A story told by poet Allen Ginsberg about his first meeting with Harry
Smith immediately comes to mind:
He (Jordan Belson) told me enough about him so that when I was in New
York later in 1959 I went to the Five Spot to listen to Thelonious
Monk night after night. The Five Spot was then on the Bowery—a regular
classic jazz club where once I saw Lester Young, and Monk was a reg
ular for several months. And I noticed there was an old guy, with a
familiar face, someone I dimly recognized from a description,
slightly hunchback, short, magical-looking, in a funny way gnomish or
dwarfish, same time dignified. He was sitting at a table by the piano
towards the kitchen making little marks on a piece of paper. I said to
myself, "Is that Harry Smith?—I'll go over and ask him." And it turned
out to be Harry Smith. I asked him what he was doing, marking on the
paper. He said he was calculating whether Thelonious Monk was hitting
the piano before or after the beat—trying to notate the syncopation
of Thelonious Monk's piano. But I asked him why he was keeping this
track record of the syncopation or retards that Monk was making, never
coming quite on the beat but always aware of the beat. He said it was
because he was calculating the variants. Then I asked him why he was
interested in it, this is almost an Hermetic or magical study. I
understood he was interested in Crowley, magic, in numbers, in
esoteric systems, Theosophy, and he was also a member of the O.T.O.
But he had practical use for it. He was making animated collages and
he needed the exact tempo of Monk's changes and punctuations of time
in order to synchronize the collages and hand-drawn frame-by-frame
abstractions with Monk's music. He was working frame-by-frame so it
was possible for him to do that, but he needed some kind of scheme.
Also see Oskar Fischinger's work:
"Oskar prepared a film which was originally named Radio Dynamics,
tightly synchronized to Ralph Rainger's tune "Radio Dynamics". This
short film was planned for inclusion in the feature film The Big
Broadcast of 1937 (1936). Unfortunately, he found that Paramount had
changed the film project from Technicolor to black-and-white. Also,
Paramount printed the black-and-white version intercut with various
live action images, so it was no longer totally abstract. Fischinger
requested to be let out of his contract, and left Paramount. Several
years later, with the help of Hilla von Rebay and a grant from the
Museum of Non-Objective Painting, he was able to buy the film back
from Paramount. Fischinger then redid and re-painted the cels, and
made a color version to his satisfaction which he then called
Allegretto. This became one of the most-screened and successful films
of visual music's history, and one of Fischinger's most popular films.
Most of Fischinger's filmmaking attempts in America suffered
difficulties. He composed An Optical Poem (1937) to Franz Liszt's
Second Hungarian Rhapsody for MGM, but received no profits due to
studio bookkeeping systems. He designed the J. S. Bach Toccata and
Fugue in D Minor sequence for Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), but quit
without credit because all studio artists simplified and altered all
his designs to be more representational. According to William Moritz,
Fischinger contributed to the effects animation of the Blue Fairy's
wand inPinocchio (1940).[5] In the 1950s, Fischinger did create
several animated TV advertisements, including one for Muntz TV which
unfortunately never aired due to the arrest of Muntz himself.
The Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later, The Guggenheim)
commissioned him to synchronize a film with a march by John Philip
Sousa in order to demonstrate loyalty to America, and then insisted
that he make a film to Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, even though
he wanted to make a film without sound in order to affirm the
integrity of his non-objective imagery. Secretly, Fischinger composed
the silent movie Radio Dynamics (1942)."
-Wikipedia
An example from my own oeuvre constructed frame by frame in response
and in relation to the sounds
of a musical composition by composer Florian Wittenburg:
https://vimeo.com/36494903
-DB
On Jan 9, 2013, at 6:06 PM, Mark Toscano wrote:
Grateful Dead (Robert Nelson) - Nelson made a tape collage from the
Dead's first album (given to him on 1/4" by them) that ran about 8
minutes, then cut his film very tightly to that tape piece. When
their second album came out, the Dead asked Bob to make a new
soundtrack for the film, using the new album instead. Although he
did it out of friendship for them, he wasn't happy with it, as the
cutting the image to the sound had been a really important concept
for him in making the film.
“...” Reel Five (Stan Brakhage) - Cut to a pre-existing James Tenney
piece ("Flocking"). I suppose Christ Mass Sex Dance could also
possibly qualify, but I don't know for sure that Stan cut that film
TO the Tenney piece ("Blue Suede"), or if he just thought the
soundtrack and image worked together.
