The Actual Installation

(can't seem to rotate this picture round for some reason)

After having deliberated a million different ideas of how our video was going to be projected, we finally reached a decision with only a few days to spare.

Our final idea still involves the two viewers sitting back-to-back watching and listening to the video at the same time. However, instead of it being projected onto a surface, or using a projector, we decided to show it on two computer monitors. These monitors would be placed on a table, ontop of a plinth, so when sitting at the table, the monitor would be at eye-level to the viewer.
We constructed two boxes which the viewer would have to look through at one end, and the monitor would be placed at the other. The boxes consisted of an outer box and an inner box, where the outer box would fit the dimensions of the monitor so it seemed like it was one big piece of construction. And within this box was a tunnel, which fitted solely around the screen of the monitor. The viewer would therefore be looking through this tunneled box and viewing the screen at the other end.
The idea of the tunneled boxes was to confine the viewer and the video, so it would reach them on a more personal level. Viewing the video through a dark tunnel symbolises the idea of narrow-mindedness and tunnel-vision, which we feel is evident in today's society. The viewers would be listening to the track through head-phones which again allows them to concentrate purely on the message of the video and disengages them from the world around them, which is what people tend to do nowadays - isolate themselves into their own little worlds by walking around and listening to mp3 players. This use of technology (head-phones, computer monitors) again highlights the idea of communicating via technology.
The two viewers would watch and listen to exactly the same things at the same time, and be in very close proximity to eachother, yet still be in their own little world. We feel this layout is an exact reflection of the theme of our video and brings it to a more personal level for the viewer.

The Actual Video

Finally Done

We finished the sound for our video on Friday - all rather exciting! The main song we're using is very powerful, the meaning of the song is not entirely related to our theme, but there are certain lyrics which do go very nicely. So we edited this song, only using the lyrics we felt were suitable, and combined it with another song which is purely melody - we feel the sound and rhythmn fit the timing of the video.
The main song is by The John Butler Trio - 'What You Want'. Its actually about a couple breaking-up, yet they both still feel strongly for eachother but neither can bring themselves to make the first move. It therefore relates to our theme, this lack of communication and not wanting to make the first move. We used the lyrics which were fitting to our video and repeated them throughtout the track:

"What you want to say...";

"I'm sick of communicating over the telephone"; (this relates to the use of telephones in our video and the idea of people nowadays solely communicating via technology instead of face-to-face)

"But tell me how you feel, for I am lonely too, need you to know I'm just as cold and numb as you...";

"But I could fly away, or I could be no one..."

We used these lines repeatedly throughout the soundtrack and combined this song with parts of another song by Eric Mongrain - 'Fusions'. 'Fusions' is more upbeat and has a suitable sound and rhythmn which we feel fits nicely with the colours and tempo of our video.

So thats us done now...finally! We just have to burn it onto DVD and upload it onto YouTube and all that jazz...

Examples of our rendered pictures

Audacity is NOT our friend

We finished the visuals for our video the other day, and have been working on the sound part since, well, atleast trying to. We had problems trying to convert the song we wanted to use to a suitable format for Audacity, and our computer kept crashing when trying to open up Audacity, so that wasn't stressful at all... but at long last after receiving quite a bit of help, its working. There are two songs we decided to collaborate together, so the aim for tomorrow is to get that finished. Then we'll be ready to burn the video onto a disk!

We also had a bit of an issue with the projection aspect for our video. We didn't really have any idea of what we wanted to project it onto, apart from the idea of a curved surface, but trying to justify how that is related to the theme of our video was the issue. We both had a sudden random brain-wave after considering the idea of 'headphones', and realised what it was we wanted to do. In a couple of the still images we're using, we're sitting back-to-back and this inspired the layout for our installation. So, situated in the middle of a room would be two chairs where the viewers would sit back-to-back, the video would be projected on a large scale for both the people to view independently and they would be using headphones to listen to the sound. This not only reflects the physical contrast/distance between the two people in the video, but also addresses the concept of communication - that so many people today go about listening to music on mp3 players, and are just so disconnected from the world around them, that they avoid communication with others. The video simply being projected onto a blank surface may not be very exciting or creative, but its the layout of the installation thats important. The layout is reflective of the images of the video and so the viewer is more involved on a personal basis.