Developed Idea

After lots of research we have decided on our final idea that we are going to use for our experimental film project. We are going to be filming in a kitchen as our piece is going to be about the cooking/ preparation of food. However, this may be a boring subject so we have decided to make the piece more abstract by showing the preparation and cooking of a meal backwards. This means that at the start of the film the meal would be cooked and at the end, the ingredients would all be separate again.

We originally got this idea of filming in a kitchen as we thought that you can find some very interesting sounds when preparing/cooking food. We thought if we could record these ordinary, everyday sounds and manipulate them into something extraordinary then they would be more interesting to listen to. We also had the idea of making the piece slightly musical by layering the sounds recorded from the kitchen on top of each other as this could make quite an interesting piece.

We have decided that the sounds we are going to record include:

     - Chicken crisping in oven,

     - Boiling water,

     - Pouring water,

     - Chopping/dicing,

     - Peeling,

     - Pots clattering,

     - Whisking,

     - Frying,

     - Knives being sharpened,

     - Cutting meat,

     - Blending.

These are the initial sounds we are planning on using but we may add to this list if any more spring to mind.

Further Research

After deciding that we were going to do our experimental piece about preparing/cooking food, I have done some more research by watching different film clips involving food to find some inspiration and to get a better idea of what we want our piece to look like. I will now add a link to each piece that I have watched and will discuss my thoughts in relevance to our piece.


Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro


This is the opening titles for the French film Delicatessen. This piece does not have much sound to it apart from the music in the background, although it does have the sound of knives being sharpened at the beginning which I have already established as quite a harsh sound and is used quite often in films/sound pieces to do with food, therefore this would be a good sound to include in our piece.

However, this piece is quite interesting to watch as you can see all of the meat being chopped up and the blood making interesting patterns on the tablecloth. Using a table cloth to cut the meat on makes the film more interesting as you can see all the blood being soaked up by the cloth, making it more visually enticing.


The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover by Peter Greenaway

SKIP TO 12:33


This film includes a number of very interesting tracking shots that take the viewer from one end of the dining room all the way through to the other end of the kitchen (12:33 - 13:20).

Now although this is very interesting to watch, I have included this clip in my research as the sounds that are present in the kitchen during the tracking shot have grabbed my attention. This is because as the camera goes past each chef, they are all doing something different creating the different sounds. For example the first kitchen related sound we hear is running water, then throughout the clip we the sound of knives sharpening, whisking, chopping, stirring and pans clattering. These are all sounds that I could use in my piece.


Be Wonderful and Wise - Lurpak Advert


Although this piece is an advert and not from a well known film or artist, I have decided to use this as a piece of research as it is very relevant to the piece that I would like to make. This advert is good inspiration for both the sound and visual part of my experimental film as it includes sounds that would be present in the kitchen and interesting camera shots that attract the viewers attention, e.g. the knife shot when chopping the onions and the pattern that the red cabbage makes when cut in different places.


Food Not Bombs by Hajan Aznam



This piece is an experimental film and sound piece from a film student from the University of Technology Sydney. When I found this clip it was incredibly inspirational as it had everything that I was trying to research, an experimental piece that was both sound and visually interesting.

Food Not Bombs includes all the sounds that come from a kitchen and turned it into a musical piece. This makes it interesting to listen to as its not something that you would normally hear on a day-to-day basis. Creating music with kitchen sounds is a possible idea that we might use for our final piece after talking to our seminar leader.

The film also contains good visuals with the director layering different images on top of each other. The way that he has edited as well makes it look like the images where food is involved could be lots of pictures editing together at a fast pace to make it seem like they are moving rather than a smooth flow of the camera videoing the shots.


Each of these pieces are inspirational to my work in different ways but have helped me gather a better idea of what I want to do for my piece.

Initial Idea for Experimental Piece

We have been informed that our first project is to create an experimental film. However before this we must make a sound piece that we will then later record the film for. For this project we have to work in pairs so I have been grouped with Ellie Marsland, another girl in my Creative Media Project seminar.

