School of Sound 1998
16-19 April 1998
Institut Français
London
Project Director
Larry Sider
Project Managers
Kirsty Malcolm
Henrietta Esiri
Emily Lincoln
Researcher
Miguel Mera
Thursday
JON WOZENCROFT
Tutor in Sound and Graphics, Royal College of Art, publisher of Touch.
‘Soundtracks for Films Yet to Be Made’: Sound is usually the last thing on the production agenda. It should be the first. Does this mean we should return to radio and work up the pictures from there? Better to observe the way various sound interventions have woven their own way into a new and expanding frame of soundtrack composition, pictures courtesy the listener.
LAURA MULVEY
Film-maker, theorist and BFI Post-Graduate Programme Tutor.
The short period during which the cinema converted to synchronised sound was one of varied pressures and possibilities. Laura Mulvey discusses the debates and aesthetic responses generated by this new phase of film history. As technologies undergo profound changes in the late 20th century, similar issues arise once again.
PIERS PLOWRIGHT
Drama and documentary features producer, BBC Radio.
‘The Shadow Knows’: Using radio clips from his own and others’ work, Plowright looks at the connection between radio and film.
MICHEL CHION
Composer of concrete music, theorist, film-maker and author.
Chion traces the technical advances in film sound since the 70’s in relation to developments such as the public’s heightened awareness of sound’s physical effects and the movement towards a sensual cinema. Using examples such as Lynch, Kieslowski, Kurosawa and Angelopoulos, he emphasises “the dialectical seesaw between the cinema of the ‘full’ and of the ‘empty’ in which the extended soundscape needing to be filled becomes a soundscape to be emptied out.”
Friday
WALTER MURCH
Oscar winning editor/sound designer, whose credits include The English Patient, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and The Godfather trilogy.
Using numerous examples from his award-winning films, Murch investigates such notions as metaphorical sound, conceptual resonance and unexpected silences. In particular, he focuses on his reconstruction and restoration of the soundtrack of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. Using a ‘before and after’ analysis of the film, he shows what the studio did, what Welles wanted and how it was achieved forty years later.
DAVID LYNCH
In a videotaped interview, Lynch discusses his approach to the soundtrack in his films Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, as writer/director/sound designer.
Documentary film-makers MICHAEL GRIGSBY (Before the Monsoon, The Time of Our Lives, Living On the Edge) and PATRICK KEILLER (London, Robinson in Space) explore sound as a key component in various documentary structures.
Saturday
MUSIC
Moderated by MIKE HODGES, director of Get Carter, Flash Gordon and Black Rainbow.
DAVID BURNAND
Composer and Head of Music and Technology, Royal College of Music.
With so much talk of interactive multimedia and the convergence of sound and music, we risk neglecting the lessons of the past. David Burnand analyses how music functions in support of drama and narrative, showing how the ‘traditional’ score may be approached in a non-formulaic way by both filmmakers and composers.
STEPHEN DEUTSCH
Composer, Professor of Music Design and Sound Design for the Moving Image, Bournemouth University.
Television technology has begun to change the way composers write for that medium. Stephen Deutsch looks at the merging of composition and sound design and the skills required of composers to write specifically for film or for television.
SIMON FISHER TURNER
Noise and music composer, collaborator with Derek Jarman on The Garden, Edward II and Blue.
Fisher Turner’s iconoclastic approach to composition for image inspired by Robert Bresson’s advice, “The noises must become music.”
MANFRED EICHER
Music producer and president of ECM Records (publishers of the soundtrack to Godard’s Nouvelle Vague).
“I think of the blind woman who goes to a Jean-Luc Godard movie and discovers, by a juxtaposition of sound, tone, music and those images that she cannot see, how to listen; and then she describes the film and she’s very close to the image – perhaps much closer than people who think they can see.”
ANDREW DEAKIN
Composer, Sonic Arts Programme leader, Middlesex University, proposes an approach to sound composition for non-linear work acknowledging the influence of certain pioneers such as music concrete composer, Pierre Schaeffer.
JULIAN NOTT
Film Music Composer, creator of the soundtrack for Wallace and Gromit.
The differing requirements of composition for live-action and animation.
IAN CHRISTIE
Professor of Film Studies at the University of Kent, broadcaster and critic who has compiled a history of British film music for BBC radio.
