The Templer Journey: travels, trails and travails

BACKGROUND: This was a soundtrack/sound design project for a documentary featuring the German Templer community - religious German settlers in Palestine who were then interned and shipped to Australia during the second world war. The film was a mix of interviews, with illustrative photographs from the period being recounted. Under consideration were the questions of how sound could lift the footage from just talking heads and photograps to a more dynamic experience for the audience. SIGNIFICANCE: Funded by OMAC (Victorian Multicultural Commission) and the Knox City Council (both competitive grants) CONTRIBUTION: This project invovled two principal points of focus. The first was to explore musical compositions which avoided the emotional proscription associated with narrative score. This was achieved by a sense of musical archive (drawing on hymns from the period recorded, performed and mixed to sound slightly detached/dated). But the more interesting question was how to use sound design to shift the perception of space. The fact that the "Ken Burns effect" (panning/zooming on static images) was used on the photgraphic montages, meant that temporal perception was already being stimulated, so it provided covering fire to subtly sound design most of the photographs being presented. (ie. Through movement they could also 'sound'). The objective was to open up a sense of space so the 'world' of the interviewee was augmented by the 'world' of the memory they were retelling, rendered in sound to accompany the 'summary' in photograph. (Please use headphones if previewing this approach on youtube otherwise it may well be inaudible!)

背景：本项目为一部聚焦德国圣殿骑士社区（German Templer community）的纪录片原声配乐与声音设计作品，该社区指二战期间被拘禁并遣送至澳大利亚的巴勒斯坦德国宗教定居者群体。影片由访谈片段与同期纪实照片混剪而成，核心探讨的命题为：如何借助声音技术，将原本仅由访谈画面与静态照片构成的内容，升级为更具沉浸感的观众观览体验。
意义：本项目由OMAC（维多利亚州多元文化委员会，Victorian Multicultural Commission）与诺克斯市议会资助，两项均为竞争性拨款项目。
项目贡献：本项目聚焦两大核心创作方向。其一为探索规避叙事配乐固有情感导向束缚的音乐创作路径：通过打造具有历史档案质感的音乐——取材于同期圣诗，经录制、演奏与混音后，整体呈现出略带疏离感的复古质感，以此达成创作目标。而更具探索价值的命题，则是如何通过声音设计优化空间感知。由于照片蒙太奇采用了肯·伯恩斯效果（Ken Burns effect，即对静态图像进行摇移与缩放），这一手法本身已能激发观众的时间感知，因此为我们巧妙地为多数展示照片植入声音设计元素提供了创作空间（即通过视觉动态，同步赋予照片听觉维度）。本次创作的核心目标是拓展空间感知维度，使受访者讲述的记忆世界，能够与照片承载的"总结性"视觉内容相得益彰，通过声音构建出更为立体的叙事场景。（若在YouTube平台预览该作品，请务必佩戴耳机，否则声音效果可能无法被清晰感知！）