Music vs. Theater

Hey Look! We won! (Goofy beard courtesy of Burning Man)

Phew. Three weeks since my last post, but definitely three busy, busy weeks. Most of that time was spent in the high desert of Nevada being deeply involved with the Burning Man arts festival. It was equal parts exhausting and exhilarating, as always, and the full details of what transpired out there is largely outside of the scope of this blog (although I am planting a nugget of an idea for a future large scale Burning Man project with a certain high profile new music ensemble).

Last weekend was spent at the DC Shorts Film Festival, and thanks to all of you who went and voted for I Got Mail as the best original song, we won! I can now be called an “award winning composer” (since I Got Mail’s previous mention as “runner up for a cappella comedy song of the year” doesn’t quite count).

The DC Shorts festival is a wonderful festival. Unlike many other festivals (where they give you a free ticket to your screening and then charge you for little things like the opening night party and the closing awards ceremony), it’s truly designed with the filmmakers in mind. Founder Jon Gann is a filmmaker himself and set out to create a festival that filmmakers would want to attend, and by all accounts he has succeeded. Little things, like making sure that the credentials indicate clearly who the filmmakers are so you know who you’re talking to when you meet them in line at the many parties, makes networking and socializing easy.

The films themselves are also very strong, and that’s not something to take for granted. I saw three of the nine possible screenings and while not every film was precisely to my taste (Tarantino knock-offs in particular turn me off pretty quickly, and for some reason every time a poverty stricken minority youth has a beloved dog, you just know the dog’s going to bite it before the end credits) I had a hard time choosing just three for the audience choice award.

So, in no particular order, here are films that stuck with me:

Delmer Builds A Machine
Very short and very awesome. May be my favorite film of the festival.

The Moon Bird
Gorgeously surreal animation. Story gets a bit drawn out (creepy thing makes little girl scream and run away, repeat until finished) but the look makes up for it. One part Brothers Quay, one part Studio AKA.

Touch
A triumph of casting. Real actors make a difference and this short demonstrates why.

The Incident at Tower 37
I saw this at the Sonoma Film Festival as well, and was impressed even before I realized who the director was (Chris Perry is an old friend of mine from the computer graphics industry). It’s thoughtful and lovely and stops just shy of being heavy handed. Quite an achievement for a film made primarily by students.

Manual Practico del Amigo Imaginario (The Imaginary Friend Practical Manual)
Laugh out loud funny mockumentary from Spain about an imaginary friend sharing tips on how to avoid obsolescence as their humans get older. Features a convention hall filled with a bizarre conglomeration of friends, including a giant Burt head, flower costumes, and… Alf? Why is there a full sized Alf costume in Spain?

Expiration
Very funny (and again, very short) short that got unfairly overlooked for the awards. It’s very well conceived and executed.

Rita
Haunting and beautiful. About three quarters through I decided I hated it, only to decide I loved it in the last few minutes. Now I want to see it again.

Marius Borodine
Another very funny mockumentary. For a brief moment, it seemed like there was a French film maker with a sense of humor, but then we realized that it was a French-Canadian film, and all was right with the world again.

Enter the Beard
Audience and filmmaker favorite, this is all flavors of charming. You just can’t go wrong with a bunch of goofy costumes and beards in Alaska. What’s not to like?

Yeah.  I know it’s not news. I’m used to the best film not winning, but it really galls me when the WORST film nominated gets the prize. Sure, none of the nominated films were all that great, but jeesh, what was the Academy thinking?

Logorama is really the best animated short film of the year?

Heck, when I saw it I couldn’t believe it was even nominated. I mean, really? This poorly crafted one-note gag filled with drooling dialogue and despicable characters (actually, I can’t even call them characters, since that would imply that some effort at characterization was apparent) was almost unwatchable. There was one high concept “we create a world constructed entirely of LOGOs!  Get it?!  It will be like Where’s Waldo but with trademarks.  Oh how clever we are.” But they skipped the part where they found some compelling reason for this world to exist or why we would want to be there.  Or develop anything resembling characters we should care about.  Or any reason for us to be invested in any outcome.  Or any sense of actions having any consequence at all. It’s just a random smattering of profanity, violence, and “oh look, we can use a Stop and Shop logo as a traffic light! Where’s my MacArthur grant?”

So to do my part to banish the bad juju surrounding this collective lapse of reason, I’d like to share a 10 minute animation that is a lovely antidote to the 15 minutes of screen poop that won the Oscar.

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Fractal expert Loren Carpenter brought my attention to a technical paper that found evidence that the distribution of shot lengths in cinema have been steadily evolving over the past 100 years to exhibit a 1/f power distribution.Your first question is probably, “what the hell is a 1/f power distribution”. And your second question is probably “why do  you have a photo of a hot girl on this post if you’re just gonna be talking about math?”  Ummm… Let’s start with the first question. It’s easier. (waving hands) It’s a distinctive pattern that seems to crop up all over biology, physics, nature and art, and there’s increasing evidence that this pattern is hard wired into the way our neurons fire. (stop waving hands). As for the second question… well,  uhhh… Let’s talk a bit about the paper first.

I find two interesting bits in this paper. First, since the entire art of cinema is only 125 years old, you can actually analyze its evolution from the earliest experiments on film. This paper claims that in just  few generations, editors and directors have unconsciously gravitated towards a film cutting style that we are neurologically wired to prefer. (Perhaps since it more closely mimics the natural rhythms of our eyes, how frequently we dart and change focus.)  However, the paper admits that other issues such as narrative, plot, and close ups of attractive people in revealing bathing suits will trump even perfectly neurologically correlated editing techniques.

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Imagine a company that dubs old super 8 films onto VHS.  If you like, they’ll even dub a nice soundtrack of classical music in the background for your listening pleasure.

Well, looks like they didn’t always listen to the entire album before dubbing it.  And what we have here is a great example of the overwhelming power music has to skew your perceptions.  Mid-twentieth century atonality does not make for an easy trip down memory lane.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZEdBRzBDLM

To be fair, the deck was stacked against film in this battle.  There is something innately creepy about old footage.   Something about memory and nostalgia and existential dread…

This was sent to me by Craig Good (via Robert Popper) along with a challenge to identify the piece.  I’ve completely failed.  I’ve scoured the catalogs of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Carter, Sessions, Boulez, Babbitt with no luck.  Anyone else recognize it?