Sound Rough Sketch No. Two

Here I again tried out a sound technique that I thought might be valuable in my final video. I wanted to play with having sound, building it up a bit, and then cutting to no sound, and then sound again.

Sound Rough Sketch No. One

Here I wanted to play with an idea that was brought to me. I took a sound and filtered it quite a bit and then used the two sounds, the filtered and the non-altered, and used them to signify two different areas when cutting in the video.

Silent Rough Sketch No. Two

Here I messed around with layering images on top of each other. I like that it is the action from different angles, kind of cubist. I also like the play of dark and light as the images move over each other.

Silent Rough Sketch No. One

This is my first silent test that I made using the footage I captured on my drift walk. In the clip I experimented with long fades of my model in different areas of downtown. I also tried to use cars to tie the shots together better.

Production Strategies

As I set off on another exploration of Milwaukee, WI I decided on a new set of parameters. With the addition of video to this project I had to decide on some way that I would limit the kind of images I would capture. First I decided that I would use a "model" for most of the shots to add continuity to a project that could very easily fall into randomness. The second thing I wanted to attempt with my images was getting static framing without using a tripod. I decided on this because I generally prefer static framing and I thought it might influence my composition choices if I was forced to do this within the confines of what the world provided me.

As far as where I would venture this time I decided to return to the starting point of my last walk, the coast of Lake Michigan in Bay View. This time though instead of going North along the coast I would go South. So on a rather blustery Sunday afternoon I set off with my model and began on an image capturing walk. As the walk went on I grew increasingly frustrated with how this strategy was panning out. It seemed that to the South the area was incredibly unvarying. After about 3 hours of walking I called it a quits for the day. Later on as I reviewed the footage I found most of it uninteresting and uninspired. I felt my boredom with the area seeping through into the work and knew that I would have to rethink my plan. This first excursion though was not in vain. One thing that I had shot really stuck out to me and would inspire everything I would do after. It was two images I had collected in front of a fence blocking off electrical machinery. Here I had my model lay on his stomach on the cement ground and shot both a close-up and a wider shot. As I played with the footage I decided to overlay the images on top of each other. There it was. The genesis of everything to come. There was just something so wonderful about this ghostly image.

For my second attempt to capture images I decided to go to downtown Milwaukee and travel the streets and alleys of a section of it looking for other locals for my mode. I wanted to go downtown because I felt that whatever it was about that first image that struck me had something to do with the cold and yet ambiguous surroundings of the concrete and metal fence. It was also at this time that I decided on the method of filming all the shots both with the model and without. Lastly I decided that this trip would be in the night time because it seemed to best reflect the feeling I was now chasing. This second trip was far more fruitful and along with the image I have discussed from the first shoot became the basis of my final project.

The sound was recorded in a few trips to the same downtown area that I explored on my second image walk. The two sounds used in the final video were recorded next to the Milwaukee River and are of the slight creak of a wooden support of a dock and off the general ambiance without the creaking.

Drift Map

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Key:
Blue/Yellow-Drift One
Pink-Drift Two Walk One
Red-Drift Two Walk Two/Sound Walks