving some understanding of whose the work is, why they created it, and what they desired to learn through it gives much better context to critiquers and helps keep conversation focused and centered for the best learning experience for everyone.