Update 9/7/05

Hi everyone,
We're now in the second week of school so I'm finally getting a chance to write! I spent most of August writing a 50-page instructional manual for my lower division class. Lots of tutorials. So progress on the video has been slow in coming. I did get a chance to read/see some relevant media. I finally read the Da Vinci Code. I'm surprised that no one mentioned it as a must read for me since it's about conspiracies, etc. It's really more of a screen play than a novel. Lots of action. Also a good example of how I DON"T think conspiracies work. That whole monks and brotherhoods and robes and arcane texts thing. The Ben video is about how a really good conspiracy wouldn't need things in vaults and tombs--everything would be out in the open, just coded somehow. But reading it helped me refine my thinking about the red room scene where Ben finally unveils the conspiracy. We need to convey two kinds of information--1, how conspiracies work and 2, the content of the conspiracy. The content of the conspiracy will likely be the material on the red wall--all that Isaac Newton stuff. How conspiracies work will probably be an audio collage.The backstory would be that there's a primer for people who are within the conspiracy. It's a code that involves collaging together sound bytes from a variety of sources. So that section would be filled with collaged-together audio snippets of primer text platitudes, for example—

ALL infOrmation SHoulD be unHIdden
ThE TOMB aNd The ROBe arE the distrACtIon
The keY liEs in the EyEs
etc. etc.

One of my grad students also suggested I change the 'romancing at the beach' scene to something else. Maybe I'll opt for my second choice which was to show Ben and his girlfriend/wife eating dinner, but in a sterile, cold mood as if they aren't on speaking terms. I think her objection was using a woman as a 'normalizing' influence which is the kind of thing Maria would have said. The problem is that the woman is a cardboard character who exists solely to make Ben seem like a normal person. That's certainly true. Maybe going the 'eating dinner in silence' approach might make that a little less problematic. But I do think it's important that he has some sort of relationship like that.
I'm basically ready to shoot. I figured a way around using a window so I have the lab set basically done. Just a matter of logistics and letting Ben's hair grow back (he cut it short). Ben don't cut your hair again!
Ron

Update 7/18/05

Hello,

Well I just got back from Hawaii a week ago and Dan is probably back from Mexico by now and Ben seems to have taken a short trip as well.

Last week and this week I'm trying to get household stuff done before school starts (like refinance, repairs, etc.) I always get depressed at this time of year because when I go to Target I see all the back to school aisles.

So things have slowed down, but I have been able to get a little work done on the video. As I mentioned, I have to make the garage set more interesting from a wide shot. All the gadgets are currently tiny designed to be shot tighter. In Hawaii I found some good things I might be able to use--a spherical etch a sketch, for example. I also got a retro antenna from Radio Shack. It's beautiful and looks straight out of 1940. While at home I also found the UCLA art motor which is the falafel motor that many of us used at UCLA to animate our installations. That might come in handy. I also found lots of old paper things that should be good for the red room wall.

Ben saw the retro time clock I got for the green room set. I also got a calendar from Ebay for the same set. I have to admit, doing this is satisfying my desire to collect interesting things as well.

That's it for now,

Ron

Update 6/25/05

Hello everyone,

Dan came over this week to look at the sets in progress and discuss the audiotrack further. Even though the workshop set was done, I've been playing with it a lot. I keep getting ideas for how this thing should look.

Process:

I was looking at the movie Dark City. There's a scene where the crazy guy has written all over the walls of a room. But when I watched the scene, I just didn't believe it. It just felt like the production designer created the room and then they just dropped the actor in it and said, 'pretend like you're drawing.' The typical film production process is so stratified that there often isn't an opportunity for elements and ideas to mingle. I'm speculating that when Dan comes up with his preliminary ideas for the score, these ideas might somehow ripple through the entire production in a way that's different from the typical process in which scoring is done after the picture is locked. This might not even be on a conscious level. At any rate, I think I mentioned this, but I'm really liking have longitudinal time to work through everything. I think it's making everything richer and more thoughtful.

Notes on rough workshop set image below: I colorized the door red to see what it looks like. I'll probably take the leftover paint from the red room and paint the door red. It looks nicer. I photoshopped in a window to see what it looks like. I like it so far. The window interior will be green screen and will allow me with a natural way to do the projections (like the clouds). Everything else is unretouched. You can see how sharp the video camera shoots in frame mode. This is taken directly from one frame of video.I've been working on the workshop set to make it look more theatrical. The first thing I did was to pull the camera back. Starting with a wide shot automatically makes the thing look more theatrical since that's all you have in theater. There's also a kind of flatness that I like in modern theater. Pulling back is making me deal with scale in a different way. The perpetual motion machine was built to function primarily in a small scale set. When the camera is wide, there needs to be some bigger elements to the machine so I'm working on that.




THeater and performance

I'm also thinking of theatricality as a kind of objectification of performance. I'm just putting in this ideas a note to myself for later. Ben, whatever you're doing in the previs looks great. I guess the idea is that Ben is simply just being himself in all the scenes, being 'normal' and everything around him looks slightly theatrical. I'm not sure where all this 'theatrical' interest comes from.