‘Sounds Indirect: Asynchrony from Eisenstein to Scorsese’: What are the effects of splitting sound from picture, so that instead of doubling, it challenges or changes the visual image? Starting in the ‘silent’ era and moving through the evolution of narration, Christie traces the provocative history of asynchronous sound.
Sunday
Carrying what has been discussed and debated in the first three days into animation, abstract film/video and digital art.
Moderated by KEITH GRIFFITHS, Independent producer for theatrical fiction, documentary and animation, Koninck/Illuminations Films.
In discussion:
THE QUAY BROTHERS
Animators/directors of The Street of Crocodiles, The Comb and the live-action feature Institute Benjamenta. ‘The Musicalisation of Space”
TESSA ELLIOTT
Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Media Laboratory, University of the West of England, presents her interactive computer installation, Periodyssey.
SIMON PUMMELL
Animation and drama director/writer, Rose Red, Temptation of Sainthood, Secret Joy. ‘Exploiting the clash between hi-tech images and lo-tech sound.’
TERRY BRAUN
Television/multimedia producer, MD Illuminations Interactive.
The narrative use of sound in interactive media.
OSCAR GRILLO
Animation director, Klacto Animations Ltd.
The basic relationship between music, sound effects and image as used in early animation.
ANDRE KATORI
Digital artist, member of AudioRom.
Katori demonstrates AudioRom’s work featuring musical interaction and the links between auditory and visual signals.
The symposium will conclude with PETER KUBELKA, film-maker, archivist and chef. He attempts to describe the possibilities of articulation in sound film. As an example he will use his film, Unsere Afrikareise, analysed in detail on a Steenbeck.
Screenings at the Institut français
Jean-Luc Godard’s Hélas pour moi (1993)
Screened in Britain for the first time, starring Gérard Depardieu.
Using the throaty computer voice from Alphaville as the voice of God, Godard portrays “…the desire of a God to feel human desire…Stately and fragmented, given to all manner of emotional outbursts, TV inserts and f-stop flickers, Hélas pour moi is at once fast and slow, beautiful and infuriating, stupid and smart. With the possible exception of Stan Brakhage, there is no other living artist so utterly in command of his film vocabulary.” –Jim Hoberman, The Village Voice
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990)
Using Steven Spielberg’s money, ILM’s special effects and an acting appearance by Martin Scorsese, Kurosawa presents eight elegantly crafted tales depicting the end of the world, mourning the collective destruction of man and nature. His bold palette of primary colours woven with a haunting soundtrack create these visions around, in Kurosawa’s words, “…a theme of nostalgia – nostalgia towards the loss of Mother Nature and with it the loss of the heart of mankind.”
And a demonstration of filmmaker Chris Marker’s CD-ROM, Immemory, commissioned by the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and to be released on the Internet later this year.
The National Film Theatre will present SOUND!, a month-long season of films tracing the development of sound in the cinema, commencing with a lecture by author Scott Eyman.
Education Event: The Speed of Sound
Scott Eyman, author of The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926-1930, will discuss the infrequent art and highly demanding craft of early sound, illustrated with scenes from The Jazz Singer, Lonesome, Hallelujah! and Applause, that provide invaluable records of performance styles of the time.
The School of Sound is supported by
The British Film Institute and National Film Theatre
The Performing Right Society
The British Council
Focus Central London
Institut Français
Bournemouth University
Channel Four Television
ECM Records
The French Embassy in London
Videolondon Soundstudios
Royal College of Art
European Film College
Austrian Cultural Institute
Dolby Laboratories Ltd.
Working Title Films
Performing Right Society
Sound Technology
Focal Press
Bose Ltd.
DeLane Lea Sound Studios
Marathon Music
Speakers’ Biographies
AudioRom are ten, London-based designers, musicians, technicians and artists working at the cutting edge of the interactive audio-visual arena. Drawing on some of the present desires and infatuations of youth culture, AudioRom produce, publish, exhibit and perform highly innovative works, examining and exploring relationships between sound and image. ANDRE KATORI, producer, musician and interface designer, and SIMON SCHOFIELD, visual artist and software designer, will demonstrate AudioRom’s latest CD Rom, ShiftControl.
