FINAL PIECE: The Constituent Features of Tension + Final Piece Evaluation

'The Constituent Features of Tension'
Rhys Connolly
Run time: 10 minutes and 10 seconds
Level Vocals:  Rhys Connolly
Accompaniment:  Rhys Connolly, Marina Diamandis, Beethoven and Nitin Sawnhey

I feel that this film successfully amalgamates all of the aspects I have explored and developed over the course of the project in a dynamic and engaging way.  I believe that in each section I have portrayed each level through thought provoking imagery and symbolic concepts.

I chose to mostly use classical/orchestral accompaniments in this film as they are well known for provoking emotion.  I also decided to include a voice over to introduce each section for two reasons; one to ensure the viewer knew that they were moving onto the next section and the second was to regain their focus after the previous section.

Section One (Begins at 0:43):  This section was the hardest to edit as I had to try and make videos with no motion interesting.  to solve this issue I made the pace of the editing faster so the section would be roughly a minute long so the viewer would not lose interest. I filmed myself on a white floor as the colour white reminds me of stillness and calmness.

Section Two (Begins at 1:43):   This section was shot on a public footpath (images of myself) and at the beach (over-layed image of waves).   I chose to include waves in this section as it is the polar opposite to fire (a natural element that appears in section 6 and 7).  To shoot myself walking I placed my camera on a tripod (tripod added stability) and asked my friend to walk in front of me with it.  In the section I play the video from the start and then when it reaches the end it reverses. I did this to correlate with to motion of the waves coming in and out.  I chose this location to film in particular due to the trees as most people find trees to be relaxing.

Section Three (Begins at 3:51):  This was the easiest section to film and edit.  I once again filmed the waves and cropped the video to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio (Cinema Widescreen) to give this section a cinematic feel. I cropped the fire into a circle a edited it directly over the middle of the ocean footage. This was to show the to extremes neutralising each other. I slowed the tempo of the accompaniment down to make it sound passive.  I deliberately did this so it would enhance the power of the next section.

Section Four (Begins at 5:00):  This section is my personal favourite out of my final piece.  I feel that I have achieved a balance between the accompaniment and visuals to the point where they end up enhancing each other.  Visually I wanted to have yellow and blue be quite dominant as I see them as colour that make me feel alert.  I also feel that the fast paced visuals complement the strobe-ing circle. I chose to have the strobe be a circle to aid continuity from the previous section.  I think that the accompaniment in this section is extremely fitting with the visuals presented.

Section Five (Begins at 6:23):     Please refer to 'Final piece proposal' and 'Film: The Lamp' pages for more information on the section.

Section Six (Begins at 6:56):   This level of tension is 'the event' moment in the tension scale, therefore needed a lot more going on. This section technically was the most challenging as there was four layers of green screen effects. I decided last minute to film a match being lit for inclusion in the final piece as I wanted to tribute my earlier films that inspired me to use fire in the first place.  I also used complex cropping methods to make my face appear to be chopped up (I chose that shape as I wanted something that looked stable and strong).  I believe that the accompaniment I chose for this section adds a lot of power and creates a feeling of urgency in the viewer. I also green screened three different fire visuals along the bottom of the frame and also the match into the gap my face screen. The transition from the multi-screen (in section 4) to the numerous green screen effects adds to the continuity of the piece along with the face screen strobing at moments in time with the music.

Section Seven (Begins at 8:39):  The final section is driven by the accompaniment and the use of overlayed imagery.   By overlaying the videos I was able to create a smooth flowing ending to conclude my piece. I thing that it is a good way to end the film as section 6 was very erratic so section 7 brings the viewer back to normality and reality.  I put seven videos of myself into this section (one for each level) and green screened very faint ocean and fire videos. I feel that by doing this I successfully wrapped up the film.

Overall, I am extremely please with the outcome of this film as it fully portrays everything that I had set out to achieve at the beginning of the project (Exploring different forms of tension, what causes it, how to create it, how to sustain it, and how they are relevant to everyone).

