Broken Bottles is one of the 3rd Year grad films I am working on as part of my final project.
The film will be roughly ten minutes long and will not follow a typical dramatic narrative. It's more of a contemplative study of the urban environment and the film is an exploration of how the city landscape has been exploited by both humans and nature.
I will be recording, editing and composing the sound to go with the visuals.
The visuals are static shots of various locations around London. (By static, I mean no camera movement). These shots are like portraits; the subjects being comprised primarily of buildings and spaces around where I study at University; the London College of Communication at Elephant & Castle.
Included in the film are shots of the Heygate Estate, the Elephant & Castle shopping centre, the Strata Tower, Metro Central Heights (originally known as Alexander Fleming House) along with the Blackheath climate camp that took place from late August to early September 2009.
I have been in conversation with two of the film makers about the project, Gary McQuiggin (director) and Leonie Bleasdale (producer). Gary's website is Blackoutinertia.co.uk.
In our initial meeting I was shown footage that had been shot but had yet to be edited together. What struck me, initially was the aesthetic beauty of the shots. In these shots was an area of London that I considered myself quite familiar (I'd been studying here for 2 years, already) however, I never really studied the environment in anywhere near the same detail as was shown in the footage. I actually felt guilty, watching it. I realised that I come to Uni in Elephant & Castle, but as soon as possible, I leave the area. For me, this area held no real interest, it just happened to be a location that my campus was based in. Impressions of the area (and I'm being completely subjective) are that it's deprived, noisy and unsightly.
In early discussions, we talked about the motivations behind making this film and the subject matter chosen. We were in agreement that this film is an exploration of the environment. There are reflexive moments in the film where shots of the camera crew are present, and Gary pointed out that these shots were to show that he and the crew were not intending for this film to be propaganda for a specific ideological message, but were intended to show that they (the film makers) were also discovering the local area and exploring its landscape. This idea interested me because it gave me the chance to build my relationship with the area and explore its sounds; maybe I could discover interesting sounds in a location that previously, I had little interest in.
Although I make no assumptions that this film is completely without motivations, Gary has asserted that he intends the film to maintain a level of ambiguity as to its purpose; he does not want the film to be overtly critical of the dereliction of the area, or bleak and dystopian with its message. He has given me a good deal of freedom to interpret his footage and also, to interpret my own relationship with the area, and the choices that I make with the composition of the sound.
My initial idea for the sound, was to be documentary in the recording and playback of the material. I intended to go and explore and discover these beautiful and unheard sounds that were just waiting to be discovered and immortalised on film. On my first recording session I decided to visit the Heygate Estate and document the sounds of a largely abandoned social housing community. When recording there, what I believed I had recorded were only the sounds of aeroplanes overhead, and the steady rumble and screech of traffic from the nearby A3 thoroughfare and roundabouts. I then decided to travel through the Elephant & Castle shopping centre, via the overground train station, through the market, and then in to the various pedestrian underpasses. I admit, when I was out recording the sounds, I was quite disheartened by the experience. All I could hear, thanks to the "cocktail party effect" was the throng of the traffic. What immediately came to mind was R. Murray Schafer's disdain for the encroachment of urban "noise" on the soundscape that he wrote about in his book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of The World .
However, when I returned home and had the opportunity to review the recordings in comfort, I was struck by the details in the recordings, the short sonic entities that burst in to life fleetingly amongst the overall traffic noise that, when recording, I had not been aware of. These short fragments; snatches of conversation, the rustling of a newspaper, the echo of footfalls in the underpasses, the straining of shopping bags, the projections of music by portable stereos, and so on, are the sounds that are beautiful in their duration of existence before they are swallowed again by the overwhelming cacophony of traffic.
In my first meeting with Aquiles (my final project tutor), we discussed the initial ideas that I had for the sound for this film. Aquiles suggested that I study the history of the area, so that it might inform my own understanding of Elephant & Castle, and that this knowledge would help inform my decisions when composing the sounds. Aquiles first mentioned Michael Faraday and explained his significance, and that the huge cubed building in the middle of the roundabout just outside the London College of Communication was in fact a memorial to him. Immediately, this gave me fresh ideas of how I could approach the sound, and to not be so concerned about being so restrictive in my initial approach (as to only document sound). He advised me that, by simply choosing this route, I was already making decisions about what to record and what not to record, and by doing so, I was already editing and composing the sound to an ideal that was not purely a document, but was also a fabrication.
With this in mind, I have been going through all of the sound that I have recorded so far, and I have cut and pasted all the elements that I have found interesting in expressing the hidden and the overlooked sounds that are present within the urban environment. Finding a structure with which these sounds will be composed as to fit the images provided, is another task that I am starting to tackle.
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