We have had a few ideas for this project but the one we found the most interesting was the idea of filming in a kitchen whilst someone was preparing a meal/cooking. We originally got this idea after listening to the sounds in Richie Bierne's sound piece 'Meat Factory Ear Worms' as we thought the sound of the knives in this piece was especially interesting. We thought that by recording in a kitchen we could get some very interesting sounds from many different things including cutting meat/veg, frying something in oil, boiling water, sharpening knives etc. There is a link to this piece in the previous blog post.

Another influence we found for recording our piece in a kitchen is the award winning opening sequence for the TV drama Dexter. I have included the video below to show examples:




This is very influential as there are a lot of sharp and interesting sounds used in this piece that we could also use in our experimental film, e.g. when he cuts the grapefruit, the sound of the egg/meat being cut/fried and also the sound used when he is eating the food.

Short Sound Analysis - Meat Factory Ear Worms

In this week's seminar we watched a number of different sound pieces and tried to pick out the different sounds that we could hear. The piece that I found the most interesting was called Meat Factory Ear Worms by Richie Bierne. This piece is very interesting as it uses a variety of different sounds including, speaking, music and background noise.

Here is a link to the clip on RTÉ Radio 1: www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/the-curious-ear-doconone-meat-factory-ear-worms.html 

The piece starts with a man talking about his time working in a meat factory, apart from the man talking; the first sound we hear is a butcher knife being sharpened. This is a very harsh sound and has a strange effect on the listener as it is not very pleasant. The sound of the knife is repeated throughout the piece to show the brutality of the factory.

In the background you can hear the sounds of the machinery on the production line and the sound of the cows mooing as they are being killed. This is repeated when he talks about the negative or practical parts of the job. However, when he talks about the positive times where he was thinking about something else, there would be music playing in the background, which he referred to as 'ear worms'. The music helps him escape the brutality of the factory. At some points the sound of the knife is played over the soft music to show the contrast between where he was and how he escaped it.

When Richie talks about his journey to work, you can hear the engine of an old car revving in the background and a song playing on the radio. This is an example of how the form of the piece relates to the content.

At one point he talks about the time he went to the hospital after he stabbed himself in the knee when skinning a cow. The sound played over that is Richie saying the word 'beep' over and over again. This has been used to symbolise the monitors at the hospital. The sound is also played when he talks about the factory at the end, which then symbolises the production line in the factory. Also when he stabs himself, you hear the noise of a cow which sounds like it's in pain. Once again this is another example that shows the form relates to the content.

Sound Tutorial

In this week’s Production Skills seminar we got a chance use some audio

equipment and play around with a few different microphones to see which one records the best sound in different situations. The piece of equipment we used was a Samson Zoom H4n. This handheld audio device already had a built in mic, which meant that we could start recording without having to add on an external microphone. There are 2 microphones located on the top of the H4n, which cross over at either a 90° or 120° angle. This makes the mic more versatile for different recording situations. I found that this mic would be best to use if I needed to record the audio of a place where there are lots of sounds (background noise e.g. a crowd, train station etc.) as oppose to recording somebody talking or a specific sound.

To do this I would use an external microphone which would fit the XLR/Hi-Z Input Jacks at the bottom of the H4n. This was good for recording a specific sound as the mic just picked up sound that was close of it, therefore the closer you got to the object making the sound, the better the audio.

 The third microphone that we used was a H2a-HLR Hydrophone. This mic allowed us to record underwater, which I found very interesting as we got to take the equipment out and test it so I got to hear what this sounds like. This mic also records vibration if you put what we referred to as an ‘egg cup’ on the end of the microphone. If you put this against a hard object and then hit the surface, this will make an interesting sound as the mic will pick up all the little vibrations that go through the object.

Short Film Analysis - Love Me or Leave Me Alone

In this week's seminar we watched a variety of different short films and analysed them after we watched them. In this blog post I am going to analyse one film in particular named 'Love Me or Leave Me Alone' directed by Duane Hopkins and explain how the content relates to different aspects of the film form.

  The focus of this film is about two young teenagers discovering the problems and challenges with first love. The film starts with a young couple arguing and shouting about how much they hate each other and that they never want to see/speak to each other ever again. This goes on for quite a while until the couple get back together and seem to have sorted out their problems towards the middle of the film. Although this is normally where a romance would end, on a happy note, the couple then start to have problems again and the film ends without any resolution to their problems.

