Chamber Music/Video: Fall 2010

STEPS TO WORKING IN JITTER

NOTE: SEE POST BELOW IF YOU WANT TO CONVERT FOOTAGE FOR USE IN FINAL CUT PRO

CONVERTING FOOTAGE TO PHOTO-JPEG

1. Acquire video: shoot your own, or download MPEG2s or MP4s from archive.org, or use www.keepvid.com to save MP4s to your hard drive, or use Yade X to convert from DVD to .vob (File —> Open DVD, then File —> Save as VOB.

2. Use MPEG Streamclip to convert your footage. For Jitter (Photo-JPEG) use the following settings:

Apple Photo - JPEG

Quality: 75%

Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, 48 kHz

Frame Rate: 30

Frame Size: 640x480

Deinterlace Video (Check √)

Field Dominance: Upper Field First

Zoom: 102%

Then just click Make Movie at the lower right.

3. Then just use a basic Jitter or Auvi help patch to read your movie into jit.qt.mov. Make sure that your jit.qt.mov object is set to 640 480 and not 320 240.

Have fun! 

STEPS TO WORKING IN FINAL CUT

NOTE: SEE POST ABOVE IF YOU WANT TO CONVERT FOOTAGE FOR USE IN JITTER - IT REQUIRES A DIFFERENT CODEC

CREATING AN FCP PROJECT

1. Open Final Cut Pro (if you are prompted for a sequence preset, go with DV NTSC 48 kHz, and if you get an error message telling you a certain device is not connected, click continue).

2. Go to Final Cut Pro —> System Settings. Under “Scratch Disks” at the left tab, Click Set at the top. Navigate to the hard drive you are using, and then either choose your project folder, or click “New Folder” and “Create” at the bottom left if you don’t have one yet, and name it after your project then select it as your scratch disk. Click OK at the bottom right to get out of System Settings. Doing this should create three subfolders in your project folder named “Audio Render Files,” “Capture Scratch” and “Render Files.”

3. Now go to File —> Save Project As, and save it as YourProjectName.fcp (or whatever) in your project folder.

CONVERTING FOOTAGE TO DV-NTSC

1. Download MPEG2s or MP4s from archive.org, or use www.keepvid.com to save MP4s to your hard drive, or use Yade X to convert from DVD to .vob (File —> Open DVD, then File —> Save as VOB.

2. Use MPEG Streamclip to convert your footage. For Final Cut (DV-NTSC) use the following settings.

Apple DV/DVCPRO – NTSC

Quality: 100%

Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, 48 kHz

Frame Rate: 29.97

Frame Size: 720x480

Field Dominance: Lower Field First

Zoom: 102%

Then just click Make Movie at the lower right.

3. Save converted .mov files to the “Capture Scratch” folder in your Project Folder.

EDITING PICTURE TO SOUND IN FINAL CUT PRO

1. In Logic, Sibelius, Finale, Quicktime or iTunes, export your audio to a PCM Wave or .aiff file (doesn’t matter) with a sample rate of “48000.” (you’ll probably be changing it from 44,100). Pictured below is a Logic bounce:

2. Open FCP and import (Command+I) your newly converted movie files into Final Cut. Drag one of them onto the timeline and if you are asked, click “Yes” to change sequence settings to match clip settings. It’s important to drag the video before you drag the audio on so that it will keep your settings and not give you a ‘render bar’. (You may not get this cue: that’s fine as long as you don’t have a red bar over your timeline).

3. Import (Command+I) the .aiff you just bounced. Drag it onto the A3/4 tracks, in case you want to add additional sounds from your video.

4. LOCK THE AUDIO TRACKS THAT YOUR MUSIC IS ON by clicking on the small locks to the left of the tracks.

5. Edit away! Don’t forget to SAVE OFTEN.

6. Have fun!

7. Bring in your hard drive with the whole project so that we can look at some of them in class.

Week 5: Chion’s Audio-Vision Terms, Ch. 3

CHAPTER THREE

Audiovisual counterpoint (pp 35-37): the horizontal dimension of two tracks (sound and image) in relation to one another, free of redundancy, where sound and image constitute two parallel and loosely connected tracks, neither dependent on the other. Chion argues that audiovisual counterpoint will be noticed only “if it sets up an opposition between sound and image on a precise point of meaning.”

Audiovisual harmony (pp 35-40): the vertical dimension of two tracks (sound and image) in relation to one another at the same moment forming chords or resonances; Chion argues that “harmonic and vertical relations (whether they be consonant, dissonant, or neither, à la Debussy) are generally more salient – i.e., the relations between a given sound and what is happening at that moment in the image.”

