OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS: SCREENING SILENT CINEMA WITH ELECTRONIC MUSIC pdf

O ne of the simplest demonstrations that a film studies instructor can under- take in the classroom involves familiarizing students with the difference between film and video projection. From 2004 to 2006 I taught an introductory film history course in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University covering cinema’s first five decades. While approximately twenty-five percent of the students taking this course were enrolled in the department’s film production major and were actively creating their own 16mm films, the remain- ing students were largely taking the course out of personal interest or to fulfill requirements for other degrees. As such, the majority of students were not nec- essarily familiar with the technical differences between film and video, nor their variability in image quality. In order to demonstrate this distinction, a compari- son was undertaken using the German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, 1919, Robert Weine). Starting from the beginning of the film, a DVD print was shown on screen via a data projector, which ran for about five minutes. The same opening scenes of the film were then projected via a 16mm projector, and this is the format through which students viewed the entire film. This demonstration subsequently led to discussions in tutorials about the differ- CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FILM STUDIES • REVUE CANADIENNE D’ÉTUDES CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUES VOLUME 17 NO. 2 • FALL • AUTOMNE 2008 • pp 77-98 BLAIR DAVIS OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS: SCREENING SILENT CINEMA WITH ELECTRONIC MUSIC Résumé: Les diverses circonstances qui entourent le visionnement d’un film dans un cours de cinéma influencent profondément la réaction des étudiants face à l’œu- vre en question. Que ce soit l’information fournie au sujet du film avant sa projec- tion ou la qualité de la copie utilisée, les choix de l’instructeur peuvent avoir un impacte déterminant (et parfois imprévu) sur la réception du film. Cet article retrace les expériences d’un instructeur qui a tenté d’identifier les divers effets sur les étu- diants de la musique d’accompagnement des films muets. Au cours d’un vision- nement en particulier, une musique d’accompagnement électronique a été très efficace au près des étudiants. Cela a mené à une série d’expériences pédagogiques visant à déterminer si les étudiants répondent aux films muets plus favorablement si l’accompagnement est moderne plutôt que traditionnel. Cette recherche a été entreprise non seulement pour répondre à mon propre besoin d’améliorer mes méthodes d’enseignement, mais aussi pour fournir un modèle à d’autres instruc- teurs qui veulent diversifier leurs façons de présenter des films muets. ences between the film and video image, with many students noting that they had not necessarily been aware of the difference in image quality until it was pointed out to them. One problem with this teaching demonstration, however, was the fact that the 16mm print of Caligari had no musical soundtrack, something that the stu- dents had become accustomed to having with their silent films during the semes- ter. This factor would ultimately lead to subsequent demonstrations testing the notion of whether modern electronic music could be used to enhance student engagement with silent films in the classroom. I decided to fill the silence of the Caligari print by synching up a CD during the screening (a senior colleague at another institution occasionally played jazz albums in such a situation). The album selected to accompany Caligari was Songs of a Dead Dreamer by DJ Spooky, featuring music that might be generally described as “electronica” by some, or “trip-hop” by others (my students used both of these terms to describe the music, for example). The terms largely refer to music that has been created by a Disc Jockey (DJ) through combining pre-existing musical samples together and/or crafting electronic tones into rhythmic structures–criteria that informs the definition of electronic music for the purposes of this essay. 1 With its dream- like/surreal soundscapes, Songs of a Dead Dreamer was well suited to the expres- sionist imagery presented in Caligari, and the album’s title served as a thematic link to the film’s depiction of somnambulism. The music was an overwhelming success with the students, who noted that the music and imagery often became synchronized, whereby when the scenes in the film changed so too did the music similarly change in its beat or tempo. 2 The success of the screening led to others of its kind in the same semester. The Soviet montage film Man With a Movie Camera (Soviet Union, 1929, Dziga Vertov) was accompanied by a new score from The Cinematic Orchestra (which had been specifically composed by the group for the film in 2001). 