Final Piece Proposal

My aim for this film is to explore the '7 Levels of Tension'. I plan on doing this through seven sections each dedicated to a different level.

LEVEL ONE - Stillness:  In this section I plan to have very static shots and no movement. I will film video of myself lying down from different angles so it can be edited together. I believe the use of different angles will engage the viewer and hold their attention. 

Planned Accompaniment:  Blondel zu Marien, D.626 (Schubert, Franz)

LEVEL TWO - Relaxed:  This section will use slow motion and use of reversing a clip.  the runtime of this section is planned to be roughly a minute and a half.  The point of this section is to make the viewer feel relaxed and to avoid making them feel rushed. 

Planned Accompaniment:  'Europe, after the rain' by Max Ritcher

LEVEL THREE - Neutral:  In this section I plan on using just fire and water as I imagined both to be on complete opposite sides of the tension scale (water being level 1 and fire being level 7). By combining the two in one film it will create the visual effect of neutralising the footage.

Planned Accompaniment:   'Solitaire' by Marina Diamandis (Publicly Known as Marina and the Diamonds) 

LEVEL FOUR - Alert:   In this section I plan on using multiple screens, fast pacing and strobe effects to create a sense of panic the aurally will correlate with a Beethoven track I plan on using.

Planned Accompaniment:   'Sonata Pathetique Op.13 - I. Grave. Allegro di molto e con brio'  by Beethoven

LEVEL FIVE - Suspense: I wanted to include imagery from my film 'The Lamp' but as I feel it was one of the most successful films in this project I will be using the film itself in my final piece.

Planned Accompaniment:  Microwave (Slowed down)

LEVEL SIX - Passionate: from my research on the 7 levels of tension, level 6 seems to be the actual event itself after the tension has built.  I plan on green screening fire visuals over my face (the shot of my face will be distorted in some way) to create an overwhelming amount of movement.

Planned Accompaniment:  'Dogfight' from 'The Raid Redemption' soundtrack

LEVEL SEVEN - Tragic: Level seven is very similar to level one in the fact it involves stillness. however, I plan on using a 1:1 (square) framing format to symbolically show restriction.  I want to film myself performing movement and then overlay seven of them over each other to create a canon (one ofter the other) visual. I plan on making section 7 quite short as in real life this level of tension is not long term. I plan on making this section last roughly 30 to 40 seconds.

Planned Accompaniment:   'Zero Degrees' by Nitin Sawnhey

I feel the if executed well my film can take the viewer personally through the all of the levels to fully experience what tension is and by doing that I will be fulfilling what I set out to do at the start of the project.

Planned runtime for 'The Constituent Features of Tension':     9 minutes


below are initial plans I made for the piece:

Film: Pacing

After creating my previous film ['the lamp'] that experimented with tempo, I wanted to further explore the use of pacing and colour. This film looks at level 4 of the '7 Levels of Tension'.

I have edited this film by speeding up and slowing down the footage in completely random places in an attempt to make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The lack of aural cues aided this effect well.  The sound in the film is all the original audio from the footage shot; I edited each section of the film with a different sound distortion to give the film a subtle structural form.

When colour correcting I decided that I wanted to visually correlate to the pace of the film by juxtaposing extreme vibrant colours with washed out opaque colours; these colours have been edited in random points of the film similarly to the pacing and audio. Although this effect work here, I don't think it is something I will expand on in my final piece as I don't believe it creates tension nor takes away from the tension - Visually it looks really nice but I feel that it is not really that relevant to the ideas I plan on exploring in my final piece.

Overall I think that this film is one of the most successful in my project so far due to the way it demands the viewer to feel uncomfortable and disturbed. I would like to create more work in this project that demands the viewer to feel tense.

Film: The Lamp

This film focuses on the audio aspect of film paired with complementary visuals (exploring level 5 of the '7 Levels of Tension'.

