Process Piece By Kirsten Anderson and Justin Zarian

The world is full of so many wonderful and amazingly unique sounds.  Consider everything you do in a day - take a shower, eat food, or walk from location to location.  Every movement comes with a distinct sound, whether our ears register and pay close attention or not.  Noises make our surroundings come alive.  Think about it - if you watch a horror movie without the sound, is it really so terrifying?  Definitely not.  Sound effects and music scores help draw in audiences without them even realizing how they are being manipulated.  Just as in a film, surrounding sounds play a subtle but vital role in every-day living.

In an effort to express human life through process, we chose to document a typical morning of a girl getting ready for school and walking to class.  Not only did we want to record a universal event, but we wanted to communicate the theme of the passing of time.  Everybody has deadlines to meet.  What happens before the deadline is the individual's call, as long as they make it in time.  Our process piece shows a girl working against the clock; however, when it matters most, she delivers just in time before the bell rings. 

Just as in the viewings for class, we also wanted to show the contrast of both mundane moments in life, as well as how grateful we truly should be for these little events.  In "My Mom the Taxidermist," the daughter tries taxidermy with her mother, even though she is a vegetarian.  This process is so special and touching because it focuses on a mother-daughter relationship.  The importance of these events, like the bonding in this piece and the seemingly insignificant task of getting to school on time in our piece, is highlighted because they are specific processes in which humans grow.  Both are not momentous events, but both are vital when determining important moments in ones life.  Alarms begin everyone's day.  We all have to climb out of bed, even if doing it somewhat drudgingly.  And showers (hopefully) are a daily routine that everyone should partake in.  These sounds are a representation of the processes everyone goes through that are taken for granted.

Every process we, as humans, go through have specific sounds attached to those movements.  This is why in a movie if something could be making a sound, then it should be making a sound.  In the Disney Pixar film Wall-E, every sound is rerecorded and layered on top of other sounds for a full effect.  We wanted to layer sounds like this in our process piece to give a more realistic representation of life.  Sounds are everywhere, and never is there one sound.  For this reason we chose to overlay the ticking clock on top of other sounds.  The ticking clock also connects to our theme of racing against the clock, and ultimately coming out on top.  The ticking ends right before the final bell of class, signifying her success in this race against time.