FOTW Audio Productions

Listen to an eerie and fantastic piece of film music for the 1971 Michael Crichton thriller, The Andromeda Strain.

Composer Gil Mellé was a Greenwich Village jazz musician, who also had an interest in electronics, and experimental styles like Musique Concréte, where music would be recorded onto tape (no wav files in those days) and then manipulated to create new sounds.

The first track here, "The Piedmont Elegy", is a great example of a perfectly compact piece of music, experimental, but still following a conventional John Barry-like song structure.

However, keep on listening, and the tracks begin to get a bit more out there!

Over the years I have re-watched the original 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, partly out of nostalgia, as it reminded me of Saturday afternoons at home, where it was shown on TV every couple of years. But it has seriously grown on me as a film.

The original had an amazing soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith of mostly experimental percussion. It was influenced by earlier modernist composers like Edgar Varese and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and was a style of film-scoring that was used a lot in the late sixties - particularly by Goldsmith. Hearing it, paired with images of men struggling through a desolate landscape, is evocative both of an era of movie-making, and of a particular type of epic journey, that staring up at the midday sun, gasping for water, solar flares spinning over the camera lens.

Also, the key sociological themes of the film about the unthinkable, impermanent nature of human civilisation, and the role of truth and versions of history when it comes to maintaining social order, can never really date, and will pretty much always be relevant, as long as the earth is turning and human beings are on it.

Finally, there is something about monkeys that strikes a special chord with viewers: muscled out of the civilisation game, experimented on by various industries, and basically not treated as you would a near relative, them gaining the upperhand is not such a far-fetched and implausible idea. It is just a matter of how.

So I was pleased to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes turning up on the big screen.

James Franco is great. The CGI is used well, and not too over-the-top. There is an element of realism in the film, which is a strong-point of good, young directors in Hollywood at the moment (and one of its saving graces). The film as a story also goes against the grain of being a staid rehash of something old. There is an innovative and fresh feel about it, and it is cleverly constructed, in the same way that Inception was.

The trailer (depending on which one you see) is slightly misleading, as it seems that most of the film will be about humans and monkeys fighting, which is not really the case: the main story lies with Caesar and his relationship with his mad-scientist type father, as well as the slow and gradual bonding of Caesar with other monkeys, as an organised, revolutionary movement.

There are a few links to the original Planet of the Apes film like Caesar building a cardboard model of the Statue of Liberty, and a quote from the original, uttered by a lesser character; but the film didn't really need them: it stands up so well on its own, that people can watch and enjoy it without having a clue about its history. It also manages to end on an epic suggestion, that does capture the impact of the original, that you honestly do not see coming.

And its also an enjoyable film, which really is the most important thing for a Hollywood blockbuster. It's not everyday that you  get to see monkeys tram-surfing up the hills of San Francisco. So do yourself a favour, buy yourself a choc-top and some popcorn, and get behind those monkeys.

You won't be disappointed.

AS PART OF PARRAMASALA 2010, a festival celebrating South Asian culture funded by Parramatta Council and the NSW government, the multi-talented British composer Nitin Sawhney and his band of classical Indian musicians, were brought out to perform the soundtrack to the silent Indian film, A Throw of Dice. During his stay, Nitin gave a masterclass in film scoring and composition to a group of Sydney musicians at the Switch Digital Arts Centre. 

Nitin Sawhney first came to international fame when he and a group of other artists like Talvin Singh, were identified in the late nineties as being part of a rising British music scene known as the 'Asian Underground'. Marrying traditional Indian sounds with club music, they revealed a musical side of the United Kingdom that, up until then, had been largely unknown outside of Britain.  

As time went on, Nitin moved away from strictly club music into the world of jazz fusion and film-scoring, influenced by the jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, who had travelled to India in the seventies to study Indian music and spirituality; and the film composer Ennio Morricone, whose unique and dedicated approach to film scoring must have greatly appealed to Sawhney. 

Growing up in a musical household, Nitin had taken lessons in piano and classical flamenco guitar, as well as learning traditional Indian instruments. He played in multiple bands from punk to jazz during his formative years, and after experiencing a period of uncertainty in his early twenties, he eventually decided to concentrate all of his energy into music. 

It was a good decision. Over the past fifteen years, he has released 8 albums, scored 40 films, and worked on countless projects with other musicians, dancers and visual artists. He has also become a high profile figure in the UK, serving on music advisory boards, and helping to set up programs for young musicians.  

ACCORDING TO NITIN, INDIA has the most advanced rhythmic systems in the world. He described how the footwork of a dancer is in synch with the percussion, taking the same vocal cue - so when the vocalist speaks, both the dancer and drummer know exactly what to do. 

He also demonstrated how there is a 12 beat system both in flamenco and classical Indian music, and that one of the flamenco styles, the bulería, can easily be integrated with Indian rhythms. As all the participants had been asked to bring their instruments, he broke the class into two groups, and had them go off and improvise on this 12 beat system. 

