T, D+P "Sounds of the city"- finalising the sub-topic

During the first days of the second week other members of the group started to come up with other ideas, making us question our original one. One of these consisted of visually communicating the sounds of the city from the point of view of a homeless person living on the streets of London. After thinking about this throughout the day and talking to various tutors about it, we decided it would not be the best solution to this project. The subject matter didn't really fit the brief that well and in order for us not to become stereotypical about homelessness we would have to had to put a lot of research into the topic, research which the time constraints of this project wouldn't allow us to gather.

We therefore decided to go with the original idea that we discussed in the first week.

Project proposal

The city can be a hectic and stressful place. Therefore, given the topic “Sounds of the City” one might immediately think of busy roads, concrete buildings and huge swarms of people trying to get to their destination. However for our project we wanted to focus on the rare and hidden areas within London where one might go to escape the chaos of city life. Through moving image we aim to contrast the “sounds of the city” that might cause people to feel a curtain level of anxiety with images of nature, encouraging people to find those areas within the city that provoke a sense of calm.

In order to explore the two different environments as a group we decided to meet on location at oxford circus and then walk through to Hyde Park. This allowed us to gather visual research of the hustle and bustle of city life and of the more relaxed and tranquil environment within a park. Some of the results can be seen below.

This was useful as it gave us time to experiment with various methods of filming the information we wanted to gather whilst discussing and developing our ideas for the project further. However it quickly became apparent to me that as individuals within the group, we all had different perceptions of the subject and how we might communicate it. For example some of us wanted to use mostly film and others wanted to incorporate lots of animation into the final piece. After discussing and talking through our different ideas for the final presentation of the piece we eventually understood each other better.

As well as filming in our group I also took some photographs of my own interpretation of the topic.

I really liked how the early afternoon light at the time made the photographs look. The affect it had on the colours and the contrast within the photographs added an increased sense of tranquility to the already calming atmosphere within the park, enhancing the idea of going to such a place to escape the stress of an external city life.