Becoming : Christian Marclay

ResearchFor the Becoming brief we were split into small groups and given a artist to research. Christian Marclay was the artist choosen for us. During this project we were asked to find out as much as we can about the artist and creating a blog which would hold all the information we had gathered about him. At the end we were then asked to present a presentation based on what we had found out. We first started by researching him online, getting as many notes and videos examples as we could so we could add to the blog. We also looked through one or two books about the artist. We wanted to be oragnised so we set each individual member of the group a specific topic to research. I was given the topic of Christian Marclay’s A Video Quartet, which is a series of hollywood video clips which is edited together to make a symphony of sound and vision. i also watched a video documentary about his work, which really help me understand what kind of artist he was, and where his inspiration lies when he is creating his work. As he didn’t always stick to one thing over again, he would use a variety of different methods to cre-ate his projects.

My first approach was going online and looking through Youtube as there was a few examples of Marclay’s Quartet posted on their, also i had found a few other websites which had some more information on his work. I also tried to find books that held any information on his work, but there wasn’t many which didnt already tell me anything new. We then returned and diss-cussed what we had found, as the other had gathered information on all of his other projects like Guitar Drag, The Clock, The Chalkboard, Telephones and his Turntable music.

After gathering all the information that we needed on the projects, we attended a few tutorials to help us generate a few ideas for our presentation. After looking through his work we diss-cussed with our tutors the possible idea of using sound recorded clips as a way to create our own music. We then decided that this was going to take a lot of time in the short time period that we had to present. Our second idea was to create a video collage of different movies and place them together to tell a story, but this appeared to be a longer process. We then made a vote between the group over what we should present we narrowed it down to a few catego-rys which include crying, laughing, dying and scary scenes. We all voted for laughing scenes in which we hoped to blend together a video collage explaining his work through the use of laughing clips and a short explanation. We wanted to find as many different laughing scenes from different films and join them together as one.

We started by looking on Youtube to find laughing scenes in films, we wanted to keep to the idea of just showing film clips, so we didnt add any animations or cartoons as it would steer away from what we were trying to make. When making this we had to write a screenplay which helped us with building its structure, as the video was not going to be completley ran-dom we had to think about how we could open the video the the audience so that they would understand what we were presenting. We all decided on finding clips from as many films as possible and we let one person also write the structure of the script where we also added a few ideas to areas that needed work. Something we had in mind was to keep all the videos the same quality and ratio but we found this as a challenge as there was many videos that were pixelated.

I focused on trying to look through comedy genres as i knew there would be a wide range of laughing scenes in most of these kind of films. I looked at films such as Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Rush Hour, The Mask, Cable Guy and many other films. After gathering all the footage we then put them together in premier pro. From this stage we then decided to film different people from our class all saying the word “Who?”. The idea behind this was to open the video with the question “ Who is Christian Marclay?” and then play clips of everyone saying who, which is then backed up by the video laughing collage that we made.

Becoming : Christian Marclay

Initial Idea

Becoming : Christian Marclay

For our own individual project, we were asked to create a final outcome that would show the artist work and style. Having already done the video collage with my group i wanted to explore his area within his stlye of music. Prior to this i had already known that he uses various audio clips, which is taken from other records which he lables as “ unwanted sounds”. Marclay then uses these sounds and creates his own style of music. This was somthing which i found inter-esting, as i’ve never heard of this method done before. I did further research into his music work and listen to his album More Encores on Youtube. Some of his tracks have a very high pitch to them and were fast in pace and later dropped. I also noticed that he keeps a regular beat throughout his tracks and often structured his music. i made a note of what i noticed so i could later use this to try and create my own.

Since Christian Marclay didnt record his own sounds, i was thinking about using sounds from other record artists to see if i could achieve a smiliar effect. I found this to be a little difficult as i would have to pick a certain sound from different music tracks. instead i opted to use a recorder to record my own sounds and use clips from other artist to make a kind of remix.An-other reason for collecting my own sound clips was based on the fact that by using a recorder they would sound clearer than if i had taken them from another source with other instruments in the background.

I had a list of ideas of what sounds i wanted to collect, I was looking to gather sounds like scratches, banging sounds, static sounds, paino sounds and drum and symbol sounds. Before i started collecting the sounds i had to decide on the structure and how i was going to start and finish it, I had an idea that i could use an artist track and loop it for the main rythm of the song. I wanted to have a paino theme in the background as i felt like it would fit in well with the sounds i was going to record.

Research Music

Becoming : Christian Marclay

I started gathering the sounds i needed using a recorder i borrowed from the media store. I collected sounds from withing the university campus. I used different objects to created the sounds i was after. my first attempt was to use a cd and to hit the edges on a plastic container, which created a soft banging sound. The first attempt was a succesful one and i continued to move to other location and use other objects. For the static sound i used a speaker which was connected to a mac computer, i got a friend to play a video and to adjust one of the output cables on the back on the mac so it would create a static effect when its passed through the speakers. I also used the metal blinds in the class room, where i took a pen to scratch the edges of the blinds which created a tapping sound effect. Overall i was generally happy with the sounds i collected. Now i had to find a way to merge them to the paino rythm to create my own music.

While is was importing my music i thought about how this was going to look when it was done and i thought that i could add further to this by creating a video collage. I didnt want to make it the same as the one from our group presentation. Instead i looked more to old black and white hollywood films. My reason for doing this was because Christain Marlcay used older hollywood films for his Video Quartet. I used any genre of films as long as they were between 1940’s to 1960’s. Some of the films i had looked at were To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Beatles : Hard Days Night, Creature from Black Lagoon, Psycho and a few others. My idea was to show different clips during this time period. i wasnt trying to create a story with these videos as there wasnt going to be any sound from them. Instead the clips were played by random with the music i put together playing in the background. I did want to create a certain flow to this, as i wanted the video to go together with the music playing. I wanted to add fast paced clips to areas of music that was fast, and with lound sounds add clips of explosions or monsters bascily a scene that wasn’t boring to watch. I tired to make the music blend in with the video so it felt like you were watching something as a whole, rather that looking at them as two different pieces of work. I think that the video works well with the style that Christain Marclay produces and its something that is completley different from our group work.

Final Outcome