Today we improvised over film clips using hardware synthesizers (Korg Volcas). I mostly used the Volca Kick and the Volca keys.
Sound and Music in film are very important. It can manipulate emotions and completely alter the meaning of scenes. I always think back to an example I was shown doing Media at school of scenes from horror films with different sounds on top of the video.
Initially, I found the limitations of the Kick quite restricting, mostly as I was unfamiliar with using this specific device, however, as I experimented further I found that the drive and envelope could be used to get more effective sounds, especially in the context of the clip we were scoring to from Bladerunner.
Many people in class found that as they rewatched the clip they found their improvisation to be less sporadic and not as effective. I found it to be the opposite as after rewatching the clips I had a better understanding of the rhythm of the editing. It also allowed me to become more familiar with the instruments at the same time, seeing what worked and what didn’t while experimenting.
I think one of the most important elements this introduced was the use of silence, and how when being told to improve over the clip as a single performer it’s important to resist the urge to fill the entire timeframe with sound. It makes me think back to my previous comments on John Cage, as well as on Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden / Laughing Stock and post-rock in general. I think that if we’d had heard everyone’s sounds at the same it would have been an interesting exercise
I mostly found myself creating more musical soundscapes for the clips, as opposed to dietetic sounds. I enjoyed watching the clips with their sound after our improvised attempts. I found Johnny Greenwood’s score, and the use of audio in You Were Never Really Here to be very effective, especially in how it interacted with the scenes, placing the sound as a focus in its creation as opposed to just a tacked-on feature afterwards or for the sake of sensory continuity.
Something I found interesting is that due to being familiar with the existing scores of the films shown, it was somewhat distracting not to mimic them. This helped in the case of Vangelis’s score as I was using the Kick so it wasn’t really possible to copy.
Here is the original improvisation with Key over You Were Never Really Here, as well as an unfinished creation using only the improvisation as material.
On a tangent, I personally have a large amount of respect for films with a very minimal soundtrack (if any at all). I’ve consistently mentioned it this year but Chantel Akerman’s ‘D’Est’ is one of my favourite films as it is essentially field recordings with visuals. There is no story, just video and sound yet to me each scene tells its own story.