3 This was fol- lowed later in the semester by the short French surrealist film Ballet Mechanique (France, 1924, Ferdinand Leger), accompanied by the first two tracks from elec- tronica artist Amon Tobin’s Chaos Theory album. Anecdotally, the feedback I received from both my students and my teaching assistant indicated that they actually preferred to hear modern music while watching silent films, because it allowed them to engage with the films more fully than if a more traditional piano, organ or orchestral score had been used. This strong anecdotal feedback ultimately led to the need for more objective evidence regarding students’ musi- cal preferences for silent films in subsequent semesters. This type of positive student response to a silent film is certainly ideal, but is not always achieved in the classroom. Jan-Christopher Horak observes, for example, that students do not always fully appreciate silent films, particularly when shown a poor print: 78 BLAIR DAVIS Teaching silent film courses on a regular basis, I’m one of the first to admit that the advent of DVDs has made my job easier. Trying to con- vince students that the film they are watching is not only a cinema clas- sic, but also as sophisticated and modern as any film made in the sound era, is a particularly hard sell when the print in question is a ‘dupey,’ fifth-generation 16mm reduction from the 35mm nitrate original, and dead silent to boot. When shown DVDs produced from restored master materials, and including a full orchestral score or at least piano accom- paniment, students are much more willing to give silent films a chance. 4 Here the issue is that students will respond differently to a silent film depending on a variety of factors, such as the quality of the print selected. Instructors make numerous choices concerning the way in which the class is conducted and mate- rials are integrated. Many of these choices, such as which print of a film to use, may seem relatively simple, but they can often have larger, unforeseen implica- tions. One illustration of this involves Edward T. Hall’s notion of proxemics—the relationship of social space to culture. In The Hidden Dimension, Hall defines proxemics as the “use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture,” 5 noting for instance that the arrangement of furniture in a room is typically determined by cultural preferences. Hall examines in particular how fixed seating arrange- ments will create a remarkably different social dynamic than when individuals are able to move their seats, with conversation being more prevalent in the latter case. 6 Instructors will typically notice a difference in the quality of discussion in a room with fixed seating, such as rows of desks or tables, as opposed to sitting around a table with moveable chairs where eye contact is readily accessible. If a simple choice like seat arrangement can affect classroom dynamics, instructors OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 79 Amon Tobin performing a live DJ set. must also be aware that the decisions they make in terms of how films are pre- sented can also have important consequences for students. Since viewers regularly respond to films emotionally as well as cognitively, it is only natural that a student’s emotional response can occasionally overwhelm their interpretations of a film. As an instructor, I have noticed that those students who describe being bored by a given film often cannot offer much in the way of interpretation of that film during group discussions, and that consequently they often perform poorly when writing about the film. Torben Grodal argues in Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film, Genres, Feeling and Cognition that “cog- nitive and perceptual processes are intimately linked with emotional processes within a functionally unified psychosomatic whole.” He sees a “systemic relation between the embodied mental processes and configurations activated in a given type of visual fiction and the emotional ‘tone’ and ‘modal qualities’ of the expe- rienced affects, emotions and feelings in the viewer.” 7 Grodal’s theories concern- ing the interrelationship of cognitive and emotional responses to visual stimuli can be extended to auditory cues, as the act of perception is rarely unconnected to other bodily senses–hearing typically being primary among them. This combi- nation of visual and auditory stimuli serves to create an environment in which the act of perception normally occurs, hence emotional responses may be activated by one or more elements of that environment. Such conceptions of spectatorship are indicative of what Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara Anderson describe as an ecological approach to film in their anthol- ogy Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations. Described as a “theory about everyday perceiving in the world,” this ecological approach “takes into account routine, everyday selection on the part of the perceiver [examining what] information we choose to gain and how we gain it from a plethora of mov- ing images.” 8 Again, given the largely inseparable nature of image and sound in cinematic spectatorship, auditory information may be included in considerations of audience perception when analyzing the effects of any given audio-visual environment on individual viewers. 9 Such tenets are in keeping with the larger tradition of media ecology, which Neil Postman describes as “the study of media as environments.” A main concern of the field of media ecology, says Postman, is about “how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling and value The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content and impact on people.” 