Friday, March 9, 2007

Christian Marclay, Video Quartet, Excerpt #1

This artist took his favourite bits of music in film and composed a new piece of audiovisual music from it.

ReMeMbEr HiGh FiDeLiTy?

Within the reading for this week (Buhler, Kassabian, Neumeyer and Stilwell) was a point in the debate where diegetic and nondiegetic sound within film was touched upon and the ‘pro’s and con’s’ involved in separating that sound into distinctive camps. While traditionally the categories have been strongly defined with orchestral soundtracks being separate from the sounds within the characters environment, this has been challenged over recent years. Examples of Magnolia and Moulin Rouge are given within the reading and their success in playing with this boundary. Yet, for me it is High Fidelity which epitomizes the idea, being a film in which music plays such a prominent role in the narrative, the setting, the soundtrack and the characters lives and personalities. In the opening scene where the camera’s focus is on a stereo, the nondiegetic soundtrack accompanying the shot is then twisted through clever sound mixing into becoming the diegetic music played through the headphones worn by the main character. This scene is like a reflection, illustrating that what we as viewers are listening to is likewise being critiqued by the character we are watching, who again is visually watching us. This concept of music being not only the soundtrack accompanying what we as viewers are watching but also the soundtrack of the characters lives, their experiences and emotions, is repeated at other points throughout the film where this diegetic/nondiegetic boundary is casually yet effectively crossed. Music is such a big part of our individual lives, many of us being able to think of a particular piece of music which in a sense feels like the soundtrack to our own life. As some of the writers of this reading argue, the boundary between what characters can and cannot hear is not set in concrete and need not be so, as it is a technique that may be used or broken despite its long history born within films of the silent era.

Grime Videos

Wow, someones already posting grime videos!

I'm thinking about making them the subject of my research assignment actually, although I'm not such in what capacity...

Simon, the videos you posted really show how things have changed for Roll Deep... I think the changes grime videos have gone through show not just a change in budgets but at the same time a change in the goals of the music...most of the earlier grime videos I have seen have focused on reflecting the musics lyrical content and highlighting the urban lifestyles of the MC's... just straight street videos basically, but you can see stuff beginning to change. I think that "Shake a Leg," video you posted really shows Roll Deep trying to broaden the aesthetic possibilities of their music to try and get more people interested in what they are doing.

Another video that does this is the new lethal b video, it really looks like he's attempting to break away from the traditional constraints of grime subject matter and his video certainly succeeds in creating a strong albeit ambiguous visual aesthetic...



In saying that the video does seem to be strongly modeled on the American rap video... mostly just a projection of the rappers ego/image but I suppose that's what MCing returns to again and again no matter what the genre. And with no other available model other than rap of how grime can become more popular yet at the same time maintain its 'credibility' I would certainly like to see some crews or MCs break this mold, maybe ruff sqwad when/if they get that kind of budget.

It is interesting seeing grime as a new genre attempting to assert it's identity through music videos. It would also be interesting to see what an instrumental grime video would look like, I've found electronic music in general seems to have a big problem with asserting itself in video form, far too often falling back on crap animation.

Grime's cousin Dubstep also faces this problems if it is too spread. Although I think dubstep is less concerned about mainstream popularity. As instrumental music it certainly provides an interesting space for experimentation.

I produce dubstep and have made a video for one of my tracks, it's called "Laser Gun Dub." PLUPLUGPLUGPLUG.



oh and more grime video links would be cool...

- Linus Norman

Indian silent film & live music AK 07

I'm having some trouble embedding YouTube vids due to account transfers etc. so in the meantime here's a bit of Prapancha Pash with Nitin Sawhney's soundtrack.

Official blurb in exoticism overdrive below:

Nitin Sawhney is firmly established as a world-class producer, songwriter, DJ and orchestral composer. He has become a latter-day renaissance man in the worlds of music, dance, theatre and film. Sawhney has scored over twenty-five films, most recently working with director, Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair), on her forthcoming feature for Fox Searchlight, The Namesake.

Continuing with the exploration of his South Asian roots, Sawhney has written a stunning soundtrack to the beautiful 1929 classic A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash), the third silent film in a trilogy by German, Franz Osten, considered by many as one the finest and most accomplished directors of all time.

A Throw of Dice, a tale from the Mahabarata, is the love story of Ranjit and the nefarious Sohan, two kings with a passion for gambling - and the same woman, Sunita. The film has not been on general release for over 70 years and has recently been completely restored by the British Film Institute.

The presentation of A Throw of Dice offers Auckland an opportunity to experience the combination of exotic and rare filmography with contemporary and evocative music in the magical setting of the iconic Civic Theatre.

The music is performed by Nitin Sawhney himself, his six exceptionally talented musicians and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

The World Premiere of Sawhney's score was commissioned and presented by the Barbican, London on 21 April 2006 and was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and
Nitin Sawhney's band.