TERRY BRAUN is a broadcast producer/director for Illuminations Television as well as a multimedia producer/designer for Illuminations Interactive. Braun is also the MD of Illuminations Interactive. He currently serves on the Combined Art Panel of the Arts Council of England (ACE) and Chairs its Combined Arts Project Fund committee. Terry is also chairman of the MultiMedia Arts and IT Consultative Committee for Sadlers Wells Theatre in London and works as a senior consultant on Multimedia and Information Technology for a number of National Lottery/ACE/A4E clients.
Illuminations Interactive is concerned with applying the creative potential of the very best broadcast television to the exciting new possibilities of interactive media. They have designed and implemented projects for The Institute of Contemporary Arts,
Dance Umbrella, Evelyn Glennie, The Horniman Museum, The Museum of London, The Hayward Gallery, Museum of the Moving Image, The British Museum, The Tate Gallery and Channel Four Television. terry@illumin.co.uk, http:// https://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk
DAVID BURNAND has been Head of Music Technology at the Royal College of Music since 1993. He was course leader for the Masters degree in Composition for Screen at the RCM until last year, and currently heads the RCM’s newly-formed Centre for Screen Music Studies. Originally a pop musician, Burnand has subsequently composed music and provided sound design for five films directed by Andrew Kötting: Hoi Polloi (BBC, 1990), Acumen (C4, 1991), Smart Alek (BFI, 1993), La Bas (BFI, 1994) and Gallivant (BFI/C4, 1996). The Gallivant soundtrack has been released on CD (TS CD001).
He also composes electroacoustic music. One Equal Light received two broadcasts on Dutch Radio (BRTN Radio 3) in 1996, and he is currently working on a piece for tape and oboe, featuring the extended playing techniques of Edwin Roxburgh.
His research includes the relationship between music and sound within multimedia with particular interest in musique concrète applications, and the origins of musico-dramatic conventions.
He contributes to teaching for the MA in Interactive Multimedia at the London College of Printing and is involved with the Film, TV and Animation departments at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths.
STEPHEN DEUTSCH is one of Britain’s 30,000 composers. He has had his concert music performed by many artists, including the Medici Quartet, David Campbell, The Gaudier Ensemble, Andrew Ball, The London Mozart Players and many others. He has composed over thirty scores for film, theatre, radio and television. His many collaborations with the playwright Peter Barnes include the Olivier Award winning play, Red Noses (1985) and the feature film Hard Times (1994). He has significant expertise in the fields of Electronic Music (including sampling & synthesis); 20th century music techniques; the composer in the marketplace; and issues having to do with film, television, broadcasting and related subjects.
Deutsch was educated in the United States (initial training — Julliard Preparatory Division). After settling in Britain he attended the Royal College of Music where he was engaged in electro-acoustic composition under the direction of Tristram Cary. In 1971, he and two partners established Synthesizer Music Services, Ltd, an electro-acoustic studio in London.
He is Professor of Music Design at Bournemouth University. In 1992, he founded the University’s MA in Music Design for the Moving Image. This course, the first of its kind in Europe, is designed to equip post-graduate professional composers with the skills necessary to engage in writing music for film, television, radio and other multi-media packages. He has trained over 35 composers, some of whom have since provided music for feature films, television and computer games.
In connection with this innovative course, Deutsch has been able to develop unique methodologies which enable musicians not only to compose film music, but to enter the theoretical arena of film music at the highest level. His internet discussion list, music-and-moving-pictures, plays host to learned discussions involving some of the most eminent film-musicologists on three continents. Since October 1997, he has led a new course at the university, an MA in Sound Design for the Moving Image. He is currently exploring methods by which his expertise in music design for moving pictures might be imparted globally by use of the Internet. Other recent research has focused on the composition of music for interactive video.
Deutsch has served on the Board of South West Arts and is currently a board member of Southern Arts. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Professional Composers and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His recent lecture for that body, ‘Music & Technology: the Composer in the Age of the Internet’, was published in the RSA Journal in July 1996 (as well as on the Web Page of the Digital Music Studio at Bournemouth University). He is a founding director of Sound Music Design, Ltd., a company specialising in the provision of music and sound design for the film and
broadcast industries.