When it came to film scoring, he taught the class that it was important to focus on melody, rather than overworking the harmonic side of composition - that an oversophisticated harmony can kill the melody.

Besides Morricone, he also spoke about his appreciation for Ravi Shankar's music for the Indian director Satyajit Ray; how the sitar-player had sat down and improvised for 12 hours straight, from which the director could pick and choose the best parts for his first and most famous film, Pather Panchali.

A nice moment came in the class, when one of Nitin's band members, Ashwin Srinivasan, who had been sitting in the back row for most of the session, was able to borrow a bansuri - a traditional indian flute - from one of the participants who had brought along a big collection of them. Ashwin joined Nitin on the stage, with tabla player, Aref Durvesh, to perform a moving piece of music. 

The only disappointment was that the class did not get to directly play with Nitin. But overall,  it was a great opportunity, and very special, that it was held in the Western Suburbs.

Keep your eye on the Switch / Information + Cultural Exchange website for more events like this in the future, and thanks to Gary Paramanathan for his help.

In a world between the word and the image, before the advent of tv, there lived the humble Saturday night radio drama, where families would sit in the living room, listening to tales of mystery and imagination on a giant bakelite radio in the spot that the tv now inhabits.

It's hard to believe that such a world ever existed, but it did. Producer Irwin Yablans, spoke about how he used to listen to Inner Sanctum and Lights Out as a kid, and it was part of the inspiration for him wanting to make Halloween. It's no surprise when the work of writers like H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe was being adapted for this 'theatre of the mind.'

Since the end of the radio era, many of these shows now exist in the public domain, and one innovative soul, Beau Roberts, has used the audio from one of them, The Visitor from Hades by Arch Obler, as the basis for a stop-motion animation - a brilliant idea!

With the action scripted like a movie, using tracking shots, proper edits, and shifts in point of view, The Visitor From Hades, is a very interesting piece of film-making. Unfortunately, stop-motion takes such a long time to create, that the project has not yet been finished - but have a look at the work so far.

For more information about its creator and his other projects, check out: http://www.beaunanzamotionpictures.com/

Happy Halloween!

Director Joe Dante was recently a guest at the Melbourne International Film Festival, with a retrospective of his work that included Gremlins, The 'Burbs, and his early film for Roger Corman, Piranha. He was interviewed on Radio National's Movie Time show with Julie Rigg. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/movietime/stories/2010/2974270.htm

In recent years Joe Dante has run a project called Trailers from Hell, where directors talk about their favourite films for the duration of the film's trailer: http://www.trailersfromhell.com/

“When I was a little boy, I lived with my parents in what was then a small suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood. My father was general manager in charge of production for Firmament-Famous Artists-Lewin. It was a mouthful, but I used to have to remember the whole thing for the your-father-my-father arguments I was always having with a kid down the block whose old man was only an associate producer at Warner Brothers.”   
                                                                                          - From Some Faces in the Crowd

Budd Schulberg, who passed away last year at the age of 95, was one of the first true Hollywood insiders, a great novelist who wrote the screenplay to On the Waterfront, and a key figure in the blacklisting of Hollywood writers during the McCarthy era.

His father, B.P. Schulberg, a founding mogul of Hollywood, relocated his family from New York to Los Angeles when Budd was just a boy to share a film studio with the infamous Louis B. Mayer (who would later become his rival). B. P. Schulberg was responsible for evolving the art of the screenplay (known as ‘photoplays’ at the time), as well as launching the careers of some of Hollywood’s most famous stars, like Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.

Roaming the studio lots with the sons of other studio heads, Budd had a privileged chilhood, pelting the stars with figs and collecting autographs; all the while, the movie business growing up around him. At his family home in Malibu, his parents nurtured in him a love of literature; his father, a once aspiring writer would read classics to the family every Sunday, while his mother would pay him 25 cents for every book he read.

During his summer breaks he worked with the Paramount publicity department, writing copy for movie magazines, interviewing everyone from Gary Cooper, to the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein (who was planning, unbelievably, to make a Western for Paramount).

But Budd Schulberg’s dream was to escape Hollywood and become a more traditional type of writer. He had seen how the wordsmiths working for his father operated - mismatched collaborators in cramped rooms, drinking and gambling, under tremendous pressure from the studio chiefs.

After graduating from Dartmouth College, he initially worked for the studios; but by age 26 he had completed his first novel What Makes Sammy Run?, the story of the unscrupulous Sammy Glick who claws his way to the top of the Hollywood food chain at the expense of his friends and colleagues. 

Budd’s father, thinking of the future problems the book could cause his son, advised him not to publish it: Schulberg’s unique Hollywood childhood had given him an unprecedented insight into the world of silver shadows and its secrets, and there were those in the business that would not be happy to have their dirty laundry aired.