"Sawhney's music - generated live on stage behind a screen - is gloriously varied and affecting, ranging throughswooning melismas on Indian sarod, to Asian dub and classical string trio." The Independent, UK

Event Details

Date: Friday, 16 March 2007 - Saturday, 17 March 2007
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: The Civic, THE EDGE®
Venue Address: Cnr Queen St & Wellesley St
Location: Auckland CBD, Auckland City, Auckland
Website: www.aucklandfestival.co.nz

Isaac Julien in town

Isaac Julien is a queer black British filmmaker who has made several films that deal with black popular music and more important issues in the US, UK, Jamaica and other parts of the Black Atlantic: Looking For Langston, Young Soul Rebels, The Darker Side of Black, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, Baadasssss. He is in Auckland as part of AK 07 to open his installation piece True North at the AUT Gallery. He'll be talking today (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday) at AUT. It's free. The exhibition runs from 9 March - 21 April 2007. More information/blurb below:


FRIDAY 9 MARCH

3pm
Isaac Julien speaks about his work True North
Gallery One
St Paul St
Free


SATURDAY 10 MARCH

11am
Isaac Julien & Nikos Papastergiadis in conversation
London based artist Isaac Julien discusses his practice and triennial installations True North and Paradise Lost with Nikos Papastergiadis, Associate Professor and Reader in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.
AUT lecture theatre WE230
Free

Isaac Julien - True North

Isaac Julien's three-screen synchronised film installation, True North, 2004, is a meditation on the treacherous and complex journeys beckoned by the sublime and contested space of the North Pole. Julien's camera is at times continuous across the three screens, and alternately, sliced into a triptych, suggesting the multiple ways in which 'land' is perceived and, literally, apprehended. At one moment, the camera literally seems as though it is falling through the cavernous cracks in the ice, the sequences changing abruptly. At another, the shifting planes of the three screens meet in absolute harmony. Then one plane will slide behind another, or a screen is 'turned off' as it were, fading to black and allowing for iconic moments and singular images. The very real treachery of the ice is played out in these metaphorical slippages, suggesting both the elusive nature of 'true north' and the highly fraught notion of truth itself.

Julien has, for a number of years, been a forerunner in the use of parallel montage. Works such as Paradise Omeros (2002), Baltimore (2003), and Fantôme Créole (2005) explore issues of black identity across multiple screens. This principle of montage - the repetition, mirroring, doubling and interchanging of individual shots - emphasises at a technical level Julien's idea that memory is non-linear. In relation to True North, he says, "the idea of 're-memorizing' is different from the official discourses of History with a capital 'H'. A lower-case investigation into the historical material is at work in True North. Memory is not chronological." Historical memory is juxtaposed with contemporary imagery, and is thus revealed to be increasingly unreliable. The promise of existential uncertainty in the face of the snow-covered, icy and sublime landscape, (a clear reference to the tradition of 19th century sublime landscape painting, for example the works of Caspar David Friedrich) is continually undermined by the non-linear format of the work.

Shot in Iceland and Sweden, the film responds to the story of Matthew Henson, an African American, who took part in Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole in 1909, and who was the first person to reach the geographic North Pole, True North, (as opposed to the magnetic North Pole). The minimal voiceover in Julien's film, which has the intimacy of a whisper, replays the tension between these two men which escalated to the point at which Henson, motivated by fear, had to remove the ammunition from his rifle at night and bury it in the snow. The men had a mutual dependence, however, with a respective double and constantly changing index.

The 'conquest', mapping and surveying of the world is a white undertaking - it is, in other words, colonisation. By casting the role of 'explorer' in the guise of a black woman, Julien contradicts the ideology of colonialism, which is assumed to be both white and male. At the same time he opposes the ideology of 'terra nullus' by making it obvious that the utmost north is inhabited, and that 'conquest' is therefore also always a form of theft. For example, Inuit men and women at work in the landscape are juxtaposed with a Christian church interior, hinting at the disputed histories of this location.

In True North, representation itself is revealed to be both an aesthetic and political challenge. The blazing beauty of white ice and the sonic thunder of the falling water is visualised as a paradoxical space. As the imagery shuttles between telescopic and panoramic journeys, the female subject of the film is simultaneously 'at home' in her icy environment, and at other times engulfed by it. In True North, Julien creates a new kind of topography in which black identity is not aligned to the nation state. Working to disrupt historical assumptions of colonisation and the aesthetic rules of the moving image itself, Julien invokes a fluctuating and experiential interpretation of the voyage.

Leonhard Emmerling and Victoria Lynn

Click here to visit Isaac Julien's Website

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Sound + Image = Disturbing Results.

Here are two YouTube videos I've encountered over the last while that I thought might be relevant, or at least in some way interesting.

The first one is a good example of how changing the relationship between images and visuals can drastically change the emotional tenor of the result.

Here we have a montage of Star Trek images to the tune of Closer, by Nine Inch Nails. Be warned, the clip isn't work safe.



