Visualising Stories Through Music

I love visualising stories and ideas from music. Apart from film being a main point for inspiration in my creative work, I find a lot of my ideas stem from music or surrounding sounds. Stories of my past and future selves put to music I hear, or put to not-so-familiar sounds connected to distant memories and felt emotions.

This Broken Social Scene track began playing while I was pretending to work. (I'm at my desk now trying to blog this as discretely as possible)

This track reminds me. I find myself travelling, going back home for the summer holidays in the days when I was still carefree. School. Coming off the plane after an 8 hour flight, it's always the night. I'm stuck in a car for an hour between the airport and home. The highways are empty, shrouded in orange darkness (lit up by street lamps all along the way). The occasional car speeds by, and slows down. There are no traffic lights on this one way highway, everyone is free to go as they like. Having exhausted myself in telling what few stories I have between the last time I spoke to my mum, and now, I watch the sleepy world outside my window (covered with condensation). We start to move like stretched out lights, leaving traces of our existence behind. Time speeds up, but slows down enough to capture this sight. Interweaving highways and roads that lead to anywhere you want. It takes me home.

What does this song remind you of? Where does it take you?

A Spike Jonze/Arcade Fire collaboration, "The Suburbs"

Saw this a while ago. Been meaning to share it.

Here's what I found on the video (some details from Win Butler, Arcade Fire's lead):

“It’s not a video. It’s a short film; we’re still working on it. It’s like a science-fiction B-movie companion piece for the record. Basically, we played Spike some music from the album and the first images that came to his mind had the same feeling as this idea for a science fiction film I had when I was younger. My brother and I and Spike wrote it together, which was really fun– it was like total amateur hour. We shot it in Austin and a lot of kids are in the film, and it was great just hanging out with these 15-year-olds for a week and writing down all the funny things they said. It was cool to revert to being a 15-year-old for a little while."

Although it is set in Austin and seemingly reflects the suburban life for American youth, I think the themes are universal. The video reminds me of when I used to ride bicycles around my suburb with neighbours who lived nearby and not so nearby. We would race each other to the vandalised park, play rubberband wars, chase each other up to the shops where we would buy shandy beer (it was all so exhilarating). We'd pick up a couple of cap guns and have fights in our front lawns. This video brings me back to these feelings of being alive and free - my suburb was my turf, and nothing could stop me.

Final Scene from Wong Kar-wai's HAPPY TOGETHER

Brian Eno's Music For Airports

This was exactly what I was looking for with regards to my new film ideas. Ambient music.

Modeselektor - Em Ocean

Today's 'random click' has turned into a surprising find. I rarely listen to Modeselektor due to how heavy some (if not most) of their stuff can be (listen to Black Block), but this neat two minute track is something else.

Iguazu Waterfall from 'Happy Together'

The Iguazu Waterfall scene from Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together.

This waterfall, so precisely placed in the film as what I feel is a symbol of the two leading characters' relationship - mesmerising, of great depths, to lose one's self. This shot follows a moment in the film where the two characters, Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai take a road trip in search for the Iguazu waterfall. Their trip comes to a halt, and we see one of them walk away from the car. "Where are you going?" says Ho, as he remains with the car, a map spread out before him. The characters stand next to a busy highway, abandoning their car and map. Cars and trucks go by in haste as their relationship grows further and further apart.

What a great, great film.

Music that Glows

Just a quick one tonight.

I have been incredibly busy assisting the marketing team for the 1st Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA), as well as the odd intern job here and there. I've also got a job as a marketing assistant of some sort at a digital television wholesaler, at which I will start as an intern. Hopefully it will take me somewhere (preferably paid!).

In the meanwhile, I have been looking for experimental/sound art type of music, or soundscapes as inspiration for a new project. I found this rather neat track on Youtube.

It's very ambient, and possibly too busy with track layers for something I could work with. Nevertheless, I love the ambiance and peace it emanates. It kind of 'glows' for me.

"Like a sad machine, dying"

This is a beautiful track from the soundtrack of Synecdoche, New York. I am a real sucker for piano solos like this. The electronic sounds in the background turn the track into a whole different experience for me. They 'sparkle' as if to say everything moves beautifully, in one way or another.

Starting Fresh

As I have been revisiting my thesis film in the cutting room, I've started writing down some ideas for another short film I'd like to make. Rather than making something for contention in a festival, I really want to make a short film just for the sake of making one - and, of course, because I love making films and want to continue making films long after film school.

Music has always been a strong driving force in terms of what inspires my work. The stylistic approach for my thesis film "This Is Not Poetry" was partly inspired by Jon Brion's "Theme" from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The short film "Night" which I shot as a storyboard for the thesis film was inspired by Carter Burwell's "Lost Fur" from the soundtrack of Where The Wild Things Are. These tracks, to me, feel like mini-ballads. At 2-3 minutes long, they feel like short films themselves, like fragments of a much bigger story.

My next projects will be similar to the approach I took with "Night". 2-3 minute shorts, or 'fragments' that may, or may not grow into a bigger picture. Firstly, this could probably be the only way to get me right back into making lots of films at a regular (if not, more often than 'never') basis. And secondly, it puts the idea of 'making a film is as easy as you say it is' into action. And I believe it.

I'll end this post peacefully with the opening scene of Paranoid Park, which features a great track by Ethan Rose - "Song One". I need this soundtrack so badly.

Jon Brion: Some Kind of a Musical Genius

Jon Brion is currently the best music discovery I've had in a long time, if not ever.

His music makes me feel both happy and melancholic at the same time, and it isn't one riddled with turbulence much like the rest of my busy life right now. Much like "Theme" from Eternal Sunshine in my last film "Night", I feel like he has written the songs to my life. I'm becoming really inspired by his music, from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind right through to Synecdoche, New York's score - I think he is a genius.

If I find a composer who is influenced by Brion, I think my thesis film will be complete.

Man With A Harmonica

Best original score for a film I have ever heard, next to John Williams' Star Wars. Yeah, I'm that kind of a geek.