Technical Challenges in Planning and Creating a Film Remotely.
This blog post will explore the technical challenges Josh and I have faced in planning and creating this project. As I am in Newcastle studying to complete my degree, and Josh is working a 9-5 in Huddersfield, we have had to cultivate a working relationship where we both work independently, and then share our ideas and progress on online platforms to show and discuss what we’ve been doing. This contrasts to our familiar approaches to collaboration, as we are both used to working in-person and bouncing ideas off one another in quick succession. In order to guide us in this new style of remote collaboration, we have been using Murdock-Kitt and Emans’ Intercultural Collaboration by Design.[1] We have found that although we are from similar backgrounds, the book offers qualitative approaches to trust building and idea sharing, as we find ways to ascertain each other’s creative and cultural approaches to our workflows. We hope that this will give us the skills and knowledge to build a positive working relationship and to guide us in future collaborations.
Remote Planning
Josh and I have mainly been using Zoom and Miro Boards to discuss and share our ideas. Concepts such as Zoom Fatigue and Burnout have been relatable topics of conversation during the pandemic, - and are something that Josh and I have also had to work through.[2],[3]The disconnect of Zoom can make it difficult to express and share ideas in ways that we are used to doing in person, however, I have found it encouraging to come to Zooms more prepared than I usually would for an in-person meeting. Personally, this has resulted in finding more confidence in my ideas, - and in being more self-assured in how I present them also, which is something I hope to continue doing in future collaborations. Using a Miro board has also helped us to collaborate by enabling us to both contribute to a shared mood board that offers us an alternative to the pressures and constricts of Zoom calls.
Our shared Miro Board has been key to the planning of our project, as the flexibility of being able to upload our ideas and thoughts whenever we like works around both of our work schedules and is a really useful way of logging our process. In the picture below you can see options of colour grading for the film that Josh uploaded, enabling us to make the decision on what the film's over all aesthetic would be like.
Josh and I also came up with a shared Spotify playlist of songs that we think could influence the soundtrack to ensure that the soundtrack is influenced by both of our musical preferences.[5]
Remote Working
Both Josh and I conducted three Zoom interviews each, asking our friends to tell us of their experiences of life in Lockdown. We recorded their responses through a contact mic placed on the sound output source of their interview, and also asked them to use their phones to record themselves so that we had two contrasting recordings of their interviews. From these interviews, I created a narrative in order to help form a storyboard for our film, I then uploaded the ideas of the storyboard to Josh to see if he liked where the theme of the film was going.
We also took a similar approach to filming the footage for the film, by sending the camera in the post to each other’s house in order to get a wide range of footage for our film to reflect the different emotions in the narrative. We found that as the file sizes of our filmed footage was so large, it was easier to send a USB stick in the post with all of the footage on it, as the WIFI at both of our homes was unpredictable and often took multiple attempts and hours at a time to successfully send the footage.
As Josh is using Adobe Premier to curate the footage into a film and I don’t have Adobe Premier, I had to trust Josh’s judgements and rely upon screenshots of his progress. This was a learning curve for both Josh and myself, as Josh has never complied footage without a pre-made soundtrack, and I’ve never worked with moving image before: we were both out of our comfort zones. Luckily, as we had been using Murdock- Kitt and Emans’ Six Dimensions of Intercultural Teamwork (as seen below), we felt comfortable trusting one another in order to work towards our established shared goals and desired aesthetic of the film. [6]
The DPA 5.1 and Sennheiser Ambeo were used to record the field recordings in order to create binaural field recordings to create an immersive soundtrack for the film. I used this really useful Sound on Sound article, and the Ambeo A-B Converter plug-in to help me to decode the four mono tracks into an ambisonic sound file.[7]
Once Josh had finished his first draft of the visuals with the narrative, I then put together a soundtrack for the film. I originally planned to have binaural field recordings throughout the whole film, however Josh and I decided that it took away from the narrative of the piece, and instead was much more effective being used in the middle of the film to provide some contrast to the synth-based soundtrack.
The technical challenges to working remotely, especially in doing something that is unfamiliar to both of us, has had its challenges and surprises. We’ve had to become more reliant upon our own tastes and decisions, but also missed the trust and relationship that comes from working in person. Unforeseen challenges such as having to send USB sticks in the post as neither of our WiFi's are good enough to upload the amount of footage we filmed, has made our project a lot more time-consuming than anticipated. We've also found that working remotely is a lot more time consuming than working in person too as it's a lot more solitary, which, we've both found to be less motivating. Working this way has, however, taught us new skills: I’ve really come to value planning a project rather than just taking it one step at a time, and Josh is now confident in putting footage together without a soundtrack to help guide him. So far it has been a big learning curve, but we are excited to see what we come up with and the journey it takes us on too.
[1] Kelly M. Murdoch-Kitt, Denielle J. Emans, Intercultural Collaboration by Design: Drawing from Differences, Distances and Disciplines through Visual Thinking, (New York: Routledge, 2020).
[2] Brenda K. Wiederhold, 'Connecting Through Technology During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Avoiding "Zomm Fatigue"', Cyberpyschology, Behaviour and Social Networking, 23/7, (2020), 437-439, (437-438).
[4] Manyu Jiang, 'The reason Zoom calls drain your energy', BBC Worklife, 22nd April 2020, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting, (9th May 2020).
[5] Josh Bennett, 'Safra.', Spotify, 2021, https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7EptF7J6CcmUox3S0vfWpi?si=061502144ac84c1d, (19th May 2021).
[6]Kelly M. Murdoch-Kitt, Denielle J. Emans, Intercultural Collaboration by Design: Drawing from Differences, Distances and Disciplines through Visual Thinking, (New York: Routledge, 2020),10.
[7] Chris Timson, 'Logic Pro X: Working With Ambisonic Audio', Sound On Sound, June 2019, https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/logic-pro-x-working-ambisonic-audio, (19th May 2021).
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