  This films challenges many conventions of its genre as usually in a romance the film will start with an equilibrium, then this would be disturbed towards the middle of the film and at the end the equilibrium would be restored. However, this film starts and ends with a disequilibrium which is very uncommon for its genre.

  The techniques used in this film are very interesting, which allows the viewer to become a lot more involved in the story. The technique that I found most interesting about this film was the editing used for some of the scenes. An example of this would be that the opening shot is of a boy facing the camera then turning and spitting, which is all shown in slow motion. The next shot is of the spit from the boys mouth landing in a girl's face. She then starts shouting about what had just happened causing an argument between the two. This scene had a lot of very quick cuts from different shots including different angles, zoom length etc.
  Quick cuts are used in filmmaking as it suggests energy and chaos, which is relevant in this scene as the editing matches the chaos of the fight. The reason that I find this technique even more interesting is because of the contrast of the two shots, the slow-motion and the fast paced sequence. This makes the fight seem very sudden and shows that it has escalated very quickly without much incentive.
  This same technique is used during the sex scene between the couple. The shots go from an over the shoulder view of the couple where they are being quite slow and quiet, to fast pace cuts where the couple get a bit more energetic. These shots go from one to the other for a while to show how it has escalated.

   The sex scene itself though does not seem very intimate throughout all of the shots. This links back to the facts that the couple is very young and this is their first love so they don't really know how to feel during those moments. This scene also takes place in what looks like an abandoned shed. The reason that they are using a shed, which is not a very romantic setting, once again links to the fact that they are a young couple which means that they have nowhere to go, as they don't want to stay at home all the time but they are not old enough to go down to the pub. This is a recurring theme throughout the film as it is set in the countryside, many of the settings are outdoors including places like the shed, a shelter, along a country road etc.

  As the location of this film is in a rural setting during the winter, everything seems very grey and dull. Even the clothes that the characters wear are very plain and are mainly colours like grey or a dirty white. The lack of colour in the film relates back to the fact that these teenagers are bored and this is reflected in the clothes they wear.

  The lack of colour in the film is even reflected in the lighting used. This is shown especially at night as the couple are barely visible in the dark. An example of this is towards the end of the film when the teenagers are discussing whether they should remain a couple; they are barely visible under a street lamp. This causes the camera to only see half of their faces as the rest of the frame is filled with darkness.

  Another interesting technique that Hopkins has used is the way that he builds tension during the film only for it to lead nowhere as the film does not match what you expect to happen. This happens a couple of times during the film, an example is when the young girl tries to hitch a ride along a country road. Once a car stops for her and she gets in, you do not see the driver's face which seems mysterious, the boy is then seen in the wing mirror trying to catch up to the car. The boy seems frantic and desperate to catch the car, which then makes the viewer think that something bad is going to happen involving the girl and the car's driver. However, this then leads nowhere as the girl gets home safely. Another example of when the director used this technique is right at the end of the film, the last shot is the boy riding his bike home in complete darkness and all you can hear is the squeaking of the wheels as he pedals. The squeaking then stops for the boy to catch his breath as a car comes up behind him, suddenly illuminating the boy as he is looking over his shoulder. As the camera is focused on him, the tension builds as this leads the viewer to believe that the boy is going to be involved in an accident, although once again this does not happen, thus challenging the audiences expectation of the films ending once again.

  The camera shots used in this film are also very interesting as a variety of different techniques are used. An example of this is when the boy is in the shelter deciding if he should follow his angry girlfriend or not, half of the screen is filled with the field and the other half is in complete darkness. I find this shot interesting as it looks like it could be a split screen, each side relating to how the boy is feeling about whether to follow her or not.

  Throughout the film the characters do not use much dialogue apart from when they are arguing and shouting at each other or when one of them is pleading for the relationship to work. This made me think that the couple don't have much to say to each other as whenever they are talking it is always seen in a negative way, e.g. shouting at each other or questioning whether the relationship should continue. Once again this links back to the theme of boredom in the film as they don't have anything positive to say to each other, therefore they seem to be creating drama for themselves.