Hullfire #3: Silence is Golden

Originally Published: February 2012

Hullfire URL: print only

It’s official: Oscar season has arrived. 

Critics’ awards and speculation about which film will be crowned king have been occurring for weeks, but the first of the major awards ceremonies, the Golden Globes, kicked off the run up to the big night on January 15^th, with the BAFTA nominations announced two days later.

The Golden Globes and BAFTAs are usually a good indicator of which films will have success at the Oscars, and this year is not likely to disappoint.  The film with the biggest chances so far is an unlikely candidate, The Artist, with 3 Golden Globe wins and 12 BAFTA nominations (the Oscar nominations themselves have not been announced at time of writing).  In a year where most of the highest grossing films have had 3D, special effects and no lack of loud noises, The Artist is very old-fashioned: a black-and-white silent film set in the early 1930s, when sound films, or ‘talkies’, were just beginning to become the norm.  The plot follows a charismatic actor of silent films struggling to cope with the change, while an up-and-coming young actress takes his place as the biggest star in Hollywood.

The Artist is truly a charming and wonderful film, made up of equal parts heart-warming romance and love letter to film history.  I challenge anyone to leave the cinema without a huge smile on their face.  It is no wonder then that everyone in the film industry is tripping over themselves to throw awards at its feet.   However, despite all of the film’s merits, some critics have expressed worry for the future of cinema if The Artist is named Best Picture at the Oscar ceremony on February 26^th.

The film business, like most industries, thrives on innovation.  Without the introduction of sound, colour and digital effects, films could not be the spectacle that they are today, and we would not have landmark films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Avatar which advance the medium.  The Artist may be a spectacle for modern audiences, as many people will have never seen a silent film, but this does not change that in its affection and nostalgia for the past it is effectively anti-innovation.  An interesting comparison to The Artist is another likely Oscar contender, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which was released in 3D (and many would argue that it is the best use of 3D to date).  Hugo is as much a love letter to early cinema as The Artist, but with its masterful use of 3D it simultaneously celebrates cinema’s roots and advances contemporary filmmaking techniques for the better.

On the other hand, when one is faced with some of the less subtle films that come out of these innovations, the special effects heavy, loud and crashing, poke-your-eye-out 3D releases, it is very tempting to revert back to a simpler way of filmmaking.  It could even be seen that The Artist is actually extremely innovative – who could have guessed that a traditional silent film could be released in the 21^st century and have such success?  It is possibly the bravest move in Hollywood for years, and will hopefully inspire filmmakers to experiment with different forms of storytelling.

Unfortunately, The Artist will likely be an anomaly, and before long we will once again be surrounded by the likes of the new superhero flick or generic romantic-comedy.  But if The Artist does win Best Picture of 2011 and happens to start a resurgence in silent filmmaking, it will be one century backwards, two steps forward – and maybe that’s a good thing.

Hullfire #1: Glimmers of Cinema's Potential

Originally published: 30th October 2011


Hullfire URL: http://www.thehullfire.com/en/index.php/arts/469-glimmers-of-cinemas-potential

Cannes, Sundance, Venice, New York, Hull ... What do all of these places have in common?  They are all, of course, the homes to some of the most respected film festivals in the world.  Okay, maybe Hull is a slight anomaly in this group, but it is the home of an exciting and inspiring film festival nonetheless – Glimmer 2011: The 9^th Hull International Short Film Festival.

Glimmer, despite the name, may not feature the glamour and sparkle associated with most other film festivals, but what it does do is bring to our humble city, and even our own campus, enough creativity to make up for the lack of movie stars and red carpets.  The festival, which this year ran over a weekend in early October, showcases short films by budding directors from all over the world.  Events included a 48-hour film challenge, competitions, and screenings of BAFTA nominated short films, but the highlight was a truly unique and slightly bonkers experience which kicked off the festival and took place in the university’s own Middleton Hall.

Two short films, I Married a Foley Footstep! and Hands of Hair formed a double bill by Mancunian artists Ben Gwilliam and Matt Wand.  The concept is simple but effective: a combination of newly shot and found footage are edited together and set to a soundtrack of Foley sound effects performed live by Gwilliam and Wand.  Foley is the art used in the film industry of recreating every day sounds in order to make the world of the film as realistic as possible, and requires a certain amount of ingenuity on the part of the artist. (One of the most well known examples of Foley is that the sound effect for the doors opening and closing in the original Star Trek TV series was achieved by sliding a piece of paper in and out of an envelope.) 

Gwilliam and Wand are not professional Foley artists by any means, but it is fascinating to see how they use the kinds of ordinary objects you could find under your kitchen sink to create a film soundtrack, including shaking rubber gloves to simulate the flapping of a bird’s wings, and crunching cat litter to mimic footsteps in gravel.  All of this is performed live in front of the audience as the film rolls, and is almost more intriguing than watching the films themselves.  In fact, the footage shown is not what’s important here (although it does make a brilliant point that by taking existing footage, shifting it around a bit and adding a different soundtrack can put a new twist on an old story, even changing its message entirely); the real impact that the films have is that they make one wonder where this experimental technique could fit into mainstream cinema.

At the moment the ‘big thing’ in cinema is 3D, a novelty that the studios have brought back from the dead in an attempt to tackle piracy.  By now we will all have donned the glasses at least once to see what the fuss is about, and in some cases it truly is a wonder, but the fact is that 3D has many flaws - headaches, a darker image and increased prices to name but a few.  Eventually Hollywood is going to have to find another way to wrangle us away from our computer screens.  In the last edition of Hullfire Olivia Sturrock tackled the debate of theatre vs. cinema, and what Gwilliam and Wand have done with their experiment is raise the question, ‘Why not merge them together?’  After all, their live sound performance to a pre-recorded film harkens back to the days of silent cinema when films would often be shown with a live orchestra performing the music.  It brings a certain kinetic and theatrical energy to a form of entertainment which has arguably fallen into routine.

You might ask, what’s the point in having the sound effects or music performed live at all?  In a Q&A session after the screening, Gwilliam and Wand explained that they purposefully made some of the effects out of sync, otherwise you may as well just play a pre-recording of the sounds like an ordinary film.  Admittedly, it was a little distracting to see an image of someone walking on the screen and hearing their footsteps a fraction of a second out of time, as was seeing a man waving marigolds about in your peripheral vision when you are trying to pay attention to the film. 

The precise method used here is not necessarily suited to mainstream cinema, and the idea of live sound effects and music may not be the answer to tackling piracy at all.  But what we can learn from this, and other experiments from Glimmer, is that there are alternative ways to make cinema interactive, immersive, and worth leaving the house for.  What Hollywood chooses as its next craze, we will just have to wait and see.