Professional Development Bursary

So from my previous posts you can see that I was lucky enough to secure a Professional Development Bursary which covered the costs of attending a short course in Premier Pro. After much searching I went on a course with Certitec in Covent Garden which was really good. Small class with a really nice instructor and a good deal of after support and it’s probably this aspect that represents where the value for money is. There were a few marketing people on the course, I was the only artist and the others consisted of small business owners hoping to skill up so that they could make their websites more exciting.

My previous blog entries give a little more detail about the course and the work that I did which I kind of felt was finished a while ago. Anyway, as promised here is the entry that concerns the sound work. I was pleased with the quality of the imagery but not being someone who usually works in moving image I think I settled a little too quickly with the work and after living with it for a few months I realised that it had much more potential. It had some sound but only that which was recorded at the time and I realised this wasn’t enough and that I could enable the work to have more impact if the sound was better quality, more structure and purposeful. The work is about people who live with terminal illness or long-term health conditions, I could go on at length here so I’ll spare you but do contact me if you’d like to hear more!

I had an idea to develop a soundtrack from the sounds of diagnostic imaging processes and thanks to some contacts I managed to get some of the medical sounds I needed. Having just started work in Premier I then needed to find someone to assist me with the sound work. Through a work colleague I was introduced to a young composer would had experience/interests in electronic sound so we met and have been developing the work together. It has a long way to go yet as we are trying multiple approaches that are quite electronic, some new tests that will be more choral whilst balancing the aims of the work in the first instance.

Over the holidays I am planning a number of recordings with people reading scripted text that will be the basis for the final composition which we are working on in January. I expect the work won’t be fully complete until Feb/March so I’ll be planning another entry to update a-n readers on how it all plays out. Thanks for reading.

Here’s a little 1 minute snippet if you’re interested:

https://vimeo.com/240289879

Please leave a comment if you have time or share, thanks.

www.catherine.baker.co.uk

Apologies that its been a while since my last update but a few exciting projects have been taking up my time, in a very enjoyable but time consuming way.

I’m still working with the video piece as the recording event was extensive so I have a great deal of footage to use, here’s another film still from the latest version. The participants as you can see from my previous posts are all clothed, which was a decision I made after some tests, they were shot in a small tank as opposed to a more expansive body of water. The below image was from the first test (tank)and my volunteer was an excellent participant but the resultant images reminded me somewhat of a “…tense, nervous headache” advert so along with rethinking the presence of clothing to normalise the person whilst exaggerating their out-of-placeness, I decided a radical change would be needed for the next filming. The first test made use of a plastic bag type invention that you can place your camera in ‘safely’ and submerge it…scarily we read the instructions multiple times and miraculously it worked! Sadly the quality wasn’t superb though so a very expensive camera and housing was hired for the second shoot…in for a penny in for a pound I thought, though it was many, many pounds more! Still a fraction of the purchase price so in hindsight it was a good decision.

Anyway, after my editing course I had felt that I was quite pleased with the 10-minute film outcome but thats the rub, once you develop your skills you get more ambitious and so I’ve been reworking the film for the past few months….check out my next entry for an update on my progress, thanks for reading!