CPS: Week 8 - Time

By Amber Stacey

Context

As mentioned throughout the lecture with Max, by abstracting time, we are able to understand stories, myths, cuts in cinema and seasons in games. Time can provide us with it’s own emotional and narrative possibilities, in which time can be in control or we can hold the power to control time through things like software.

How can we create time through the application of music, in order to help identify place, narrative and feelings in games and animation? Time can be projected through many different forms, by the influence of music and allows us to interact and share our stories on an unconscious level. Through creative storytelling, music can be informative to time. Time itself can dictate motion and physics as seen in TV shows as “The Flash”. It can project different time periods through stories such as Gladiator or King Arthur and help create a sense of place through the time of the day, different seasons and stages in life – in which a classic example of this in animation, is a scene from Pixar’s movie “UP” which demonstrates Ellie and Carl’s relationship through time specifically, in which the music plays a major role in evoking emotion and being able to tell their love story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2bk_9T482g

Music can create nostalgic memories, inspire stories, provoke us and express relationships of all kinds. Different time signatures play a role in creating different feelings through speed and different instruments help provide a range of different genres. Music has a strong ability to engage the audience through stories whether it be animation, film or games.

Method

Through applying the method of tinkering, I will compose a short piece of music on piano and try to manipulate the sound to create different senses of time.

Response

I began this weeks theme by thinking about some of my favourite movie scenes in order to understand how I felt music helped reflect time in those stories. That afternoon, I sat at my piano and tinkered for a while in order to try create a simple melodic piece that could be used to reflect time through memories.

I ended up creating 50 bars through the use of 3 basic chords – A, G and F.

I recorded my response to a USB from my digital piano and imported my midi file into garage band. There I played around with different tempo’s, effects and instruments to manipulate and change the sound of my song to help project different feelings of time. To help demonstrate the different emotions from these in a visual sense, I quickly applied some stock footage to 3 selected exported mp3s in Premiere Pro.

Time Video #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FrW-FN9EwY&feature=youtu.be

Time Video #2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q0lAnRG94U&feature=youtu.be

Time Video #3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeiux6H3-j8

Video of me tinkering at my piano + garage band
https://youtu.be/KABPxv2EZy4