The Hastings Sound Project was one I set myself under the Spatial Practise unit during my second year of university. Coming from Hastings, I wanted to create an experimental film that expressed the vibrance of the town and visualise the feeling and life within it. I travelled home to film every part of the town that I love the most and everything that makes Hastings, Hastings but also what makes it 'home' to me.
I went to the seaside and documented iconic parts of the town like the Old Town, Seagulls, the Fair, Arcades, the people as well as photos of the sweet shops, stained glass windows etc. The idea was to film these subjects in a sense that represented the action of them e.g moving with what I was filming rather than statically recording to give the audience and understanding of the mood the said focus provides. As well as the positive side of Hastings, I wanted to cover some of the negative: crime. The town wrongly gets branded as crime ridden and despite that being wrong, we aren't free of it (like everywhere else) so because of that, I felt the need to include headlines and news tags discussing this as well as the arson of the Pier. In addition I went to museums in the town and documented elements of them so that the rich history of the town was relevant in the film too: shaping a narrative of the town and the atmosphere it holds.
Once i had all my footage, I edited them all together using overlay and screen modes to blend them into each other. I wanted scenes to overflow onto the other so that the individual films felt like one and (despite being hectic at times), I wanted them to reflect an atmosphere. This was further enhanced by the camera movement but also the organic sounds coming from the original videos.
Some texts in the film are segments from poetry about the town which I used digital type for, editing glitch effects to make the text part of the scene instead of a layer on top of it.
To finish, I added animation in to reflect the history of the town but also my personal view of being a 'Hastings boy'. For example, I boiled hand written text like 'our great little home' and 'judgement/us' as I feel that people underestimate Hastings, giving it bad rep because it's popular to but in reality, it's quite the opposite.
The animations interact with the particular bit of footage they're on and all have a contextual narrative to them (in relation to what you see), all of which presenting Hastings as I see it: beautiful, busy, full of life and always interesting.
For the second part to this project I wanted to put the video of the place, into the place. In other words, now the first video was made, I wanted to physically put it into the town. The plan was to film areas of Hastings (ideally with a wall) going from day to night, quiet and occupied and have the made video composited into it as if it were being projected into the space at the time of filming.
I made the mistake of not using a tripod so the camera had subtle hand movement but despite that, I motion tracked the footage and attached the first film to a wall in the frame. I liked the concept of this as it reversed the roles of the videos. The experimental film was now in a real space so its own sound wasn't needed. I removed it and replaced with the ambient sound within the scene it was being 'projected into'. Doing this meant that you got to see the interpretation of Hastings, in Hastings while natural sounds of the town like cars, people, cats, music and the seaside now narrated the video being projected.
What I love about this video is how Hastings lives. We get to see life happen and a town thrive, even in its silence. We see birds gravitate in their habitat and see their behaviour, we see people enjoy themselves dance as well as 'do life' but we also hear people 'do life'. There's so much going on in the experimental interpretation that sound almost accompanies it on the ride but in the second film, we see both visuals with a natural audio. This audio tells stories of peoples lives that are captured in the footage, whether that's phone calls, passing by or evening singing and dancing on a pub table.
We hear the life of the town through the people that make the town what it is. They're the narrator to this story.