To me it's a true "talking picture". It delves into the implications of that description and derives structures that can generate contents that are proper Lo the mode. It derives its form and the nature of its possible effects from its being built from the inside, as it were, with the actual units of such a film, i.e., the frame and the recorded syllable. Thus its dramatic development derives not only from a representation of what may involve us generally in life but from considerations of the nature of recorded speech in relation to moving light-images of people. Thus it can become an event in life, not just a report of it.
Echoes reverberate to "language", to "representation" in general, to representation in the sound cinema, to "culture", to "civilization". Via the eyes and ears it is a composition aimed at exciting the two halves of the brain into recognition.
A clear use of ambiguity.
Can you extrapolate from "not being able to understand"
(in terms of intelligibility of parts of the separate segments) to
"not being able to understand" the whole?
"Understand"- Two shades of meaning.
LAUGHTER AND ORGASM: relation?
Style is a way of saying. Styles of different sections. Ways of saying several things at once.
DIFFERENT MEANINGS AT DIFFERENT READINGS connecting different "strata".
***
INTERNAL
Appearance/disappearance
Substitution
Metamorphosis
Auto-motion
Changes of light (intensity, color, position)
Repetition
Normal movement
EXTERNAL
Focus
Color
Light intensity (f stop) (fade in/out) (exposure-over, under)
Opticals (wipes/fold-overs)
Superimpositions
Repetition
Camera position
Camera movement
Camera speed Screen shape
The other external is the actual film strip. Editing.
SOUND
Appearance/disappearance
Substitution (other voice, other sound, etc.)
Pitch change
Timbre change (room-tone, echo, fuzz)
Volume (loud to 0)
spatial position
Repetition ("distortion")
CROSS CAUSES AND EFFECTS
Cause: action "in" picture. Effect: "external" change (image color, focus, etc.)
Cause: action "in" picture. Effect:
"Entering the image": TOUCH: caress, feel, eat, fuck, smash. Verbal description, "journalism". Dialogue sexual.
Eventually, the camera enters the image by fast changes of position, hand held stuff, wild cuts, dollies, etc.
***
List all possible manipulables.
Computer/cross-index all the permutations, combinations.
Use this as a script.
5 6 1 2 3 4 action
6 5 2 1 4 3 reaction Superimpose
5 6 2 1 4 3 action several locations
2 1 5 6 4 3 reaction or sets or backdrops
4 3 2 1 5 6
1 2 4 5 6 3 Trees by a river NO
3 2 1 4 5 6 New Orleans Street
5 2 1 4 6 3 Babylonian (ancient) scene
Do film in four or five tempi.
medium (long) 40 minutes
slow (medium) 15 minutes
fast (medium) 20 minutes
slow (short) 5 minutes
Control of WAVES OF "COHERENCE" necessary.
Rhythm continues but certain elements become more sequential then become more varied again.
e.g. dialogue
becomes more sequential
''normal''
then starts
fragmenting again.
COMEDY Commedia dell'Arte Comedy of Art
Same characters exchange positions but original voices are still heard. Characters are replaced but original voices are still heard.
Characters are replaced but new voices are heard. Characters change spatial position but sound continues.
FRAMES: The Fact: Everything can be changed between frames.
Film absolutely not videotape.
CUTTING – Disjunctive.
ABSOLUTELY non-sequential patterns.
No proportionate modulations, glissandos, fades.
Must be staccato
not
legato
But: 6 2 l 9 3 8 4
All this applies to sound, too: it can be changed "between frames".
Needn't be sequential, needn't be sentences, needn't be a story.
Words interchangeable.
***
Internal reactions to external causes.
During fade-out people say "what's happening to the light?"
Over-exposure; people cover their eyes.
Flood of color-they watch it rise.
They comment on changes that happen to the sound,
e.g., a bit of music is substituted for a phrase of dialogue.
Another person says "That's by J.S. Bach, isn't it?"
A superimposition of a group of people is imitated by the people
in the scene.
A person reacts within the scene to
other people's reactions to
an external cause.
A SERIES OF JOKES: crude enough that some
will survive dismemberment.
A man got on the elevator in bis apartment building. There was a woman in the car and she_was completely nude. He was a little taken aback but he said, "My wife has an outfit just like that." (Aunt Rhoda's joke.)
MOVE CAMERA SLIGHTL Y (on tripod) ON EACH FRAME OF S.F. REAL-TIME SHOOTING-JITTER.
DON'T FORGET: This thing is absolutely SOUND – IMAGE
RELATIONSHIPS
OK plan to studio re-record some things with changes.
Have sound man change something on every image,
change treble, bass, or volume.
A bit where sound disappears
when something is held in front of the camera.
Something opaque?
The entire film an "example" of the difficulty (impossibility) of the essentializing-symbolizing reduction involved in the
(Platonic) nature of words in relation to experience (object) etc. discussed. The difference between the reduction absolutely necessary to discuss or even describe the experience and the experience.
Each is "real" but each is different.
***
INTERNAL REACTION: People in the shot notice, see, pay attention to a manipulation: e.g., a bottle appears, reappears (8 frames, 4 frames, 2 frames).
They watch this, continuing to talk about
something else. They screen their eyes during over-exposure.
Change camera position in mid-conversation (continue in the middle of a word).
Should especially concern itself with the people. Lots of medium shots, close-ups. (2 or 4 heads, etc.)
All-woman cast?