Dissonant harmony (p 37): Audiovisual moments which “point to a momentary discord between the image’s and sound’s figural natures.” Chion argues that “many cases being offered up as models of counterpoint were actually splendid examples of dissonant harmony.”

Shot (p 41): the length of film between two splices; a specific unit of cinema based on the fact of film editing construction. A neutral object, objectively defined, which everyone can agree on as a unit of measurement.

Sound Slice (p 43): a particular sound event occurring in a soundtrack, whether inaudibly mixed or abruptly demarcated.

Internal Logic of audiovisual flow (p 46): a mode of connecting images and sounds that appears to follow a flexible, organic process of development, variation, and growth, born out of the narrative situation itself and the feelings it inspires. Internal logic tends toward continuous and progressive modifications in the sonic flow, and makes use of sudden breaks only when the narrative so requires.

External Logic of audiovisual flow (p 46): a mode of connecting images and sounds which brings out effects of discontinuity and rupture as interventions external to the represented content: editing that disrupts the continuity of an image or a sound, breaks, interruptions, sudden changes of tempo, and so on.

Elements of Auditory Setting, or E.A.S. (pp 54-55): sounds with a more or less punctual source, which appear more or less intermittently and which help to create and define a film’s space by means of specific, distinct small touches. Typical sounds of the auditory setting are the faraway barking of a dog, or the ringing of a phone in the office next door, or a police car siren. The E.A.S. inhabits and defines a space, unlike a “permanent” sound such as the noise of ocean surf. The E.A.S. can also have a punctuative role, thanks to editing, helping to create the scene’s overall rhythm, thus renewing and transfiguring its functions completely.

Point of Synchronization, or Synch Point (pp 58-62): a salient moment of an audiovisual sequence during which a sound event and a visual event meet in synchrony. It is a point where the effect of synchresis is particularly prominent, rather like an accented chord in music.

Temporal Elasticity (pp 61-62): the use of slow motion and other radical stylizations of time. Temporal elasticity is most possible when it surrounds strong synch points such as blows or explosions, and is often used in action, war, and martial arts films.

Synchresis (pp 63-65): a word forged by combining synchronism and synthesis; the spontaneous and irresistable weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time. This join results independently of any rational logic. Synchresis is what makes dubbing, postsynchronization, and sound effects mixing possible, and enables such a wide array of choice in these processes… Certain experimental videos and films demonstrate that synchresis can even work out of thing air – that is, with images and sounds that strictly speaking have nothing to do with each other, forming monstrous yet inevitable and irresistible agglomerations in our perception… But it is not totally automatic. Synchresis can happen as a result of dynamics, rhythm, and other physical attributes of the link, as well as through culturally determined meaning.

CHAPTER THREE FILMS

First Name Carmen metro scene with sounds of seagulls (Jean-Luc Godard)

L’Homme qui ment audiovisual dissonance (Robbe-Grillet)

Enthusiasm moments of audible sound editing (Dziga Vertov)

Hail Mary beginning slices of sound (Jean-Luc Godard)

American Graffiti use of recording technique as spatiality (George Lucas)

M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati)

Earrings of Madame de internal logic (Max (?) Ophuls)

La Dolce Vita internal logic (XXXX Fellini)

Children of a Lesser God internal logic (Randa Haines)

Alien external logic (Ridley Scott)

M. external logic (Fritz Lang)

Nouvelle Vague external logic (Jean-Luc Godard)

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick external logic (Wim Wenders)

The Informer (John Ford, music by Max Steiner)

Letter to Freddy Buache - deferred anticipation (Jean-Luc Godard)

Children of a Lesser God - two characters joining with silence (Randa Haines)

Band of Outsiders - silent film leader (Jean-Luc Godard)

Alien - silence on closeup of cat (Ridley Scott)

Face to Face - ticking as she gets ready for bed (Ingmar Bergman)

Dragon Ball series - temporal elasticity

Raging Bull - temporal elasticity (Martin Scorcese)

The WIld Bunch - temporal elasticity (Sam Peckinpah, inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai

Week 4: KeepVid/MPEG Streamclip Instructions

Steps to Making Your Audiovisual Collage Video

http://mvs2010.tumblr.com/post/419300227/week-5-tips

Week 4: Chion’s Audio-Vision, Chapter 2 Terms

Causal Listening (pp 25-28): the first of three ways of listening: listening for the cause of a sound (what individual or object made that sound? that is a dog’s bark/the wind in the trees/Mom’s voice). It’s not at all always accurate. Causal listening is not always accurate, and is not only the most common but also the most easily influenced and deceptive mode of listening. It’s important to remember that these three ways of listening often overlap.

