Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Process Piece





I love the challenge of storytelling through something as narrow as audio only. When it is limited to one form of media you have to be very creative and utilize that platform in a way that the audience doesn't feel shortchanged or lost.  I think a form of storytelling we don’t automatically think to put in this category is song.  With only some lyrics and notes you can tell a story.  You can evoke emotion.  As we sit at church, so many can testify of feeling the Spirit through music.  A great example is the song Come Come Ye Saints; it tells the powerful story of the courageous saints who trekked west.  Every word and note is important to the song; it makes us feel grateful for the power they had and the blessings that we can enjoy because of their courage.  The Routines videos by Mercadante were also able to convey their message with a small platform. Of course, it incorporated audio and video. However, the audio was kept to a minimum so the main focus, the video, told the story. How each video was presented, everything from the form, to camera placement and color was intentional. You have to be when you are relying heavily on one means of storytelling. In our process piece, when left to audio only, the sounds we used were very intentional. Originally we were going to have the narrative told from the perspective of an onlooker actually describing what was happening. But another student, Melissa Lee, suggested we take that narrative out and let the audio tell the story. We tried this and it worked out rather well so we went with it. We start with an establishing ambiance noise to place the audience in the middle of the road.  We also made the conscious decision not use any other voices besides our main characters as to not get our audience confused. By making these decisions and using other elements that went into making our piece, we hoped that the sounds we used provided adequate and unambiguous imagery.  

- Rebecca Viazzo and Ty Griffiths

No comments:

Post a Comment