New-to-me concept, mentioned in the Davies book: the dancers get the music through headphones. Why on earth has that never been used in a movie? Cutting back and forth from the booming subjective version to the silent wide shots, with some kind of chase/suspense sequence snaking through it.
Reading Davies, I'm starting to think like him. (If only.)
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Silent disco...
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3 comments:
Blargh:
"The first Silent Disco appeared in 1969 in a Finnish science fiction film called Ruusujen Aika (Time of Roses)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Disco
Another way in which movies distort the world in ways not always to the better: the lack of narrative silence.
Much modern dance of the last twenty years is performed without music and the muffled sound of the dancer's feet hitting the floor is wonderful -- like a walk through the city in a snowstorm.
You're right, of course, but I'd expand it: a silent chase of any sort would be a strange and wonderful sight in a movie.
BTW: There's a good interview in print on the BBC website here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/russell_t_davies_1.shtml
He pays tribute to a predecessor on Doctor Who:
Are there any writers from the old Doctor Who series who are a great influence on you?
Robert Holmes, he was the greatest old Doctor Who writer. And it's a tragedy really, because he was a genre writer and when the history of drama is written he won't even be a footnote, apart from among Doctor Who fans. He was a brilliant writer. If you don't know your Doctor Who there's a story called The Talons of Weng Chiang, and the first episode of that, every line is perfect, every line is funny, or dark... There's not a word wasted. It's a masterpiece of writing, and good for Doctor Who fans keeping his memory alive, because he's dead now. If he'd been alive we'd have signed him up straight away, he was an absolute genius.
Modern use of narrative silence?
"No Country for Old Men."
There are plethora examples of visual storytelling without massive explosions in modern film making. Only those who are in denial would assume there aren't.
As for a play on the "dancers getting the music through their headphones" thought..."Face Off" has a disturbing sequence where a child listens to "Over the Rainbow" during a gun fight. The film cuts in and out of the explosions and gun fire and into a child POV with the classic MGM song playing in headphones.
John Woo's American films may not live up to his Hong Kong promise, but there are some wonderful moments.
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