10 With these notions of “understanding” and “feeling” paralleling Grodal’s conception of “cognitive” and “emotional” responses to cinema, this ecological framework may be seen as vital to an understanding of how the environment created by an instructor’s myriad of choices, concerning both the visual and auditory components of a classroom film screening, can affect the impact that silent films have on students. The act of replacing traditional forms of music with contemporary ones to accompany silent films is a process that is not unfamiliar to the majority of mod- 80 BLAIR DAVIS ern students. Dominique Russell argues that film music currently exists within a changing “soundscape,” whereby “there has been a change in our sound envi- ronment through the proliferation of ‘private sound bubbles,’ created through compact music players. Headphone technology creates private soundtracks to common images Insulated from room tone and ambient noises, two head- phone wearers become spectators to two very different scenes, depending on what they are listening to.” 11 Students have become accustomed to recontextu- alizing visual phenomenon by selecting alternative auditory cues to experience privately via iPods, mp3 players and other such devices. As Russell suggests, when the spectator changes the soundtrack that accompanies visual stimulus, the very scene itself changes due to the resulting environmental shift created by the new relationship between sight and sound. It was the desire to create such a shift that led Anna Siomopoulos, Patricia Zimmermann and their colleagues at Ithaca College in New York to commission a new score by Fe Nunn in 2004 for a screening of Within Our Gates (USA, 1920, Oscar Michaeux) as a part of Black History Month. Combining a jazz quartet, African drumming and spoken-word performance, Siomopoulos and Zimmermann describe this new score as an attempt to “destabilize the film text, reanimate film reception, and complicate film spectatorship through music, spo- ken word, and multiple voices.” The project was motivated by the need to “rethink the exhibition of politically significant silent films” in order to “create a new reception context” for them. 12 The act of incorporating modern music into silent film screenings is also not without precedent outside of academia. Since 1982, Pordenone Italy has hosted Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto, a silent film festival that has regularly featured contemporary scores written and performed by such composers as Wim Mertens and John Cale. 13 In 1984, Giorgio Moroder compiled a modern rock score for a theatrical re-release of Metropolis (Germany, 1928, Fritz Lang). Within Canada, the Vancouver-based theatre The Blinding Light (operating from 1998-2003) reg- ularly ran screenings of such silent films as Metropolis, City Lights (USA, 1931, Charlie Chaplin) and Man With a Movie Camera featuring live musical accompa- niment by the group Eye of Newt, which incorporates sampled music into their performances. The Blinding Light also hosted screenings with the Vancouver group Deep Blue Funk Films, which paired the music of Massive Attack with Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in a performance labeled “Massive Caligari Attack.” Deep Blue Funk describes this approach as a “synchronicity experiment,” an idea they see as borrowed from Carl Jung’s concept of the “harmony of two otherwise unre- lated events that occurs at a particular moment in time and space.” 14 Furthermore, DJ Spooky has himself created a new electronic score for Birth of a Nation (USA, 1915, D.W. Griffith). Titling the performance Rebirth of a Nation, it has been commissioned in recent years by festivals in the United States, Paris and Vienna, including a festival held by The Lincoln Center for the OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 81 Performing Arts. 15 Spooky states that he created the new score in an “attempt to draw the viewer into a direct relationship with the work, to draw the viewer into a kind of self-critical standpoint which encourages reflection on one’s own responses to the work,” particularly in relation to one’s own responses to Birth of a Nation itself. 16 With the increasing frequency of experimentation with elec- tronic music used to accompany silent films in cinematic, musical and artistic communities, the reasons for transporting such approaches towards reconceptu- alizing silent film screenings into academia become particularly cogent. METHODOLOGY My methodology consisted of multiple approaches towards determining student response to the various screenings. Immediately after each of the three screen- ings (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Man With a Movie Camera and Ballet Mechanique), the entire class of approximately ninety students became a large focus group. Students participated in dialogues with one another and myself about the posi- tive and negative effects of the use of electronic music and its implications for film spectatorship, and I documented their comments. In each case this large group dialogue was followed the next day by the use of a smaller focus group made up of the members of a class tutorial session consisting of eighteen students. Here, students were able to elaborate on their opinions from the day before, dis- cussing the demonstration in more detail. Comments were again documented and compared with those of the larger group. While no personal information was gathered, the age range of students appeared to be predominantly eighteen to twenty-four years, although several students appeared significantly older. 