MICHEL CHION was born in 1947. He has been a composer of musique concrète since 1971 (Best Record Prize in 1978 for his Requiem), a director of films (Jean Vigo Short Prize for Eponine in 1985), of videos since 1975 and art video since 1990 (City of Locarno First Prize for La Messe de terre in 1996) and a writer of books about music, sound and cinema since 1978 (Best Cinema Book Prize for La Musique au cinéma in 1995). He has been a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the Service de la Recherches set up by Pierre Schaeffer (who acknowledged him as his leading heir) and a critic for Les Cahiers du Cinéma. His books have been translated into some fifteen languages. As a theorist and teacher of sound in general and the relationship between sound and vision in particular (a field for which he laid down the theory), he teaches in many schools and universities including Paris III (where he is an associate professor), the Esec and the Davi at Lausanne Cantonal Art School. He also leads seminars and gives lectures in numerous countries in Europe and North and South America. Available in English are his books Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, David Lynch and The Films of Jacques Tati.
IAN CHRISTIE is a film historian, broadcaster and media consultant. As Head of Distribution and Exhibition at the British Film Institute (1984-93), he pioneered commissioning new scores for classic silent films and launched the BFI’s innovative Connoisseur video label. He organised major Eisenstein conferences and events in 1988 and 1998, and co-curated two exhibitions to mark the centenary of cinema in 1996: ‘Spellbound’ at the Hayward Gallery and ‘The Director’s Eye’ at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art. In addition to many features for BBC Radio 3 and 4, he wrote and co-produced a 1994 five-part series on early cinema for BBC2, The Last Machine, presented by Terry Gilliam.
His books include Arrows of Desire: the Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; The Film Factory and Inside the Film Factory (with Richard Taylor) on Russian cinema; Scorsese on Scorsese (with David Thompson); and The Last Machine. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, vice-president of the MEDIA II programme Europa Cinemas, a Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford and Professor of Film Studies at the University of Kent.
ANDREW DEAKIN was born in 1958 in the North of England. Early exposure to brass band music resulted in a lifelong interest in free improvisation, electronic and computer music. He read Music and Philosophy at Middlesex University, eventually returning to develop a BA (hons) degree in Sonic Arts – the first such degree in Britain. Over the last eight years he has worked almost exclusively with choreographers including Emilyn Claid, Jodi Falk, Gaby Agis, Rebecca Skelton and Andrew Fifield, with works performed throughout Europe. Current concerns and activities include Object Oriented Composition, Acoustic Ecology and the development of interactive computer-based performance.
Deakin is a member of TRACT (with Tessa Elliott, Jons Jones-Morris and Rebecca Skelton) and electroacoustic duo ‘tractor’ (with Martin Robinson) and founder of the Lakeland Soundscape Project based in the English Lake District where he has lived since 1996.
MANEFRED EICHER (born 1953) studied double bass and composition at the Academy of Music in Berlin. In 1969 he founded the Edition of Contemporary Music (ECM) for which he is record producer, publisher, and editor of the ECM New Series.
Hundreds of records made under his artistic direction include those of Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Egberto Gismonti, David Darling, Pat Methany, Dino Saluzzi and Bruno Ganz (Hélderlin). For ECM New Series he has produced recordings by composers Gyérgy Kurtog, Arvo Part, Heinz Holliger, Giya Kancheli, Alfred Schnittka, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Meredith Monk, Gavin Bryars, Werner Pirchner, Steve Reich and John Adams, as well as albums with works by Bach, Perotin, Tallis, Gesualdo, Hindemith, Shostakovich, and Schubert.
Music production and/or conception for films by Jean-Luc Godard (Forever Mozart, JLG, Hélas Pour Moi, Allemagne Neuf Zéro, Nouvelle Vague, L’Histoire(s) du Cinéma), Theo Angelopoulos (Ulysses’ Gaze, The Suspended Step of the Stork), for Xavier Kolier’s Oscar-winning Journey To Hope, and more.
TESSA ELLIOTT is a producer and director of computer mediated installations and performances in which traces of physical presence evoke visual and acoustic fragments which permeate and resound throughout space. Each work explores the notion of interactivity within a dynamic digital framework, integrating computer, video and sound technology. Elliott’s international installations include ‘Configuration’ — SIGGRAPH, USA 1991 and ‘Emergence’ – Third International Symposium of Electronic Arts, Australia 1992. National works include performances of ‘for I = 1010’ — Lillian Baylis, 1995, ‘Odyssey’ — The Place, 1996 and the permanent, but ever changing installation, ‘Periodyssey”, at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, 1998 onwards.
