Sophie Clements
Royal College of Art, London

Turn the Tide

Biography: Sophie is a masters student in communications art and design at the Royal College of Art in London. Her interest in moving images came from a desire to combine her two main interests — music and design. As a percussionist, Sophie places great emphasis on the sound and rhythm in her work, and the way they reinforce and interact with each other. Usually the creator or co-creator of the sound in her pieces, Turn the Tide is a step toward the commercial market, and the first “music video” she has made. Sophie is currently collaborating with various musicians in London.

Objective: Turn the Tide is a film that I made of a song from a band in which I play. The song urges us to become aware of the cycles we find ourselves in, and in turn to make our world a better place. I symbolize this by the use of thousands of pieces of paper. Paper is a medium through which we are educated, influenced, persuaded and inspired, carrying the messages that greatly influence our values, thoughts and views. In this film, the paper becomes alive and delivers its message to us.

Tools used: The original footage of the band was shot on mini DV with separate shots of the lead singer and the rest of the band. I then edited each musician and performance of the singer individually in Adobe® Premiere® (also synching up with the original audio), finally compositing them together in Adobe After Effects®. I transported the composited film back to Premiere and rendered each frame of the film as a TIFF sequence. Using an Adobe Photoshop® batch process, I then placed all 5,700 frames on a separate page, adjusted levels and size, and printed it. I re-animated each frame from two or three angles using the stopmotion capture function in Premiere, then edited them together. Finally I graded the film in After Effects.

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