But having witnessed his father’s ill-treatment at Paramount - demoted, despite being one of their top producers, Budd was keen to expose the hypocrisy of a system that promoted family values in its films, yet was saturated with backbiting, vice and infidelity. 

The book launched his writing career, but as his father had predicted, it alienated him from the community he had grown up in.

He would later experience a second round of alienation during the McCarthy-HUAC investigation into the communist influence in Hollywood. Named as a former member of the party, Budd in turn named others, and it was perceived as a severe betrayal by those around him. 

However, Budd Schulberg always had a strong social conscience, identifying with the underdog in society. In the aftermath of the Watts Riots of 1965, he set up a writers workshop for the mostly African-American community of Watts.  It attracted the support of Robert Kennedy, and Budd later acknowledged that this was the thing he was most proud of in his life.   

LINKS:

IMDB Entry for Budd Schulberg: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0775977/

Back in 1983, a trilogy of feature-length telemovies were made by the ABC called Scales of Justice. Written by Robert Caswell, and directed by Michael Carson, each story was a fictional examination of corruption at three levels of the Australian legal system.

The first story The Job started at the ground level of the legal system, the police force, with a new rookie Constable Leonard Webber (Simon Burke) joining an inner-city Sydney police station. Fresh out of the Police Academy, with the police ethos of right and wrong and what it means to be perceived in the community as a police officer - the blue uniform representing the conscience of society - he is gradually exposed to age-old corruption.

It starts out small, while out on duty with his senior officer, Constable Borland (John Hargreaves). Although an efficient teacher, showing him how to carry himself while saving a mentally ill lady from committing suicide, he also teaches him the first of what could be a series of lifelong bad habits: drinking on the job, ignoring small misdemeanours in order to avoid excessive paperwork; as well as the dubious difference between a "bribe" and a "gift". He also describes the police uniform as an unofficial "discount card" for making purchases.

But at a much deeper level, he is also being taught the importance of looking after your friends, which is more of a social code of not dobbing in co-workers. When some money in the station goes missing, the evidence of a bribe, all the on-duty officers are forced to chip in a few dollars to make it back up, rather than report it missing and bring in outside scrutiny on their policing.

The rookie takes on some of the habits, and reacts against others; but his own dilemma begins when a friend in his football team who has been charged with petty-theft, asks him to put in a friendly word with the investigating officer on his behalf. After thinking about it for a while, the rookie mentions it to Constable Borland, who tells him to go see the detective; which he does. The detective he visits describes how the system of favours work, not explicitly; but lets the rookie know that his friend now owes him a favour, and suggests that he could help the rookie by becoming an informer.

But crunch time comes for Constable Webber when he is out on night-patrol with Sergeant O'Rourke (played by veteran Australian actor, Bill Hunter) and they investigate a robbery of a fur coat store. The sergeant tells the rookie to check around the back, and in the meantime, steals some of the coats. The rookie comes back out just as the seargeant is closing the boot of his car. He quickly works out what has happened.

The sergeant leaves him to guard the broken door to prevent any passerbys from helping themselves to the merchandise, while he returns to the station. Two detectives then show up who also help themselves to some of the coats. The rookie ignores it, but the next day, he finds that someone has put one of the coats in his locker as a "present" for his fiance.

He takes the coat home with him, and wonders what to do about it. He then asks the advice of a female officer who has just found out she is to be transferred to a remote police station for investigating a rape case that Sergeant O'Rourke had wanted her to ignore. She advises the rookie to get rid of it, throw it away, and don't say anything.

But thinking he is doing the right thing - by the law at least, Constable Webber decides to report it to the head of the station, without naming his sergeant at first; but when pressured from an outside investigator, he does.

Sergeant O'Rourke is investigated by internal affairs by officers who are like him in age and attitude. The seargeant claims the reverse of what had really happened, that the rookie took the coats while the sergeant was out the back checking the store, and they accept it: it's easier to write off a new rookie, who is disloyal, than indite a senior officer, and let it reflect badly on an organisation who, up until then, had not detected his corrupt ways.  

Thinking that it will all turn out in his favour, the rookie is stunned when he is asked to hand in his badge and leave the force; and although this ending is not explicit in terms of content, it is cold and brutal in a uniquely Australia way. 

If there is such a thing as a hardboiled Australian crime film, that bears a close relationship to reality without being sensational, then this it. This episode has elements of Serpico, but without a clearcut hero.

The series was shot in a documentary style, and had a big impact on Australian audiences when it was first shown; and over the years, it has become part of High School English curriculum for students sitting their final year exams.

This particular episode also contains some great night-time footage - the industrial areas, the harbour and shipping yards of Sydney (that are sadly disappearing). 

Here is a link to a short clip on the Australian Screen website, with some background information about the series.