For the last 8 weeks we've been looking at documentary form, the unconscious identity and the concept of self-reflexivity. The first four weeks were research based and I took this opportunity to incorporate my interest in philosophy and the fact that I was already reading some Nietzsche when looking into theories around "truth".
The concept behind the documentary, which was our practical unit for the second four weeks, was that it was meant to explore technology's effect on social change, and how it plays into the way we construct our identity.
I decided to focus this topic on musicians. As I thought it would be interesting to delve into how bands and artists construct their identity, especially as music is already such a significant interest of mine. I also thought this would be an effective way to implement my idea of building a showcase website for bands (that I've briefly discussed before) in some way or another. I decided to make short films focusing on each individual band I met as a test run for my website idea, as well as making the documentary project, which, I believed, would all work well together and accompany the website effectively.
However, I think I may have been a little over-ambitious here and that my focus on the website may have detracted my attention from making the documentary solid as a stand alone piece.
I decided - rather ambitiously and stubbornly - to work by myself this term, rather than in a group. This was mostly due to poor experiences in groups in the past, but also because my role has tended to be mostly technical in recent projects. I've been focusing on realising other peoples ideas or at least co-producing concepts, and not giving enough input to the core concepts myself, so I wanted to put the pressure on myself this time to produce something entirely of my own.
It turns out this wasn't exactly the best idea. Traipsing to and around London by myself with all my camera and sound equipment, a laptop, notepad and two hard-drives, wasn't exactly easy, especially when it came to getting quality video and decent sound and lighting.
I also decided not to involve any friends that are musicians - not at this stage anyway - to not use any contacts I already had and to try my best to get in touch with as many decent bands as possible. I ended up with three, very talented bands, an independent record store, a recording studio/band manager and a guy called David Balfe, an extremely successful musician/producer/manager/record label/A&R man/rights publisher/music video director - just about every aspect of the industry you could name.
I was attempting to get in touch with a musician called Derek Meins (aka the Agitator) and accidentally got the attention of David, who contacted me and kindly offered to be involved with the doc. He very modestly told me to Wikipedia his name and see if I thought his opinion would be of any value to me. I was sort of in shock when I found out he was a musician in the 80's, playing in the Teardrop Explodes and (one of my favourite bands) Echo and the Bunnymen. He also managed both bands and started his own record label to release them though - producing 'Crocodiles' (an album that I highly regard as a huge influence on me and the entire Alt Rock music scene spanning the last few decades) along the way.
In terms of for the site, I'm still reasonably confident I can re-edit the footage into several shorter clips, including all the cut footage that I liked myself, but was irrelevant to the brief for the course, in order to make several short and more focused videos.
As for the website itself, I'm putting a lot of effort into learning the basics behind the layout and design of the site. I'm still not exactly understanding everything that goes on with the coding, but I'm getting a better grasp over it with time and I'm starting to do more simple things myself, like adding a comments section to the artists page so visitors can leave messages, and repositioning all the images. It's all up and running online, but I'm still yet to edit the videos for the three bands that I've shot and there's a lot more work to do on the site before I want to start spreading it properly. At the moment there's only rough-cut videos up for the sake of a prototype.
I'm also still unsure about the name. Taking influence from a solo artist I've been working with in the studio here in Tremough, I thought 'Music and Money' would be suitable for a site that attempts to explore the motivation behind music - after one of his songs we recorded with two mics, an old 3/4 size guitar and in one take. But 'Music and Money' was already taken, so I settled with 'Music or Money', a different implication altogether, but relevant nonetheless. So this is the site URL for now:
www.musicormoney.co.uk
I haven't been using the recording studio as much as I'd like to this term, the work load in the second year is definitely a contrast and I've found myself with a lot less free time. Hopefully I'll be doing some sessions with at least one artist before the holidays, and I'm determined to find myself some Dartington students to start working with at the beginning of next year.
I've also been working on a framework for a short story to pass time occasionally. I've come up with something I think I like, a sort of beginning, middle and end, and I'm starting to build on it when I get a chance. At the moment it's about 8,500 words long and I'm aiming to get a complete narrative of between 10 and 15,000 words - mainly because I never actually finish anything. I've decided if I don't worry about length, and just focus on a finished structure of a story. I can decide to leave it or build on it as I please.
The first line is: "This is the first thing I have ever understood."
I decided - rather ambitiously and stubbornly - to work by myself this term, rather than in a group. This was mostly due to poor experiences in groups in the past, but also because my role has tended to be mostly technical in recent projects. I've been focusing on realising other peoples ideas or at least co-producing concepts, and not giving enough input to the core concepts myself, so I wanted to put the pressure on myself this time to produce something entirely of my own.
It turns out this wasn't exactly the best idea. Traipsing to and around London by myself with all my camera and sound equipment, a laptop, notepad and two hard-drives, wasn't exactly easy, especially when it came to getting quality video and decent sound and lighting.
I also decided not to involve any friends that are musicians - not at this stage anyway - to not use any contacts I already had and to try my best to get in touch with as many decent bands as possible. I ended up with three, very talented bands, an independent record store, a recording studio/band manager and a guy called David Balfe, an extremely successful musician/producer/manager/record label/A&R man/rights publisher/music video director - just about every aspect of the industry you could name.
