woensdag 26 december 2012

Babette Hnup, "Was der Kiez für mich war" (2012)

Nice combination of images, images of images, images of text-images and off-screen voice.
Short video poem by Babette Hnup on a poem by Steffi Neils. (English title: "What My Hood Meant to Me").

dinsdag 11 december 2012

Stan Brakhage on sound on film


"Legendary Epics Yarns and Fables: Stan Brakhage"
9 minutes, Directed by Stephen E. Gebhardt and Robert Fries

My transcript from 05:21 to 07:54:

"I, for instance, have been telling people that I think, really for the art of the film, that sound is an aesthetic error, and maybe a so severe one that even within twenty years – if people have a concept of film as art in twenty years that’s worth anything – there might be a general assumption that all pursuit by artists of the medium to put sound on a film was really a blind alley. Whereas right now I could illustrate it beautifully by [Brakhage beweegt zijn lippen zonder geluid] I said just going on talking and not making any noise at all, and actually, so there wouldn’t be … it wasn’t a case that someone came and removed that noise later – I mean – I can make it, sitting here, can move my lips as if I am talking [Brakhage beweegt zijn lippen zonder geluid] so that one can see when I’m not actually talking, the extent to which I am dropping masks over my face or something more of a face, at least that’s my theory that if the major consideration of film is really the visual, then that the reason sound is a blind alley is because it cuts back sight, so that, at the very instant that suddenly the sound is removed, or that it’s relatively silent, my theory is, that it becomes more possible to see and that at the very instant that a word comes in, it immediately becomes more difficult for whomever to see. I suddenly see more when I stop talking, for instance. I also get scared. I sometimes think the real reason that, aside from the wonder of lip-sync, that the movies plaster mood music and everything else all over the soundtrack, is so that there is never a moment of silence, is because people are afraid. And with sound pouring into the ears, they feel more comforted, lullabied in some sense."