Secondly, we have a more comedic piece about the broader music environment. I thought it's a well-done piece of stand-up, and made me laugh.

lecture 2

at today's lecture, nabeel mentioned about "minstrelsy", where ethic groups imitated each others' characteristics and images to entertain audience. we watched al jolson, a jewish pinted his face black while performing, and it made me think of michael jackson.

as a black, who turned white, and the rest of the world enjoyed the criticism and loved the jacko moments. crowned king of the pop, jackson hit the top in 1982 with the album thriller, as "the first black artist to find stardom on mtv". however, his image went down hill over time, his changeable face structures and skin colour went along side with his crazy actions and child-molester accusations. seems like his private life drew more attentions and made home more popular than his career now days.














With the drama, popularity, and legacy, the black and white Michael Jackson remained an icon. Can minstrelsy be applied to this case? Maybe yes, and there might be more to it.





























Wednesday, March 7, 2007

The Shining

Some of you may have watched the sunday horror on tv2 last weekend, it was Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (1980). It had been a good 10 years or so since I last saw it so decided to watch it again and enjoyed it even more this time around. Anyway while browsing Shining-related stuff online in order to read some explanations of the ending I came across a spoof trailer on youtube which re-edits the film in order to make it look like a disney family movie:



I thought it made a great example of how essential music is to an audiences perception of a film, and how we automatically associate certain music with particular genres of film which can then shape how we interpret the images. I think if you knew nothing about the Shining this trailer would be completely believable as a family film even though essentially all they have done is change the music and narration.

For comparitive purposes here is the actual trailer, which interestingly uses no dialogue or narration at all but relies solely on the music and images to give the audience an idea of what kind of film it is:



Another shining-related point in relation to 'popular music' is the influence of the film on an old favorite music video of mine, Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma' (from around 1994 I think):



If you haven't seen the film it may not be so apparent just from watching the trailer but the long tracking shots in the hallway and interior style of the hotel rooms are very reminiscent of The Shining's setting, while other elements such as the twin girls, and the typing of 'karmacoma' over and over again in the closeup shot on the typewriter are the more obvious references to the film.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

underground to mainstream in three easy clips

seeing as ive made a couple of comments so far and criticized OKgo a little and academic music a little more i thought i would put up some music i am really into. Then you can have a rip into it if its not your cup of tea.

ive got three clips here that show how music changes the more money you add and then of course the more people you have to get to like it so you get your money back.

the first is, i'm guessing about 2002, because dizzee rascal is still in roll deep. its a continuous shot on a handy cam so its about as far away from mtv strobe light television as you can get. no sound mastering at all. Grime can be kinda hard on the ears people new to it so if you fully dislike the first video skip to about 6mins40 and just watch a real young dizzee.



The second is an actual music video played on digital music television in the uk. i don't fully understand how it works but i think theres a directory of a whole lot music and you choose the video you want to watch through your sky decoder. It would have definitely been funded by the artist and is lowww budget video but amazing music. the first guy is called mercston and the guy in the skeleton jumper is called ghetto




The third video is what made it to NZ. this was played on c4, juice and alt quite a bit. its the same guys in the first clip a few years down the track with a label behind them. they were heavily criticized by the scene for releasing a commercial sounding album. I disagree, the track i chose specifically deals with the mainstream/underground dilemma check the skit at the start. by the way the white dude isnt a record company addition hes a well respected mc from the scene




anyway make your own minds up. ive got heaps links of links to more musical fire if anyones interested or would be keen to hear what you think changes as funds go up.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Just To Start Us Off...

Wow this blog seems to be so far a two horse race. And since neither are being graded on it, also fairly pointless. So I thought I would open things up with a quick note about a question I have been asking myself recently, music for films or films for music?

It seems when watching some of the newer films, the prominance of the music seemingly overtakes the film itslef. It could be argued that the music is a character in the film and moves the plot along, changes plot and even creates most of the emotion. Personally though, I like films that use music to complement the film, not control it.

Take Almost Famous as my example. While I love this film, it's salute to the music of director Cameron Crowe's childhood is as important as the film itself. While it is a film about music, when watching it last night I actually just did for the use of the music. There is a great piece that was edited together to go with Stairway To Heaven, then they couldn't afford the rights to it, so the DVD tells you when to press play, it's a great thing to look at if you haven't.

So it's just a small post with a question I don't have an answer to, but would like your opinion... Happy Blogging!

And in what might become a regular feature...

And here begins week two.

Around fifty people have successfully signed up for the blog, so anyone reading this who hasn't recieved an invitation should send me an email and I'll get right on it.

Since the paper is about popular music on screen, I thought that talking about some music might be an interesting place to start even if it is in absence of the screen element.

I only really became interested in music relatively recently, and as such I have little handle on what it is that I like. What I thought I'd do was put up an instrumental piece (assuming a cat can count as an instrument) as a talking point, since it is imaginatively strange, and see what people think.

Vladiswar Nadishana - Cats Love Song

This might happen again if people were interested, and I guess people should feel free to share their own weird music as something to talk about - with the caveat that Music We Wouldn't Otherwise Hear is probably the order of the day, so a focus on things that don't get airplay in New Zealand or haven't been pimped to death in Sounds.

The MP3 will stay up for a week, so have a listen if you're interested. I advise not downloading it at university due to paying for all that bandwidth.

- Kevin.