Graveyard-shrine

In the graveyard scene, Ben finds a tombstone or other item and sees the spinner symbol and the words 'ex nihilo.' I wanted to make this a little more visual. I'm thinking of him going to a roadside shrine instead. Very similar idea, but more flexible visually. This way, he can tear through layers of photos and images in the shrine to get to the symbol. And it's actually more visually interesting to look at this rather than just a plaque in the ground. (see jpg for sample shrine)



Films I've been looking at related to the video....

Pi--About a conspiracy. Visual and more of Darren Aronofsky's shallow profundity.

Conspiracy Theory. Mel Gibson thinks everything is a conspiracy. I looked at his room which has all sorts of things hanging in it. They went for realism. Not that useful.

Dark CIty (See earlier in email).

Cat woman. There's a scene where Halle Berry is looking through the internet doing research. Similar to Ben looking at arcane book pages in the church. But the Pitof-directed scene is self-consciously stylish.

Daredevil-the end is like the original ending of the video where Ben erased the word processed file. A weird ending.

A Beautiful Mind. My niece's boyfriend saw the red room pages hanging in my room and said it reminded him of this movie. I can see why. I never made the connection before. Ron Howard does it rather awkwardly I thought, but I guess it gets the job done. I hated Russell Crowe's acting. I thought it was annoying and mannered.

Update 6/15/05

Hello,

I just realized I feel like I'm writing an email blog.

This past week has been productive. The spinner works! It was difficult. The invisible thread arrived. I was disappointed because it looked thick and furry. Then I realized that you're supposed to unravel the thread and use the individual tiny threads. Yes they are invisible. You cannot see the thread even from inches way. The thread is brittle and is extremely hard to use.

Half the time I have to take it by faith that i'm actually holding the thread. It was so tough to work with that I went to Joannes and bought a spool of "invisible thread" to use as a replacement. It's like thin dark fish line, but it still shows up on video! It would have been OK if it didn't move, but the movement is a dead giveaway. So I summoned up my courage, went back to the magician's invisible thread and got it to work. By the way, if you ever need some, just go to a store and pick up "wooly nylon." After ordering it from Penguin Magic, I found it's the basically the same thing. I give credit to the magicians who use it. In fact, it's more magical to me that they can control the invisible thread without breaking it than doing the actual levitation itself.

At any rate, the workshop set is finally complete. Ready for shooting.

Krissy and I painted the two rooms. The green room ended up being a grayish blue. The red room was difficult to paint. Halfway through, I found out I was supposed to prime the wall.I didn't which is why I had to use so many coats. Anyway, the red is quite beautiful, the paint job is lousy, but we concentrated on the part that will be seen. (The rest of the room will only be seen when the camera flies around Ben).

The gray/blue room should be easy to dress. The red room will be somewhat harder. I've been making a collage on my closet door of various papers. I got a lot of great stuff from collage supply outlets (eg. mantofev.com). I also have some vintage mcdonalds and cake ads arriving via the mail (Ebay). The hard thing about this is the scale--filling up the space with energy.

___

I am so far really liking this way of making the film. It's slow and drawn out and the line between pre/post/production is also blurred. So I've been able to think through things. There's a kind of understanding that comes only from longitudinal time I believe.

Some things I've been thinking about:

>Firmed up the introductory scene. This was not previsualized. It was the scene that was going to show closeups of the spinner and Ben's physics books. I realized there needs to be a magical momenet where we are very tight. Ben releases the spinner into the air and then it starts spinning/floating. Cue the spinner music. There is lots of detail in the workshop set so closeups should look nice.

> I realized that the driving scene from the graveyard to the church/lilbrary is not necessary. I'm not sure why I put it there in the first place, but I realize that it's important for the church to be geographically and chronologically ambiguous. maybe it's actually in Europe. Who knows? But there needs to be ambiguity.

>Ben and his wife-originally still images. Should probably be more like home videos. Since moving away from the changing-photos machine idea, we might as well go full motion. It will add a nice and different visual texture.

>I got the Russian Vostok model, which is quite beautiful. It was going to be the satellite in the ending scene. I'm now wondering if It's better not to show the satellite at all?? Remember, we want to keep it ambiguous as to whether Ben is really being pursued or whether this is all his vain imagining.

That's it for now.

I believe Dan is back from Stuttgart where he was doing a MAX sound program for a dance group there.

Ron

Update 6/9/05

Hi everyone,

Here's what's happening with the video...

Notes:

Garage: the set where Ben is developing the spinner
Green room: the set that represents Ben's workplace
Red room: used for the finale in which Ben is reading his notes off the wall.

The garage set is 99% complete. Last thing I'm working on is making the spinner spin. I tested black thread and it shows very clearly on video...there's even a shadow. So I ordered some invisible thread from a magic store to see if that works better. I found that the higher the spinner, the better it looks. If it's too low like in the previs, it doesn't look like it's floating.

I'm working now on the wall of papers and writing for the red room. I'm probably nixing the plexiglass idea. What I'm doing now looks a lot more organic and visually richer. hmmm. probably only an academic would find a "reading off a wall" scene climactic.