21-87 (Arthur Lipsett) - composed to Lipsett’s own pre-made sound
collage. I think at least one other Lipsett film was made this way
- maybe Free Fall?
John Whitney’s oil-wipe films are abstract films created “live” to
various recordings. Drawing in a pan of oil with a stylus (this
filmed from below on b/w stock) John would improvise abstractions
in real-time, playing along to a particular recording. Several
films were made this way, including Hot House, Celery Stalks at
Midnight, Mozart Rondo, Mahzel, 3rd Man Theme, Egyptian Fantasy, and
several others, all made between about 1948-1953, some of them
extending later into the ‘50s as John attempted to create color
versions that he hoped would have wider distribution.
Mark T
From: Herb Shellenberger <he...@ihphilly.org>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <frameworks@jonasmekasfilms.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 1:32 PM
Subject: [Frameworks] Films composed to music
Hello Frameworkers. There have been a few really great looking-for-
this-type-of-film threads recently, so I thought I would throw my
query out there.
A colleague and I were discussing experimental films that were
composed to music. In general we think of film scores being added
after the fact, but there are few films that I can think of that are
composed specifically to fit a piece of music:
Studies for the Decay of the West (dir. Klaus Wyborny)
In Wyborny's "musical film," every new sound triggers a new image:
6,299 shots, all directly edited within his Super-8 camera. An
intoxicating, stroboscopic trip to industrial, natural and urban
landscapes in East Africa, New York , the Ruhr region and Rimini .
This experimental music film refers to Oswald Spengler’s world-
famous 1918 philosophical work The Decay of the West. Culture
pessimist Spengler argues that progress is an illusion and that the
modern era brings little good. People are no longer able to
understand the rationality of the world. Wyborny does not set out to
make a film version of Spengler's theories, but rather a visual
reflection on the modern age; a stroboscopic journey in five parts
to industrial, natural and urban landscapes. He uses 6,299 shots,
edited directly in a Super-8 camera. Each piano note and violin
vibrato evokes a new image: demolished buildings, rubble,
destruction and nature. This film forms a counterpart to Wyborny’s
previous films series Eine andere Welt. Lieder der Erde
II(2004/2005). [Film Society of Lincoln Center ]
Passage Through: A Ritual (dir. Stan Brakahge)
When I received the tape of Philip Corner's “Through the Mysterious
Barricade, Lumen 1 (after F. Couperin),” he included a note that
thanked me for my film, “The Riddle of Lumen,” he'd just seen and
which had in some way inspired this music. I, in turn, was so moved
by the tape he sent I immediately asked his permission to "set it to
film." It required the most exacting editing process ever; and in
the course of that work it occurred to me that I'd originally made
“The Riddle of Lumen” hoping someone would make an "answering" film
and entertain my visual riddle in the manner of the riddling poets
of yore. I most expected Hollis Frampton (because of Zorn's “Lemma”)
to pick up the challenge; but he never did. In some sense I think
composer Corner has - and now we have this dance of riddles as music
and film combine to make "passage," in every sense of the word,
further possible. (To be absolutely "true to" the ritual of this
passage, the two reels of the film should be shown on one projector,
taking the normal amount of time, without rewinding reel #1 or
showing the finish and start leaders of either - especially without
changing the sound dials - between reels.) [Stan Brakhage, via CFMDC]
These are both films that use film to “play” music in a sense, or
use music to generate images or structures. While some filmmakers
may have used music in this way in a portion of a larger film, I’m
more interested in films that exclusively use this method, whether
it is with one complete piece or a few. Also, I’m trying to focus on
films that integrate music more deeply than just cutting on specific
beats.
Any ideas would be much appreciated!
Herb Shellenberger
Programs Office Manager
<image001.jpg>
3701 CHESTNUT STREET | PHILADELPHIA , PA 19104
phone: 215.895.6575 | fax: 215.895.6562
email: he...@ihphilly.org | web: www.ihousephilly.org
_______________________________________________
FrameWorks mailing list
FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com
https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
_______________________________________________
FrameWorks mailing list
FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com
https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
_______________________________________________
FrameWorks mailing list
FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com
https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