***
PSALMANAZAR: Georges Psalmanazar (1679-1763), assumed name of a Frenchman who represented himself as a pagan from Formosa and invented a language, "Formosan" and a religious system; he later repented of the imposture, which is described in his memoir, and became a serious scholar, a friend of Dr. Johnson.
Each sequence made like a spoken word – like an actual word? –
so each has a distinct character.
No, it's the language of film.
Introduce "relativity" into the use of speech:
contextual nature of nuances of meaning.
Words common but everybody having nuances. My uses to make this
work of art.
Words as material (recorded).
“A picture is worth a thousand words." The picture is the words. Some way of making visual sentences.
Someone opens mouth and things change.
"The unexpected happens when you least expect it."
LOGOMANIA: a pathological state of volubility, or incoherent wordiness.
LOGOPATHY: a speech disorder of any kind.
LOGORRHEA: pathological form of volubility.
REBUS: The rebus introduces the subject of the accuracy of recording, verisimilitude, absolute realism in a context where
the nuances (means) of the medium are the elements of the reality of the experience of the representation.
Philosophical Comedy
"Gags"
"Routines" exemplify philosophical statements
problems
proposals
Use books, e.g. Wittgenstein
to write joke-dialogue.
To end a scene: e.g. four people talking.
Take out voices, one by one, until the scene is silent,
then remove the people one by one, then remove the set to white screen.
SOURCE OF SOUND
Sequence with playing of record, turning on T.V.
and (perhaps off screen) tape playing plus talking.
Someone points to loudspeaker and facing audience
says (or off-screen tape says) without moving mouth,
"This is where it came from."
T.V. sound is turned on, then turned off,
and tape of just previously recorded conversation is
played with T.V. picture. People comment.
Someone points to an object as a voice speaks about to play a
record. While putting it on sound starts via off-screen tape;
they then play simultaneously for a while.
ANARTHRIA: loss of power of articulate speech.
A. Language as a "tautology". We already know what can be said.
B. Not only are there many words you have never heard, but
there are many combinations of them and the ones and combinations
that you already know which have never been made which you've
never heard.
Originality then with words is?
Language is Thought's body.
Speech is thought; they are not generally two separate activities.
***
Wrong or invented sounds far things that happen on screen.
Man drops a cup, it shatters, sound is thunder and rain. Rain sound continues till woman covers her eyes. Man cleans up broken cup, sound is hammering. Hammering cuts simultaneously with cutting to "now", same cup in place of fragments. Woman lights cigarette, sound is a hall or chime. She blows out smoke and as she blows, cup (is pulled) slides along table over to edge. Either it cuts at edge and a second later, sound of breaking glass, or it falls off and sound is of car screeching around a comer. She knocks ash off cigarette, sound is splashing water, puffs on cigarette, sound is the spoken word "money." Simultaneously, man pulls letter from his pocket, sound is a bird sound till he unfolds letter. As he unfolds letter, sound is a siren and also she starts to speak: "Harvey, I just don't know what to say." He reads letter and sound is footsteps. She speaks again: "So much time has passed since we first met that it seems like it was only yesterday. The first time I saw you was in winter. I saw you walking clown the street, 3/0U were wearing a very long black overcoat. You looked very strange and very interesting and I hoped that I could meet you. Isn't it strange? Some two weeks later I did." During "the first time" she gets up from chair and walks out of room. Her voice continues with absolutely no change in volume, etc. It ought to be in perfect lip sync before that. Next, man turns off a lamp which is on table. Sound is of breaking glass and image over-exposed. Man leaves everything on table on its side. At first leaving, sound of rain again. At the last, sound cuts and camera swivels till scene is sideways with objects right side up, short hold and cut.
The last part as a separate scene in itself or part of another. Someone leaves everything on their sides, then the camera swivels.
A section shot right but shown backwards including sound.
A sequence: camera swivels as above but scene continues, talking,
etc. Cut to scene upside clown with sound somehow effected by that. SOUND UPSIDE DOWN? Cut to backwards scene.
Backwards scene could be shot with some action done backwards
so they'd be "correct" though screened wrong.
***
THE ART OF MODULATING TIME
RECORDING
The "concretion" of music, its materiality "increases" with
radio, records.
Music is now in the situation of literature after the invention
of printing. Recording is mapping of time into space. Like
drawing or painting.
Consonants equivalent to attack or percussion.
(Staccati, pizzicati)
P.K.D.T.B.
Lenses: shoot something changing lenses. Per word, perhaps. Various focal lengths. Wide screen lens, anamorphic, multiple image. Diopter, split field lens. Super wide angle, 5.7 mm., etc.
VISUAL
One sequence of lenses
zoom
pan
camera position
focus changes
SOUND
volume
and distortion
changes
Use
electronic filter?
What is it like not to be able to read or write?
The selection from the notes reproduced here was originally published in October 4, nos. 43-52 (Fall 1977).
* “During the period, I was obsessed with the film and was continually thinking about it and making notes and scribbles on any paper that came to hand. These "ideas" and "observations" (some having no evident final use in the film) accumulated into the hundreds. They are now in the Edward P. Taylor Research Library and Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario. The following selection of scripts was suggested by Annette Michelson and the editors of October magazine.” - Michael Snow
** The full Litle of the film is given as Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to /Jennis Young) by Wilma Schoen.This four-and-a-half-hour film took three years to make and was completed in 1974.