In July, I'm pretty sure we can shoot the garage, green room and red room. That will be 80% of the "1st unit" footage.

Dan, I was wondering if Olivia might be interested in being in the video in still form. I envision her doing a time period thing, like a 100 year old photograph with her holding the spinner. Like an old portrait. That would be taped.

The lights came in. I ran lighting tests and am very happy with the image. I'm most likely shooting progressive scan in simulated 16 x 9 mode.

I found a fantastic church exterior in Glendale. It looks like some kind of monastery. Still need to find a library interior.

Ron

The Creatrix

Ben told me about this image by Mark Ryden, Michael Jackson album cover illustrator turned gallery artist. Note the words "ex nihilo" at the bottom.

Dan's notes on the previs

--real physics books (shot from spinner POV)


--add dusting off corrosion from spinner scenes
--add 'security cam' aerial shot to stars and shift earlier
--all external shots are security cam shots
--all evilentities are shadows
--foreshadow moving piles of paper
--can't get the thing tow ork
--more at-work scenes
--covers the machine
--page turns
--library--looking for books
--tramistter in dead bird

--half of ben's machine actually doesn' work.

--view of star attack overhead house and attacking bird swarm is through some weird surveillance lens

--ben looks terrible

--time lapse at library--lots of piles of books, maybe a few days

--longer on bird swarm

--add the dream sequence

=--don't forget the 'mad scienist' talkign about matter.

--creation of matter text--very raw and clear explanation almost too basic.

--one shot of paper blowing down the empty street.

The great delusion
The demise of magic and the rise of the mechanical age


Perpetual motion and the creation of matter

The new alchemy--
The secret: gold is a catalyst

Response to Dan

Hi Dan, thanks for all the really thoughtful and great ideas. I also found it's really useful when you say things like "this is the scene where usually what happens is..." It helps provide a starting place for the scene and allows me to think whether we're following the norm or departing from it. Also, I think you understand the functioning of the audio perfectly. The audio really is serving to enhance meaning and provide additional information as well as doing traditional soundtrack things. What makes this video a little odd is the use of language... there isn't any spoken language! So the text displayed on the screen together with the audio is working to provide meaning.


On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12:06 AM, ron saito wrote:
Camera opens on things that Ben reads on his break. Perpetual motion pamphlet. Sandwich. Coffee.

This would seem to be mostly foley (or production sound---are you going to generate any production sound?). Should there be some sort of sonic indicator when the camera's showing something significant? That would be the traditional job of the music, but perhaps the blandness of incidental sounds coupled with visual emphasis on important items would set the tone more effectively.

The emphasis here is setting the tone of the entire piece., of easing into Ben's world. This scene takes place in the same space as the printing press, so perhaps the audio would be similar.

Then we see Ben at his printing press. Printing and printing.

What is he printing? Is this related to the material he's reading or just an ordinary job? I guess what I'm asking is if the printing has import? If it's just his job, then perhaps a repetitive realistic sound would emphasize a kind of static effort (meaning that it's not a developmental effort with narrative import, but a sort of visual and sonic statement about the mechanistic world or some such). If it has import, then the printing press sound could progress in its various appearances.

This is Ben's job. The backstory is that part of the reason BEn is interested in perpetual motion is that he's trying to find an easier way of doing his job. This section needs to be repetitious. However, it shouldn't sound like drudgery. It's a repetitive job that allows Ben to think. So he likes it. Repetitive, but engaging in a sort of meditative way. Seems like there should be some sort of ka-chunk or spinning noise. BTW, I actually have this printing press if it would be useful to hear it or sample it.


Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual... takes off his jacket, puts the mail down, etc. Then he checks in on his device which is spinning slowly in the foreground. Time-lapse transiton.

Clearly the device needs an emblematic sound of some kind (maybe it has a technical relationship to the printing press sound but magical instead mundane). This emblematic sound could then develop over its various appearances where the printing press would remain static. What does the device sound like? Is it softly whirling and a little "tinkly" or more industrial than that? What are you thinking of for the time-lapse transition? I could carry over the device sound into the transition and morph it into the printing press sound (or layer in the printing press sound).

Device noise: totally open. THe main thing is that it shouldn't have to much "weight" and shouldn't be too dramatic. Time lapse transition. Truthfully, the first thing that came to mind was Philip Glass but no real ideas about this either.

Next day. Ben at his printing press. Audio for this printing press section could be half sound design, half foley. I like the idea of a radio playing in the background, some conspiracy stuff like Art Bell (artbell.com) but all distorted, like it's being tuned, along with sounds of the press turning.

Does your audio suggestion here imply that the function of the printing press is developmental? If not, then it might be possible to maintain the mundane mechanistic character of the press but change the atmosphere around it---perhaps generated by processing the radio sound. This would give the radio sound a sense of being an actor in changing Ben's worldview by slowly becoming more surreal (all the while the printing press is chugging away in its mundanity).