To create the sound I recorded my microwave using my mobile phone and then slowed the tempo down by 35% in an audio editing programme.
As I knew that I was going to slow the video down I knew that I needed to stabilize the video live on the shoot.  To do this inexpensively I attached three full water bottles to my tripod (one bottle to each leg) - This enable me to move the camera and end up with smoothly shot video that would still look a good quality when slowed down.

I decided to keep the visuals for this film quite simple and static as I wanted the audio to create the atmosphere. The footage in this film was also slowed down to correlate with the audio.
Learning from my previous film 'Catch', I decided to stabilise this footage in my editing software. This resulted in the film having smooth controlled movement that greatly complements the accompaniment.
I feel that this film is one of the more successful films in my project. The accompaniment and visuals work very nicely together to create a film that makes the viewer feel a bit unnerved and unsure. I would like to include similar imagery in my final piece.

Film: Catch

This film was an experiment with slow motion (in both visuals and accompaniment) to create tension.  I decided to once again use fire as it had proved to be a successful visual in my film 'Strike'. This film looks specifically at Level 5 of the '7 Levels of Tension'.  The slow motion effect in this film, to me, made me feel quite uncomfortable as matches being lit is quite an ordinary thing to see, however, in slow motion you are able to fully see every spark and every slight movement on the match head.

I feel that the use of slow motion was successful in this film as I was able to create an uncomfortable tense atmosphere. By slowing the footage I was also able to correlate the pace of the video with the pace of the accompaniment (Lady Gaga's 'Bloody Mary' [Acapella]) which I slowed down by 75%  (100 beats per minute to 25bpm).

Overall I feel that this film worked well at creating tension. However, if I was going to do it again I would use a tripod to ensure more stability in the visual material.  I don't feel like stabilisation was a huge issue in this film but I do believe that the film would have benefited from having a smooth and fluid shot.

Film: Strike

This film looks at aural tension. This film looks specifically at level 4 of the '7 levels of tension'.  I decided to use the track 'Crashes and 8's' from Philip Chambon's soundtrack created for Swansong.

This track's melodic structure and chord progression creates tension for the listener and I have paired it with slow paced imagery to complement the fast the tempo of the track.

Fire is a natural element that cause deep instinctive and primal discomfort due to its destructive nature - It was because of this that I chose to use fire as a visual in this film.
During the storyboard process of this film I knew that close up shot would be predominantly used throughout this film as I wanted to bring the viewer even closer to the flame than they would in real life.  In this film I also experimented with the angle of the footage.  Every shot in this film has an angle offset of at least 14 and -14 degrees to give the film an uneasy feeling as not everything was lined up correctly (deliberately).
I left this film in a 16:9 framing format as I felt that it would enable me to get the best shots.
Overall, I feel that this film was very successful and I plan on using more fire imagery in more of my work.  I also plan on experimenting with making my own accompaniment for my films.

Film: 'After Invisible man' [Green Screen]

This film looks at the idea of placing the subject into tense imagery. The aim of this idea was to enhance the tension rather than create it myself as I felt the Jeff Wall had already created stunning visual tension in this photograph (After Invisible Man). 

The use of green screen was an entirely new visual effect that I had never used before and it was this that pushed me to experiment with it. I first had to learn the theoretical side of green screen videography before beginning the shoot (Involving Colour correction and Chrome keying)

Chroma keying is a visual effect in which the editor selects a colour (and a tone) that is within the video (usually green or blue depending on the use of backdrop).  The progamme will that completely remove that colour from the image.  Whatever is still left on screen is turned into a digital mask ready to overlay onto another image.

I used this effect on myself to put a video of myself onto Jeff Wall's image. When placing the video of myself onto the photograph I also had to make it smaller and crop my legs out to make it blend in well.

I feel that this experiment was successful, however, I think I will move onto using the 'Chroma key' effect to green screen more naturalistic elements (water/fire/e.c.t.) to enhance my own imagery as opposed to enhancing someone else's work.