Semantic Listening (p 28): the second of three ways of listening: listening for meaning through a code or language. What did Mom say? What do those beeps mean in Morse Code? Listen, there’s the musical phrase from the first movement! It’s important to remember that these three ways of listening often overlap.

Reduced Listening (pp 29-33): the third of three ways of listening: listening to the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause or meaning. Reduced listening takes the sound… as itself the object to be observed instead of as a vehicle for something else. It’s important to remember that these three ways of listening often overlap.

Week 4: Chion’s Audio-Vision Terms, Ch. 1

Added Value (p 5): the expressive and informative value with which a sound enriches a given image so as to create the definite impression, in the immediate or remembered experience one has of it, that this information or expression ‘naturally’ comes from what is seen, and is already contained in the image itself.

Synchresis (p 5): the forging of an immediate and necessary relationship between something one sees and something one hears. Added value is at work in this relationship.

Empathetic Music (p 8): music which directly expresses its participation in the feeling of a scene, by taking on the scene’s rhythm, tone, and phrasing; obviously such music participates in cultural codes for things like sadness, happiness, and movement. From the word empathy, the ability to feel the feelings of others.

Anempathetic Music (pp 8-9): music which exhibits conspicuous indifference to the situation, by progressing in a steady, undaunted, and ineluctable manner: the scene takes place against this very backdrop of ‘indifference’. This juxtaposition of scene with indifferent music has the effect of not freezing emotion but rather of intensifying it, by inscribing it on a cosmic background. The anempathetic impulse in the cinema produces those countless musical bits from player pianos, celestas, music boxes, and dance bands, whose studied frivolity and naiveté reinforce the individual emotion of the character and of the spectator, even as the music pretends not to notice them. This effect of cosmic indifference was already present in many operas, when emotional pitch was so high that it froze characters into inaction, provoking a sort of psychotic regression. Hence the famous operatic convention of madness, with the dumb little music that a character repeats while rocking back and forth. Chion believes that the cinematic use of anempathetic music is directly related to the “indifferent and automatic unwinding… of projection.”

Audiovisual Contract (p 9): A symbolic contract that the audio-viewer enters into, agreeing to think of sound and image as forming a single entity. Audiovisual relationships seem natural, but are far from it.

“Spotting” Visual Movements (p 11): Rapid visual movements can be “spotted” by rapid auditory punctuation, for example in Kung Fu movies in the form of whistles, shouts, bangs, and tinkling that mark certain moments and leave a strong audiovisual memory of the event.

Temporalization 1: Temporal Animation (p 13): The quality of the time which the sounds lends the image: exact and concrete, vague and fluctuating, etc.

Temporalization 2: Temporal Linearization (p 13): The way that sound imposes a chronological structure on a series of shots: shot A came before shot B which comes before show C. A series of chronological events.

Temporalization 3: Vectorization or Dramatization (p 13): the way sound imposes a sense that we are on a trajectory to a goal, imparting imminence and expectation to a series of shots. (ie, the prologue of Persona). You can reverse many visual shots; you cannot reverse sound without experiencing it completely differently.

Visual Microrhythms (p 16): rapid movements on the image’s surface caused by things such as curls of smoke, rain, snowflakes, undulations of the rippled surface of a lake, dunes, and so forth – even the swarming movement of photographic grain itself, when visible. These phenomena create rapid and fluid rhythmic values, instilling a vibrating, trembling temporality in the image itself. See Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams.

Stridulation (p 20): a sharp, high, slightly uneven vibrating that both alarms and fascinates. Musically, created by tremolo; in film sound, often created with insect sounds. An example of an effect which is both cultural and psychophysical in nature.

Week 3: Christian Marclay: Festival

I saw the Christian Marclay show this past weekend at the Whitney Museum of American Art this weekend. Some of you are no doubt familiar with Marclay’s work, and I wanted to let you know that even if you weren’t able to make it to New York to see the exhibit, there is plenty of inspiring documentation on the Whitney’s website. If you don’t know his work, the exhibition website is a good way to familiarize yourself with some of

A lineup of some of New York’s finest musicians played Marclay’s artworks/scores. You can see documentation of the exhibit on the Whitney’s website, but it’s a little disappointing in terms of visual documentation. I’ll try to put something on library reserve.