These printing press scenes should be static I think. No sense of development. They should be different enough visually and musically that they don't look like a loop. But other than that, I think they need to be very similar. They're sort of like an anchor. The main thing is to provide strong sonic distinction between work and home. Work should probably sound more mundane than home. That is, home can sound more musically dense and strange since that's the place where the perpetual motion is happening. Work shouldn't be too interesting. Perhaps, sonically poorer and thinner.

Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual. Checks on his device again. Still spinning. Time-lapse.

Next day: Ben at his printing press again. Comes home. Goes through his ritual. Looks at his device. Still spinning. This time he notices a grainy texture. Puts it under the microcscope. The grains look like five-pointed stars. Part crystalline and part organic. Time lapse. But time, the audio should be slightly different with some beepy bird time noises. Is it birds or is it some kind of weird satellite?

The material should probably have some emblematic sound (perhaps an extension of part of the device sound). The time-lapse could then be an opportunity to morph this sound (particularly if it's the tinkly characteristic of the device) into the bird/satellite sound. [There's a scene from Solaris that I should show you sometime. Whenever something weird happens at the space station, there this tinkly bell-like sound. I'm thinking of that as the sound element from the device that becomes the sound element for the matter]

Sounds interesting. I actually rented Solaris on your recommendation. I should look at it again.

Next day. Ben at his press again. Comes home. But this time his ritual is interrupted. The device stopped. Ben examines it. Tries to fix it. But it doesn't work. Then Ben remembers his video camera. He looks at the video of his spinner for the past few hours and makes out something hazy. But he can't tell whether it's anything or just a shadow or a smudge. hmmmm.

Does the video footage have audio? If so, we could take the room and device sound make it mono and carve out the bottom end so it sounds sort of lo-fi. Also, the shadow could come across sonically as a "shadow" on the audio---a brief suppression of the high-end followed by a sudden silence (or does the device "spin down"?).

The audio needs to be carrying part of load here. You know that backwards/forwards -sounding high-pitched stereotypical rewinding kind of noise but perhaps transformed and enhanced. in some way. I love this audio shadow idea.


****
By now, Ben's kind of forgotten about his device. He could never get it to work again. So now we come to a sequence of images showing his life. He gets married and maybe has a baby. Everyday, home and vacation type photos. The photos are attached to a kind of rotating device that spins them slowly.
***

I gather the rotating device is not meant to be a real device, so probably no sound for it. Or perhaps an ambient sound with occasional hints of the special material sound or the bird satellite sound. This would normally be the moment for a music-video segment---it might be interesting to work explicitly against that.

Yes, the rotating device is not a 'real' device. My original thought for the segment was 60's Easy Listening. Go to Itunes and listen to "put your head on my shoulder" by The Letterman if you want to know what I mean. Of course this would be unbearably cheesy. That's why I originally thought of the 'grinding' idea...remember that? I like the idea of audio that still has the remnants of easy listening music or similar but is somehow transformed in some strange way. Whatever this sounds like, it needs to function as a sort of break and not sound too serious.


Now Ben's back at work again. This time, the audio should sound as 'realistic' as possible. As he prints, ben notices something on the newsletter he's printing. Something looks like his spinning device is in the background. Dissolve to a church (a paper model) which has the spinner displayed on it somehow (not sure how this will work).

In a visual that's a metaphor for Ben searching through the church, Ben opens up the paper church and within, we see photos describing his search. Somehow his search takes him to...


I'm not sure I understand the church. Is it an actual church? Or is a metaphor of some kind? This might be a time to bring in a new, more musical element that could be part of an arc or expanding sounds through the rest of the video. One traditional thing to do would be bring in something serene and vocal-like (I think I can do this without being cheesy). However, I think I need to understand the church's function better.

Apparently, every artist has to have some new term. Like big art group's "Real-time Film." (I was thinking about this. They should actually call it real-time TV since the piece was primarily dialogue-driven just like TV. But they need the pretension of aspiring to film I guess). Anyway, the concept here I am officially naming is "Micro-performance." This refers to theatrical devices that require amplification to come across. Traditional theater is 'broad' because of the necessity of amplification. But, like close-up magic, there are many worthwhile theatrical ideas that take place in intimate settings. I'd like to exploit that. At any rate, the church is a clue. The idea is that Ben looks at the photo in the newsletter. Somehow, he sees a connection between the spinner and a church. Then he visits the church and gains additional info which takes him to the library as he continues his research. The unfolding church model represents his search through the church and gives us a rough idea of how we get to the library.

Part of this is a bit of a satire of certain film conventions. There's always some kind of gratuitous clue-finding to take up time. Like the dart in Star Wars episode II that takes us to the Water planet. The use of a church is because these churches can be old and start to bring in those spiritual/religious affiliations. Part of the reason this idea doesn't work as well as it once did is that it's not set up as well as originally. Originally, Ben's house burned down by now. That was a small folding model so we'd be used to seeing models by now. However, there wasn't enough build to the end scene, so I moved the burning to the end. But now the church may be too abrupt. It's possible I may need to make this less whole scene less abstract.

I guess imagine this as a horror movie--searching through a church. A cat jumps out of the darkness! The main character continues to look around. High strings getting eerier. The charcter stumbles across clue after clue after clue. Scary scary!