82 BLAIR DAVIS DJ Spooky on the turntables. These focus groups were triangulated with the use of a survey (see Appendix A) conducted with the entire class at the end of the semester, allow- ing several weeks for reflection on the demonstration as a whole. The survey did not seek to document audience effects, but to record the self-reported effect of enhancement and/or distraction created by the total aural/visual experience dur- ing screenings. The survey was completed anonymously and consisted of nine questions, divided into three sections for each of the three respective screenings. Students were asked to indicate which of the given statements they felt best described their own viewing experience in each case by circling the most appropriate choice. The survey asked what effect the modern music used to accompany each respective film in class had on their engagement with the film, as to whether it A) strongly enhanced; B) somewhat enhanced; C) neither enhanced nor detracted from; D) somewhat detracted from; or E) strongly detracted from their engage- ment with each film. The survey then used the same five criteria to determine what effect an organ or piano score would have had on students’ engagement with the same film, and then also asked what effect a symphonic or string instrument score would have had. These three questions were asked for each of the three films. While the survey therefore asked respondents to imagine the use of organ/ piano/symphonic music with films they had not seen with such musical accom- paniments, students had been exposed to numerous other silent films featuring all of these different forms of instrumentation throughout the semester, and were therefore familiar with each musical variation asked by the survey. While the use of control group screenings of these same films using these other types of music would have proven ideal (and would have undoubtedly yielded different results than questioning students about the hypothetical use of such music), such a structure was unfortunately not permitted under the institutional confines of the course at the time. The survey also invited respondents to include any additional written comments they wished to make about the demonstration. Completion of the survey was encouraged but not mandatory, and seventy-two responses to the survey were received. At the start of the survey, the word engagement was defined as “your atten- tion to/interaction with each film.” The term engagement was chosen because it signified the degree of student interest involved, and the ultimate goal of this demonstration was to determine strategies to increase students’ overall interest in silent films. This notion of “engagement” was reiterated before the survey was distributed, in order to remind students that they were to respond to each spe- cific act of classroom spectatorship and not just to their own general preferences about the various musical genres as a whole. While there is a risk that person- al musical tastes may have influenced student reactions, focus group responses seemed to indicate that this was not a significant problem. Many students described how they were able to separate their own musical preferences from OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 83 their considerations of how the chosen music affected their overall experiences of watching these films. The results of the survey (see Appendix C) were quantified in order to deter- mine how many students objected to a given score, and how many felt that a given score added to their experience of watching each film. The demonstration and survey were then repeated in a subsequent semester in another introducto- ry film course (see Appendix B and C), using a different group of students, a dif- ferent film and a different choice of electronic music in order to further test the validity of the hypothesis that an electronic score can enhance student engage- ment with silent cinema in a diverse set of circumstances. The film Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Denmark/Sweden, 1922, Benjamin Christensen) 17 was shown to a class of approximately forty students. A musical playlist con- sisting mainly of tracks by both Amon Tobin and DJ Spooky was selected to accompany the film, with the attempt to match the tempo and rhythm of indi- vidual musical tracks to the mood or pace of specific scenes from the film. While the variables of this second demonstration are different from those of the first (in that the film and music were different 18 ) the fact that the survey results were highly similar to those of the first demonstration supports the hypothesis despite the change in variables. RESULTS, PATTERNS & OBSERVATIONS In the initial demonstration using music by DJ Spooky to accompany Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 72.2 percent of students felt that the music enhanced their engage- ment with the film. Additionally, 19.4 percent found that the music detracted from their viewing experience and 8.3 percent felt that it neither enhanced nor detracted. Alternatively, these statistics point out that 80.5 percent of students had no objections to the use of a modern score. In contrast, 47.8 percent of stu- dents felt that a symphonic or string instrument score would have enhanced their engagement, but only 9.8 percent believed it would detract, with 42.2 per- cent remaining neutral towards such music. Furthermore, if a piano or organ score had instead accompanied Caligari, only 