Final Thoughts

My vision for this project would be as an exhibition in an art gallery, rather than a museum. The reason for this is because due to it being quite abstract and impressionist it doesn't tell a clear or accurate historical story. It is more of a representation of the mood of that time and the different ways in which Richard was percieved. I had managed to get my iPhone's acceleromter working as midi controller using the Midi Motion Machine app. If I was to do this installation for real I would have an artifact or several artifacts, which the viewers could pick up and interact with. The artifacts would each have accelerometers in, which would operate a different part of the soundtrack. Because I have two seperate vocal tracks by different actors, one of the artifacts would operate the crossfader, showing the switch in different interpretations. One of the things I wanted to do in my final presentation was to use the iPhone to alter the simpler effect frequencies live in Ableton to show how it would work, however there were problems communicating the iPhone to the laptop due to the wifi connection. An idea I had for the artifact itself was to have a coin with two sides. One would have a white rose and one a red, running with the them of the piece.

Overall I have really enjoyed this project as I got to use a lot of excellent pieces of software for the first time. It was great seeing everything come together in the final presentation and being able to play with the videos using a midi controller in Arkaos. I had a lot of problems along the way but in the end the abstract/surreal aesthetic route actually worked out extremely well and I was very happy with it. I'm just glad that I didn't have to do a U turn and start from scratch although it was a bit of a 90 degree turn, I got there in the end and made something I'm proud of.

Finishing Off

Below is the final version of my soundtrack. I decided to use the speech from the 1955 Lawrence Olivier film version of Richard III. There are several reasons for this:

First of all Olivier is a very famous actor and this version is more recognisable.

Secondly, I wanted my piece to look at the contrast between different interpretations of Richard, hence each clip having a red and white version.

Thirdly, this clip was much better quality and sounded much less tinny when I added it to the track. The way that Shakespeare used to structure his scripts were often written as iambic pentameters, meaning that each line would consist of 10 syllables. When disjointed or sinister characters spoke, like Richard for example, the script would break away from this rhythmic structure to show a clear change in mood. I tried to recreate this method and warped the vocals in ableton so that the first section goes in time with the beat and then when he starts to get angrier and more worked up, the rhythm becomes more disjointed.



Below are the editted versions of the footage I recorded to be used in Arkaos for the final presentation. The white rose symbolises the shift of power between the two houses during the war of the roses. The blood falling onto the white rose symbolises not only the change from a Yorkist monarchy to a Lancastrian one, but also in a more literal sense, represents the blood shed of many battles. I have done two versions of each clip, one very dark, saturated red with the clip playing normally and the others in very bright white colour with the clips playing in reverse. The red and white represent the two houses and the different sides of the story. The reason the white clips are played in reverse is again to show the shifts between the two. The final clip, although not red like the others, represents the death of Richard and the aftermath of the war. The rose is whithered and forgotten, like the house of York itself.













The next two clips were done to give a sort of earie mood to the piece. The reason I chose to make it look like someone hanging is because Richard III was actually hanged after the war despite already being killed at the Battle of Bosworth. His naked corpse was presented to the new king and was hung, drawn and quartered as a symbol. The reason I made the hanging look like someone being hanged alive is because I wanted it to be almost a switch between the actuality, being that Richard was already dead and the message which was meant by the hanging. Also it is me in that footage, although don't worry I am just dangling my legs from some goalposts. no students were harmed during the making of this film.

The castle-type footage is also there to add to the mood. It is like the whithered rose in the fact that its meant to symbolise an old forgotten war and an old forgotten monarchy.





All videos were editted with iMovie. Aside from the general cutting and editing, I also altered the levels of colour to get the right look. I also did a bit of reversing, especially in the case of the rose, which is whithered. That was a really small clip showing a slight movement and the played back and forth on a loop to make it look almost 3 dimensional.

First Version of Soundtrack

As you can hear, I have inserted the audio from the TV play into the track. The only problem is that the sound quality isn't that good in the vocal track. This maybe due to the quality of the original or maybe its because it was ripped from youtube. This is only a minor problem anyway and I think it goes quite nicely with the track. I did the full track live, rather than do it in bits. It really allowed me to get a feeling for what I was doing and made it much more enjoyable adding bits in gradually. You will also notice I have added the bongo drum loop, which gives it a really nice sound I think. I chose to use instruments that you might not neccessarily have found in the 1500s because I wanted it to have a modern sound with a sort of underlying classical theme. This is why on top of the wobbly bass, bongo and drum loops I put a guitar over the top and made something which sounds a little bit like a lute. Why a lute? Because there is a line in that opening speech which
actually says:

"Grim-visaged War hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a LUTE."

Once again everything was done in midi and I used no samples or loops

Richard's Speech

I have decided to incorporate the opening soliloquy from the TV version of Richard III. The main reason for this decision is that there is no music in the background and the clip is available on youtube. This opening speech really explains Richard's character. He start by talking about the War of the Roses and their recent success against the house of Lancaster. He then goes on to speak about his deformed features and how he can't attract women or do physical things that most people can because of it. The last lines where he says "And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days" which basically means that since he was born with the physical form of a 'monster' he is going to act as one.

Playing with Simpler

As explained in the previous post, I can't record audio, so apologies for the poor quality iPhone recording. For this I was just playing around with the Filter and LFO frequencies using a midi controller.

http://sites.google.com/site/lcogamesdesign/Memo.m4a?attredirects=0&d=1

Building My Bass

I would've liked to have the audio on this video but unfortunately my soundcard doesn't support it. It is just demonstrating how I made the wobbly bass. I first made it in midi using a guitar instrument until I got a tune I was happy with, I then dragged the simpler on to the track, then added a short waveform I got from Dubspot. From there I played around with the settings to get the right sound. The most effective dials on there are the LFO beats/freq and the filter frequency. I really want to connect these up to midi controller and operate them live as they can reallly sound good. I will do this and upload a sound file of it working later on. I actually duplicated this bass and put it up an octave or two. I then altered the LFO beats/freq, to make a more prolonged, less wobbly sound. The two went quite nicely together and I was able to make different variations, which complemented each other quite nicely.

I will say I used a tutorial for the simpler effect, which can be found here, however I spent a lot of time playing around with it and understanding what each dial and option does.

Building the drum loop

In Ableton, I spent a while getting a decent drum loop. Part of the battle was picking the right sounds for the kit and the other part was creating a decent arrangement. I know that I want to introduce some bongo sounds as well but that will be on another kit. One of the things I discovered that I thought was very useful was that below each thing in the midi track display there are some sliders to manage the velocity. If you select a few different notes, then hold control and draw a line accross the sliders you can create increasing or decreasing velocity. This is good for building momentum or taking the impact of certain sounds, which may be too loud or heavy.