***

The library. Ben's reading. Instead of cutaways as shown, probably the images will be projected onto Ben's face. Arcane, scary and medievalimages. Some of them look like the spinner. Then the bird-beeping noise. Then he hears a thud. Looks up. Probably nothing. Then a huge, almost machine gun like sound event like dozens and dozens of thuds. He looks at the window. It's cracked in a million places. Then we see a bloodied bird. Apparently a huge flock of birds flew into the window. Weird and scary.

Oooh, fun audio possibilities here! Apart from the clear sound design ideas, I think that dense and perhaps processed text would be great to accompany the images projected onto Ben's face.


Yes, I actually got the idea for the bird flock from that Trevor Wishart piece you played for me that sounds like millions of birds. I think I commented that it was neat that there was an explosion of sound, but without the massive reverb which would be typical. This idea also comes from Chinese fireworks. In Hawaii, every New Year's, they burn these long strings of fire crackers. They go poppity pop pop all the way until the end of the string when they hit this hexagonal box of compressed firecrackers. Then, in an incredible flamming noise, thousands of fireworks go off within about 3 seconds. It's a really interesting audio event to me. I like the idea of this text accompanying Ben's face images. I think out-of-sync would work well here. I was thinking that the projections onto Ben's face would be sporadic. Nothing. Then a bunch of flashes of stuff. Then nothing again. Then more flashes. I like the idea where the audio also appears in spurts, but sort of out-of-sync with the visuals, almost like a conversation with the visuals. It would be sort of like the text becomes not only the info fromt he book, but Ben's thinking or understanding or something. BTW, this general idea comes from Umberto Eco's medieval aesthetics. According to Eco, the medievals felt that illuminated books were literally illuminated, as if spiritually incandescent somehow. I like the idea of using a light bright enough that would cause Ben to squint slightly, implying that there is a force to the information streaming from the book.
***

Now, an abstract dance. Ben is in limbo now. He doesn't know what to believe. Is he being chased by someone or something? Is it his imagination? He's not sure what to do. Maybe this scene is a puppet or maybe it's ben. This audio could be custom-controlled electronic instrument.

***

This would be an interesting place to do a interactive instrument as you describe (that audio generated by the performance could potentially be augmented in post-production. We'd need to talk a bunch about this to figure out just what sensors would be needed, etc. Maybe this is the place where the dance/performance triggers off meaningful sound (the new material emblem, the spinning sound, the satellite sound, etc.)---the performance then would be a kind of visualization/sonification of the thought process that leads to the discovery of the conspiracy. I sort of like the idea of Ben doing it rather than a puppet or something more abstract. In a commercial tv/movie this would be another music video scene with some mournful music playing and Ben moodily walking the streets and thinking (or driving and thinking). The idea of a person actual physicalizing the thought process (in some way other than moodily walking) and having those physical gestures create the sound is really appealing to me. There are other examples of a character going through great anguish where the music provides the continuity (I'm thinking of the scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen's character goes nuts and punches the mirror). If the dance here is to be one of anguish then the triggered audio would sort of work against that stereotype as well.


I agree that this should likely be a 'dance' piece. The whole thing needs some action! Your ideas sound great here. I probably wouldn't make it too anguished. I think Ben has some ideas about this.




New scene. Back at the house where he's assembled all the papers. Now we read the conspiracy theory he's put together. Newton, Matter. Blah blah. Then the beeping noise. But this time it's synchronized with the image of a satellite. We zoom into Ben's room and then into the electric outlet. Short circuit. Fire! Everything's destoyed.

***

The traditional movie thing here would have building, dramatic music leading to the reveal. I think the reveal needs some sonic setup. Perhaps a building collage of the spinning noise, the new material emblem sound, the printing press, the church sound, the library text voices, etc. and then a dramatic cut back in sound at the reveal that let's the satellite sound be heard. (perhaps that collage has its origins in the "dance"). Do you plan a big reveal? or will it be understated?

This seems like the climax of the video---the discovery of the conspiracy followed by burning down. Is the big reveal the creation of matter? or is it the Newton as diversion angle? or? I think the audience needs to be set up early so that what is revealed has obvious import. Maybe one place to emphasize this would be the point at which he discovers the new matter in the microscope----at that point a flashback (or whatever device you think would be appropriate) would show again some of the material that he was reading at the beginning and the import of the violation of this law of physics. My only worry is that the creation of matter may not seem like that big a deal to most people unless it's stated upfront as the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. You talked about using conspiracy radio at one point---perhaps at the beginning of the video he's listening to the equivalent of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The transition then from science radio to crackpot radio offers another way into understanding the changes in thought process that he's going through.

Tell me what you think of this idea... My initial thinking on this section is that I want the vocabularies of video/audio to imply climax and fear while the information remains understated. Do you remember when you were a kid, and sometimes your parents would be discussing things in hushed tones. And you knew something was up, but you weren't sure what? And somehow, that was really scary.... feeling that there was something so bad happening that no one would even tell you about it? So here, I'd like the pace to go faster, faster 'cutting' more 'exciting' shots, faster audio. As an audience we know something is happening. But unless you're sharp, you're not going to know exactly what happened.