26 percent of students felt that it would have enhanced their engagement, with 31.8 percent believing it would detract, and 42 percent of students remaining neutral. While the data may indi- cate that 90.1 percent of students had no objections to a symphonic score, it also indicates that nearly half of those students might have found a non-symphonic score to be more engaging. The response to the modern score by The Cinematic Orchestra to accompa- ny Man With a Movie Camera was even more encouraging. The survey found that 82.8 percent saw the new score as enhancing their engagement, with only 2.8 percent seeing it as detracting and 14 percent remaining neutral. These num- bers indicate that 94.5 percent had no objections to the modern score, the highest response to any of the musical choices in the entire survey. Comparatively, only 84 BLAIR DAVIS 24.2 percent of students felt that an organ or piano score would have been ben- eficial, and 39.1 percent believed that a symphonic/string score would have aided in their engagement. The use of Amon Tobin’s music to accompany Ballet Mechanique drew the lowest amount of support, with only 49.2 percent respond- ing favorably. However, only 13 percent saw the music as detrimental, with 36.9 percent being indifferent. Furthermore, the acceptance rate of the electronic music is still higher here than that of other musical forms for the film, with only 36.5 percent of students preferring a symphonic score, and 20.6 percent favoring a piano or organ score. The subsequent survey in the second demonstration, regarding the use of electronic music in a screening of Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, yielded similar results. The survey found that 78.1 percent of the new group saw the elec- tronic music as enhancing their engagement with the film. A further 18.7 percent found that the music detracted, while only 3.1 percent remained neutral. In con- trast, only 50 percent of these students would have found a piano or organ score beneficial, while only 46.8 percent would have benefited from a symphonic score. The survey results indicate that the majority of students in almost all of the scenarios preferred the modern electronic soundtrack. Furthermore, in each case, regardless of whether a majority was reached, the positive response to this music outweighed the negative response. Focus group comments for the Caligari screening, for example, noted that the DJ Spooky music was “more effective” and allowed for a “better experience” for students. At the Man With a Movie Camera screening, students made similar observations regarding the Cinematic Orchestra score: “It made the film feel more contemporary;” “It allowed me to connect with the film more;” “It gave the images more resonance.” Such state- ments also appeared in the anonymous survey comments. “The addition of con- temporary music is an interesting idea. I liked the choices, the [sic] improved the films quite a bit,” wrote one student. “Loved the modern music, it put things in OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 85 T he Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ( Robert Weine, 1919) a modern, more relatable context for me,” wrote another. What became most striking about the survey results, however, was the pat- tern that emerged when comparing the preferences of individual respondents for one screening to that same respondent’s preferences in other screenings. In so doing it became evident that those who disliked or were neutral about one choice of electronic music were likely to be enthusiastic about another such choice. Ninety seven percent of respondents in the initial survey that were neu- tral towards one or more of the electronic choices were enthusiastic about at least one of the other electronic accompaniments. Similarly, 95.6 percent of respondents that disliked one or more of the electronic musical choices reacted favorably to at least one of the other electronic choices. In many cases, students who felt that one electronic score strongly detracted from their engagement with a film noted that a different electronic score strongly enhanced engagement for another film. Therefore, instructors who may be worried that an electronic score could alienate a significant portion of their students during any given screening should be comforted by the fact that those who do not enjoy one particular piece of electronic music will very likely respond favorably to other choices during the course of a semester. In so doing, the odds become much higher that instructors may instill interest in those students who might otherwise tend to dismiss silent films entirely. Many students in the surveys singled out organ music as being particularly detrimental to their viewing experiences. Overall, 43 percent of respondents in the initial survey were neutral towards a piano or organ score, with an addition- al 33.3 percent noting that such music detracted from their engagement with the films. The consensus of the large focus group for the Ballet Mechanique screen- ing was that there would have been diminished interest in the film if an organ score were used. “Organ music would be so distracting, esp.