WALK FIVE ++ - Sound and Vision
While Walking Listening and Looking
(60/40 Seeing/Hearing)
The week of sight and sound.
Clearly I am a visual person. Last week, the week of sound only, was less inspiring for me than this week of sight and sound. As much as I enjoyed other classmates’ audio pieces and as much as they brought imagery to mind as I listened, as a creator I struggled with finding the imagery in my own piece. I was too close to it. I knew the source of all the sounds and could not move beyond that. Perhaps if I listened again after some time to forget I could experience mystery and imagination in my own piece.
In contrast, this week’s project was fun, albeit time consuming. The more I watched the video, the more I picked up on serendipitous moments, particularly in transitions when the composition of one clip gently blended into the composition of the next. And sounds that I recorded at another time matched the video nicely. Some little details came to my attention that I had missed earlier on. In the second clip, the moss fly-over, I had been unaware that there was helicopter sound on the video. That made me chuckle. I feel some segments in this piece could be longer but I opted to err on the short side initially. I will likely go back and re-edit to make it 20-30 secs longer when I have the time.
One of my more interesting observations from this week was this: as a result of all this paying attention, I was noticing just how distracted I am on a walk now. Distracted by what I am seeing and hearing and a compulsion to capture it somehow. I have the luxury of walking almost every day so to fight back on that obsession, I will now designate pure walking days (no recording no camera or microphone allowed). As a temptation to capture a sight or sound arises, I will acknowledge and let go. At least I will try hard to do this.
Carrie - your description of being more visual than audio really comes through in this video. Mostly I mean the visual composition of some of your shots is really wonderful. There's a short clip of a small twig in the water, where the twig crosses diagonally and the reflection of a cloud in the top left corner and the slight reflection of a tree that's really stunning. And then it melts into it's component parts of a separate shot of a tree branch on water, and I really like how those pull together to make a lot of sense. You mention that the composition of one clip moves into the composition of another, and I definitely agree that this works here.
ReplyDeleteAlso I think it's a great idea to designate pure walking days. In my experience with this, it was very hard to do at first, as my hand reflexively shot to my pocket to find my phone all the time. So I just stopped carrying it entirely, which helped tremendously and really added to my enjoyment of walking itself.
Also, yes, that helicopter sound with the moss made me laugh as well.
Carrie, I really enjoyed your edits. The transitions and overlays between sections were lovely. In your writing you mention picking up on the serendipitous moments the more you watch the video. I love how that happens. I too find that the editing offers us another whole experience of attention!
ReplyDeleteHi Carrie,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great piece, it really shared the experience. In other words, I felt very present on YOUR walk, in that respect it was super successful from my perspective and with respect to the content of the class. The overlays worked beautifully to transition from one sight (site) to the next. I'm curious to know what the sound at the beginning and the end was because I was imagining you walking across a creaky old wooden bridge! Thank you.
Laurie