BTW... satellite noise. This is the one thing I have a really specific idea about. I really like that beeping noise Ussachevksy uses in Wireless Fantasy. It's a very iconic sound. It's also used in the begnning of Planet Claire by the B-52's. I don't know if it's morse code or what. If it's some kind of code, this would be another opportunity to weave in more information. I also have a definite satellite image in mind. It looks like Sputnik.


What happened to Ben? DId he die? Did the fire (and all the peculiar and frigtening events) -really- have something to do with the satellite? Were these all just concidences? New scene. We push in through window to see Ben. He's typing up his newsletter about what he learned about Newton.and the global conspiracy. Then he thinks. Kind of a blank look. A bit of fear overcomes him. He rewrites what he's typing into something blander and less specific then uploads, one star among millions.

Will there be some sort of surreal transition between these scenes? It would be an interesting place to rehash in a diffuse and reverse way (getting less dense) the collage that leads to the reveal.

Maybe instead of blander and less specific, maybe he changes the writing to be more crackpot conspiratorial in tone. There's a sort of version of this in the movie Men in Black (did you see that?) where the veteran agent picks up a bunch of tabloid papers to figure out what's actually going on declaring something like "the best news reporting on the planet." Not that I'm suggesting you emulate it, but it did remind me of that idea.

Accompanying the the blank look (perhaps triggering the frightened look) could be a "mental" version of the satellite sound---I know, how about lot's of reverb to show it as part of his thoughts... ; ) The moment of upload might be an interesting point to bring back the new material emblem and maybe the spinning device sound.


I never thought of this audio flashback idea. Could work really well. This ending scene is supposed to have the feel of a pax Romana, a somber romanticism. It's purposefully played in a different way than a typical film. The typical movie ending: Ben would be dead (60's movie) or Ben would strike back (90's movie). In this case, Ben is supposed to be well-adjusted. He knows what he's up against. He knows 'the truth' of things, but he's become self-censoring. So I'm not sure exactly what he writes on the webpage, but generally speaking, self-censoring makes things blander and more general in my thinking.

Audio in general... Rather than pure post, I see this being a mix of pre and post production audio. That is, Ben needs to have some kind of control over the audio. Sometimes he is 'playing' audio something,at other times, he is merely triggering it. This triggering can be implied (eg., when Ben moves his hand, this is a signal to add audio A in post) and literal (the audio actually starts playing on stage. Since there's no live audio, everything can be streamed in some kind of multi-track format and post would consist primarily of mixing/sweetening as needed. But I think overall, Ben needs to have some important and fundamental control over audio events. Also, I think it would be both interesting (and maybe kind of amusing) to have a kind of live digital foley idea in appropriate places. So maybe there are sensors in the printing press. And each turn triggers a sample. Or Ben has some kind of motion sensor. So if he turns around quickly, the correct sample ("whoosh") or audio event is triggered. This just strikes me as being really funny, tho it would probably be backgrounded and therefore 'invisible' to the audience.

Thanks for all the good comments. Schedule... any short themes or examples, or musical demos you could provide by mid summer, even short ones would give us something to play with. I'm hoping that by Christmas maybe we'll be doing some sort of dress rehearsal of at least part of it. I don't know if that's too accelerated a schedule. Let me know how things fit with you. I know you have that German piece as well as some other comissions.

Ron

Some initial ideas for sound approaches:

1. Performer performs to precorded audio segment.

2. Performer signals.
Performer does a designated gesture indicating that something should be turned on in post.
Ex. Ben points to his eye. This is the cue to start a drone during post.

3. Performer signals (hidden)
Performer triggers a switch unseen which marks a point in time, eg., in SMPTE. This indicates something to be added in post.

4. Performer starts audio.
Ex. Performer turns on a tape recorder. Output is split--to monitor so Ben can hear it during performance, and to multitrack deck for later mixing.

5. Motivated live performance.
Performer plays an actual instrument (e.g. poles, or percussion) that is, in peripheral way, motivated by the story. Take care that this doesn't become 'Stomp'
Ex. Performer is going out so he puts on a hat. But this hat has weird "feelers" on it. Whenever performer turns his head, the feelers hit little gamelans.So maybe, as performer looks around at various phenomena, he ends up playing a weird tune.

5. live foley
Performer triggers a sound that accompanies action
Ex. audio triggers on feet trigger samples of footsteps.Could be used to imply different spaces (e.g., sloshy footsteps).

6. Electronic instrument
Performer uses gestures/ etc., to play an electronic instrument

7. On/off ambient loop
An ambience or loop is constantly running during the performance. Certain movements make it audible. Good for defining one space from another.
Ex. Performer has foil on each foot connected by a wire in the inseam. Audio is routed through two long strips of foil on the floor. When performer steps on both strips, he connects the circuit turning on the ambience for an area. Going to different areas triggers different ambiences. Maybe the trigger would fade in/out so transitions wouldn't be so harsh.