[sic] today, because we rarely hear that,” said one anonymous survey comment. This statement points to the fact that organ music falls outside of the common musical frame of reference of most contemporary students, with one student noting that such music is rarely heard outside of a religious context. While organ music is cer- tainly in keeping with the historical context of original exhibition practices of silent films, the fact that it may be detrimental from a student’s perspective in classroom screenings should give instructors cause to consider alternative musi- cal choices. While they did not appear to enjoy organ music, the survey results do indi- cate that most students are generally not opposed to symphonic scores. Only 11.3 percent of respondents in the initial survey felt that a symphonic or string score would detract from their engagement with the films, with 41.1 percent believing that such music would be beneficial. While 47.3 percent remained neutral, these results point out that students are perhaps more comfortable with symphonic scores than organ scores precisely because the former is more familiar to them 86 BLAIR DAVIS [...]... OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 89 attain together When this musical “recontextualizing” process is combined with the additional context of the silent film, ideas about the relationship between art and technology raised by the multiple combinations of sounds and imagery become manifold Despite the academic possibilities of electronic music for silent film screenings, the practice of combining the two has met with. .. students as to the artistic merits of silent films, then instructors should strongly consider integrating this music into classroom screenings In turn, students classified piano, organ and orchestral scores as being “older” forms of music, forms they considered more “traditional” and old fash- OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 87 ioned.” One student also described such “older” forms of music as seeming “romantic” in so... artist used with Ballet Mechanique In this regard, the music used for Haxan in the second demonstration was not entirely different from the first demonstration’s music OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 97 19 In fact, many of the electronic pieces of music used to accompany the silent films in class incorporated elements of symphonic or string-instrument music DJ Spooky samples unidentified orchestral music, for example,... traditional musical instruments as drums, piano, saxophones and violin, this score by The Cinematic Orchestra is included in the “electronica” category because of the work by musician Patrick Carpenter, who is credited as performing with Turntables/Electronics 4 Jan-Christopher Horak, “Archiving, Preserving, Screening 16 mm,” Cinema Journal 45:3 (Spring 2006): 112 5 Edward T Hall, The Hidden Dimension (New. .. Holmes defines electronic music as being “electrically produced or modified,” but makes a distinction between electro-acoustic music whose “heyday” was the 1950s, and more recent musical genres such as ambient, illbient, techno and trance It is the latter forms of music that this essay is largely concerned with, as opposed to both electro-acoustic musical forms such as the theremin, as well as music created... contention within the silent film community concerns the recent phenomenon of setting silent films to scores consisting of electronic, rock and avant-garde music styles Many silent film enthusiasts, especially those of the older generations, consider this to be nothing less than sacrilege.”25 Film critic David Edelstein describes, for example, how Moroder’s 1984 rock score to Metropolis drove him “frothing with. .. contemporary soundtrack will expose the silent film to a newer, younger audience.27 This focus on bringing new audiences to silent films is also seen in an interview with a member of The Cinematic Orchestra, who says of the band’s performances for Man With a Movie Camera, “It’s more of an event than a gig because people are encouraged to watch the film People love seeing it with a contemporary soundtrack and... Wisconsin Press, 1996), 230 21 Ibid., 244 22 This student’s comments about music videos raise the issue of whether students respond to silent films with electronic scores precisely because they do resemble music videos While some educators may decry this comparison, if similarity with a new media format can stir interest in an older format then the question of pedagogic merit should become a moot point... If electronic scores can encourage a greater degree of student involvement with (and enthusiasm about) silent films, as well as inspire a greater awareness of the mental and bodily processes of spectatorship involved in watching films, an incorporation of this music into classroom screenings of silent films could become a more regular practice in how film studies classes are taught The application of electronic. .. participants was that using modern electronic music served to make silent films feel “more modern” or “contemporary.” At the same time, many noted that electronic music also allowed the silent films screened to feel more “artistic” or “avant-garde,” stating that the films seemed as if they could have been created fairly recently as opposed to being eight or nine decades old Such comments are particularly . • FALL • AUTOMNE 2008 • pp 77-98 BLAIR DAVIS OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS: SCREENING SILENT CINEMA WITH ELECTRONIC MUSIC Résumé: Les diverses circonstances qui. and old fash- OLD FILMS, NEW SOUNDS 87 The Man With a Movie Camera ( Dziga Vertov,1929). ioned.” One student also described such “older” forms of music