Task 3 - Make a (Film) Trailer
Alan writes:
This task derives from three contexts. Firstly, it’s a response to my own feelings about process and product, as set out in my ‘official’ response to Task 2: that task was about process, so this task asks you to make a definite product. Secondly, Task 3 is intended to be useful for your ongoing project with Mette Høybye, ‘Fieldwork in the Body’: you have said that you’re unsure how to organise all the recordings you have made of your collaboration, and this exercise is designed to jumpstart that process (so — although this task is to make a product, it is still about process…). Thirdly, Task 3 comes from our discussions on parametric approaches to creative work, and directly also from an assignment that was set at the Middlebury workshop on ‘videographic criticism’ I attended in June. As Chris Keathley and Jason Mittell, the organisers of the Middlebury workshop, have written, ‘formal parameters lead to content discoveries’; I hope the parameters set out in this task will help you to make worthwhile discoveries about the content you have amassed.
Your task is to produce an trailer forthe film you have planned based on the materials you have accumulated for the ‘Fieldwork in the Body’ project. Like an abstract, this film should convey the topic, approach, and tone of your project and planned film. One key goal of this trailer is to make us want to see your longer film and to know more about your project! The parameters for creating the trailer are as follows:
- It should be exactly 120 seconds long, including any titles;
- It should consist of fifty still images and one continuous twenty-second shot featuring both you and Mette;
- It should have a continuous soundtrack, which should not be a specially composed voiceover but should consist of pre-existing recordings. The soundtrack should sync with some but not all of the twenty-second shot.
Enjoy!