I was attempting to get in touch with a musician called Derek Meins (aka the Agitator) and accidentally got the attention of David, who contacted me and kindly offered to be involved with the doc. He very modestly told me to Wikipedia his name and see if I thought his opinion would be of any value to me. I was sort of in shock when I found out he was a musician in the 80's, playing in the Teardrop Explodes and (one of my favourite bands) Echo and the Bunnymen. He also managed both bands and started his own record label to release them though - producing 'Crocodiles' (an album that I highly regard as a huge influence on me and the entire Alt Rock music scene spanning the last few decades) along the way.
He later went on to sign Blur - his biggest success - as well as convincing them to change their name from Seymour and managing them until he decided to retire into a very big house in the country, inspiring Blur to pen the Battle-of-Brit-Pop-defining song 'Country House'.
David was kind enough to agree to an interview, and even drove me out to his home (the same country house), made me sandwiches and allowed me to interview him in his kitchen. This was a hugely valuable experience for me, definitely making the whole project worth it, if for no other reason. He was an extremely generous, enthusiastic and passionate person, and had very interesting opinions and insights into the industry.
I spent two weeks filming and interviewing people and then came back to Falmouth for the final week and a half to edit.
The first cut of the doc I was relatively happy with, it was structured in three sections, one introducing each character and beginning to explore what they saw as the 'philosophy' behind music, then delving into their own opinions of how bands build an identity and image - both consciously and subconsciously - and finally discussing how the advent of new digital technologies (with particular focus on Myspace and Facebook has changed this for the better or worse). This cut, however, was twenty-one minutes long, eleven minutes over the specified limit.
Cutting it down to time was a struggle, the end result was a flat and relatively dull documentary that didn't have much of an exploration. It also meant I'd cut out most of the illustrative, cutaway footage of the bands (the most visually pleasing parts), and was left with a lot of 'talking heads' style interviews - something which I'd specifically claimed I would avoid at all costs during pre-production.
I showed the cut to my lecturers two days before the deadline and they weren't particularly impressed, suggesting I have a think and attempt to begin the edit again from a more radical perspective, putting more of myself and my opinions and bias into the piece rather than attempting to be purely observational and letting the characters speak for themselves. They wanted me to highlight, utilise and explore the contradictions and paradoxical elements behind a musician claiming to be natural and unmoved by fashion or image-consciousness when clearly they are entirely built on an image - be it an unconscious one of whether they are fully aware of it.
And the frustrating part is that I didn't disagree with what my tutors were saying. I'd attempted to tackle the documentary as something that coincides with the brief, but also as something that accompanies the website that I wanted to start, and I think those two motivations conflicted. I ended up shooting footage that was too much to do with my concept for the website, that when editing together a documentary for my degree I did end up with something flat and uninteresting as a stand alone piece. I also struggled with taking advantage of the trust these people had invested in me in order to basically mock them - this felt uncomfortable, but was a more entertaining result than the original version.
I ended up struggling to re-edit it and resulted in handing in two unfinished versions, with the intention of the original being my final hand-in if I had to choose. Ultimately, I was pretty frustrated and dissatisfied with this.
In terms of for the site, I'm still reasonably confident I can re-edit the footage into several shorter clips, including all the cut footage that I liked myself, but was irrelevant to the brief for the course, in order to make several short and more focused videos.
As for the website itself, I'm putting a lot of effort into learning the basics behind the layout and design of the site. I'm still not exactly understanding everything that goes on with the coding, but I'm getting a better grasp over it with time and I'm starting to do more simple things myself, like adding a comments section to the artists page so visitors can leave messages, and repositioning all the images. It's all up and running online, but I'm still yet to edit the videos for the three bands that I've shot and there's a lot more work to do on the site before I want to start spreading it properly. At the moment there's only rough-cut videos up for the sake of a prototype.
I'm also still unsure about the name. Taking influence from a solo artist I've been working with in the studio here in Tremough, I thought 'Music and Money' would be suitable for a site that attempts to explore the motivation behind music - after one of his songs we recorded with two mics, an old 3/4 size guitar and in one take. But 'Music and Money' was already taken, so I settled with 'Music or Money', a different implication altogether, but relevant nonetheless. So this is the site URL for now:
www.musicormoney.co.uk
I haven't been using the recording studio as much as I'd like to this term, the work load in the second year is definitely a contrast and I've found myself with a lot less free time. Hopefully I'll be doing some sessions with at least one artist before the holidays, and I'm determined to find myself some Dartington students to start working with at the beginning of next year.
I've also been working on a framework for a short story to pass time occasionally. I've come up with something I think I like, a sort of beginning, middle and end, and I'm starting to build on it when I get a chance. At the moment it's about 8,500 words long and I'm aiming to get a complete narrative of between 10 and 15,000 words - mainly because I never actually finish anything. I've decided if I don't worry about length, and just focus on a finished structure of a story. I can decide to leave it or build on it as I please.
The first line is: "This is the first thing I have ever understood."