8. The high tech equivalent of the above is to use visual, IR, or other sensors which are triggered by Ben when he enters certain spaces to start ambience.

9. Post production
Import sync events are done standard post-production style.

Note:
The idea behind these isn't to be restrictive, but to be expressive. If any of these ideas sounds restrictive, it needs to be rethought. The overall shape of the piece is most important rather than any kind of underlying system. Probably the most important general concept is that the entire stage/set is kind of instrument that the performer plays/follows/leads as required.

From Dan

Hi Ron,



Here are my quick notes on the sound:

On Saturday, January 22, 2005, at 12:06 AM, ron saito wrote:
Camera opens on things that Ben reads on his break. Perpetual motion pamphlet. Sandwich. Coffee.

This would seem to be mostly foley (or production sound---are you going to generate any production sound?). Should there be some sort of sonic indicator when the camera's showing something significant? That would be the traditional job of the music, but perhaps the blandness of incidental sounds coupled with visual emphasis on important items would set the tone more effectively.

Then we see Ben at his printing press. Printing and printing.

What is he printing? Is this related to the material he's reading or just an ordinary job? I guess what I'm asking is if the printing has import? If it's just his job, then perhaps a repetitive realistic sound would emphasize a kind of static effort (meaning that it's not a developmental effort with narrative import, but a sort of visual and sonic statement about the mechanistic world or some such). If it has import, then the printing press sound could progress in its various appearances.

Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual... takes off his jacket, puts the mail down, etc. Then he checks in on his device which is spinning slowly in the foreground. Time-lapse transiton.

Clearly the device needs an emblematic sound of some kind (maybe it has a technical relationship to the printing press sound but magical instead mundane). This emblematic sound could then develop over its various appearances where the printing press would remain static. What does the device sound like? Is it softly whirling and a little "tinkly" or more industrial than that? What are you thinking of for the time-lapse transition? I could carry over the device sound into the transition and morph it into the printing press sound (or layer in the printing press sound).

Next day. Ben at his printing press. Audio for this printing press section could be half sound design, half foley. I like the idea of a radio playing in the background, some conspiracy stuff like Art Bell (artbell.com) but all distorted, like it's being tuned, along with sounds of the press turning.

Does your audio suggestion here imply that the function of the printing press is developmental? If not, then it might be possible to maintain the mundane mechanistic character of the press but change the atmosphere around it---perhaps generated by processing the radio sound. This would give the radio sound a sense of being an actor in changing Ben's worldview by slowly becoming more surreal (all the while the printing press is chugging away in its mundanity).

Ben comes home. Goes through his ritual. Checks on his device again. Still spinning. Time-lapse.

Next day: Ben at his printing press again. Comes home. Goes through his ritual. Looks at his device. Still spinning. This time he notices a grainy texture. Puts it under the microcscope. The grains look like five-pointed stars. Part crystalline and part organic. Time lapse. But time, the audio should be slightly different with some beepy bird time noises. Is it birds or is it some kind of weird satellite?

The material should probably have some emblematic sound (perhaps an extension of part of the device sound). The time-lapse could then be an opportunity to morph this sound (particularly if it's the tinkly characteristic of the device) into the bird/satellite sound. [There's a scene from Solaris that I should show you sometime. Whenever something weird happens at the space station, there this tinkly bell-like sound. I'm thinking of that as the sound element from the device that becomes the sound element for the matter]

Next day. Ben at his press again. Comes home. But this time his ritual is interrupted. The device stopped. Ben examines it. Tries to fix it. But it doesn't work. Then Ben remembers his video camera. He looks at the video of his spinner for the past few hours and makes out something hazy. But he can't tell whether it's anything or just a shadow or a smudge. hmmmm.

Does the video footage have audio? If so, we could take the room and device sound make it mono and carve out the bottom end so it sounds sort of lo-fi. Also, the shadow could come across sonically as a "shadow" on the audio---a brief suppression of the high-end followed by a sudden silence (or does the device "spin down"?).

****
By now, Ben's kind of forgotten about his device. He could never get it to work again. So now we come to a sequence of images showing his life. He gets married and maybe has a baby. Everyday, home and vacation type photos. The photos are attached to a kind of rotating device that spins them slowly.
***

I gather the rotating device is not meant to be a real device, so probably no sound for it. Or perhaps an ambient sound with occasional hints of the special material sound or the bird satellite sound. This would normally be the moment for a music-video segment---it might be interesting to work explicitly against that.

Now Ben's back at work again. This time, the audio should sound as 'realistic' as possible. As he prints, ben notices something on the newsletter he's printing. Something looks like his spinning device is in the background. Dissolve to a church (a paper model) which has the spinner displayed on it somehow (not sure how this will work).

In a visual that's a metaphor for Ben searching through the church, Ben opens up the paper church and within, we see photos describing his search. Somehow his search takes him to...


I'm not sure I understand the church. Is it an actual church? Or is a metaphor of some kind? This might be a time to bring in a new, more musical element that could be part of an arc or expanding sounds through the rest of the video. One traditional thing to do would be bring in something serene and vocal-like (I think I can do this without being cheesy). However, I think I need to understand the church's function better.

***

The library. Ben's reading. Instead of cutaways as shown, probably the images will be projected onto Ben's face. Arcane, scary and medievalimages. Some of them look like the spinner. Then the bird-beeping noise. Then he hears a thud. Looks up. Probably nothing. Then a huge, almost machine gun like sound event like dozens and dozens of thuds. He looks at the window. It's cracked in a million places. Then we see a bloodied bird. Apparently a huge flock of birds flew into the window. Weird and scary.

Oooh, fun audio possibilities here! Apart from the clear sound design ideas, I think that dense and perhaps processed text would be great to accompany the images projected onto Ben's face.

***

Now, an abstract dance. Ben is in limbo now. He doesn't know what to believe. Is he being chased by someone or something? Is it his imagination? He's not sure what to do. Maybe this scene is a puppet or maybe it's ben. This audio could be custom-controlled electronic instrument.

***

This would be an interesting place to do a interactive instrument as you describe (that audio generated by the performance could potentially be augmented in post-production. We'd need to talk a bunch about this to figure out just what sensors would be needed, etc. Maybe this is the place where the dance/performance triggers off meaningful sound (the new material emblem, the spinning sound, the satellite sound, etc.)---the performance then would be a kind of visualization/sonification of the thought process that leads to the discovery of the conspiracy. I sort of like the idea of Ben doing it rather than a puppet or something more abstract. In a commercial tv/movie this would be another music video scene with some mournful music playing and Ben moodily walking the streets and thinking (or driving and thinking). The idea of a person actual physicalizing the thought process (in some way other than moodily walking) and having those physical gestures create the sound is really appealing to me. There are other examples of a character going through great anguish where the music provides the continuity (I'm thinking of the scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen's character goes nuts and punches the mirror). If the dance here is to be one of anguish then the triggered audio would sort of work against that stereotype as well.


New scene. Back at the house where he's assembled all the papers. Now we read the conspiracy theory he's put together. Newton, Matter. Blah blah. Then the beeping noise. But this time it's synchronized with the image of a satellite. We zoom into Ben's room and then into the electric outlet. Short circuit. Fire! Everything's destoyed.

***

The traditional movie thing here would have building, dramatic music leading to the reveal. I think the reveal needs some sonic setup. Perhaps a building collage of the spinning noise, the new material emblem sound, the printing press, the church sound, the library text voices, etc. and then a dramatic cut back in sound at the reveal that let's the satellite sound be heard. (perhaps that collage has its origins in the "dance"). Do you plan a big reveal? or will it be understated?

This seems like the climax of the video---the discovery of the conspiracy followed by burning down. Is the big reveal the creation of matter? or is it the Newton as diversion angle? or? I think the audience needs to be set up early so that what is revealed has obvious import. Maybe one place to emphasize this would be the point at which he discovers the new matter in the microscope----at that point a flashback (or whatever device you think would be appropriate) would show again some of the material that he was reading at the beginning and the import of the violation of this law of physics. My only worry is that the creation of matter may not seem like that big a deal to most people unless it's stated upfront as the cornerstone of modern scientific thought. You talked about using conspiracy radio at one point---perhaps at the beginning of the video he's listening to the equivalent of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The transition then from science radio to crackpot radio offers another way into understanding the changes in thought process that he's going through.


What happened to Ben? DId he die? Did the fire (and all the peculiar and frigtening events) -really- have something to do with the satellite? Were these all just concidences? New scene. We push in through window to see Ben. He's typing up his newsletter about what he learned about Newton.and the global conspiracy. Then he thinks. Kind of a blank look. A bit of fear overcomes him. He rewrites what he's typing into something blander and less specific then uploads, one star among millions.

Will there be some sort of surreal transition between these scenes? It would be an interesting place to rehash in a diffuse and reverse way (getting less dense) the collage that leads to the reveal.

Maybe instead of blander and less specific, maybe he changes the writing to be more crackpot conspiratorial in tone. There's a sort of version of this in the movie Men in Black (did you see that?) where the veteran agent picks up a bunch of tabloid papers to figure out what's actually going on declaring something like "the best news reporting on the planet." Not that I'm suggesting you emulate it, but it did remind me of that idea.

Accompanying the the blank look (perhaps triggering the frightened look) could be a "mental" version of the satellite sound---I know, how about lot's of reverb to show it as part of his thoughts... ; ) The moment of upload might be an interesting point to bring back the new material emblem and maybe the spinning device sound.

Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too incoherent. So looking over my own notes I seem to be suggesting an approach whereby sound emblems with specific import are introduced, brought back, and build up into a kind of semantic collage that mirrors the collage/assemblage that Ben constructs to reveal the conspiracy. I like this idea that there's a kind of run of the mill foley, etc. sound track intermingled with sounds and sound collages that carrying some of the meaning of the story (this is not exactly revolutionary, but I think it could be pretty effective).

I think this is going to be a really great project! Not to get ahead of myself, but do you have any particular timeline in mind for the various phases of the project.

I hope this is interesting and/or useful!

Talk to you soon.

--Dan