Formerly Head of the acclaimed MA Digital Arts at Middlesex University (1994-98), she is actively involved in education, constructing innovative digital workshops for, amongst others, Camerawork 1995, Split Screen 1996, Lighthouse 1997, and Site 1998. Her writings have been published and presented at national and international forums. They include ‘Fine Art and Pure Science-the coincidence of the sublime and the rational in computer arts education’ 1995, ‘Collaboration and the Fine Art Object’ 1996 and ‘The Programming Imperative’ 1997. She has recently been appointed Senior Research Fellow at the Digital Media Laboratory, University of the West of England, Bristol.
HENRIETTA ESIRI is a freelance arts producer who has been initiating and developing arts festivals, performance seasons, professional development and educational programmes for seven years. She has a background in contemporary dance, having a Masters degree in dance from London University, Laban Centre. Esiri was for four years, artistic co-director at Chisenhale Dance Space, the leading UK centre for research and development in contemporary dance. Her recent freelance projects include project management at Dance Umbrella and development of a new dance and installation programme, Ripe Nights, at Union Chapel in Islington. She has been a mentor to artists at the Sadler’s Wells’ Mosaics seasons and is an adviser to the London Arts Board.
KEITH GRIFFITHS, of Koninck and Illuminations Films, has been producing independent films and television programmes for twenty years, including works by Chris Petit (Radio On, The Cardinal and the Corpse, The Falconer’s Tale), Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey (Riddles of the Sphinx) and Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Faust, Conspirators of Pleasure). Having formed Koninck in 1980 with the Brothers Quay, he produced their animated films (Street of Crocodiles, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, The Comb) and their live-action feature, Institute Benjamenta, as well as the animated films of Simon Pummell (Secret Joy of Falling Angels, The Temptation of Sainthood, Butcher’s Hook) and the documentary features of Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space). He has lectured at the Academy of Media Arts (K6ln) and the Northern Media School in Sheffield.
OSCAR GRILLO was born in Buenos Aires in 1943. From 1959-1971 he worked as a cartoonist, illustrator and animator. He was an assistant animator on Popeye cartoons in the US, illustrated ‘Waiting for Godot’ in Spain and won First Prize for Best Illustrated Book in Bratislava for his work on ‘I Malavogla’. In 1971, he travelled to England for a two week stint that has lasted 27 years. In 1972, he worked on Richard Williams’ Oscar-winning animated film, Christmas Carol. From 1973 when he co-founded Dragon Productions, he collaborated with. the best animators in Britain including Geoff Dunbar on Lautrec (Cannes—Best Short Film, 1974), Bob Godfrey on Great (Oscar Winner, 1975) and he directed, designed and animated Seaside Woman (Cannes-Best Short Film, 1980) with Linda McCartney’s music. Since forming Klactoveesedstene Animations in 1980, he has continued to produce commercials world-wide, illustrate regularly for The New Yorker and exhibit his paintings in London and Paris. In 1996, he was Animation Supervisor for Men in Black at Industrial Light and Magic.
MIKE HODGES; s of Graham Hodges (d 1987), and Norah, née Cotterell (d 1994); b 29 July 1932; Educ Prior Park Coll Bath, ACA; m 1964 (m dis 1982), Jean Alexandrov (d 1990); 2 s (Ben b 22 Dec 1964, Jake b 23 July 1966); Career writer, film producer and director; memb: Amnesty, Charter 88, Intermediate Technology, VES; Television World in Action (prod/dir) 1963-65, Tempo (exec prod/dir, ABC arts programme) 1965-68; Theatre Soft Shoe Shuffle (writer, Hammersmith Lyric) 1985; Films as writer/dir include: Get Carter 1970, Pulp 1972, Missing Pieces 1982, Black Rainbow 1991; as writer/dir/prodr include: Suspect 1968, Rumour 1969, The Terminal Man 1974; as dir include: Flash Gordon 1979, Squaring the Circle 1984, Morons from Outer Space 1986, Florida Straits 1987, A Prayer for the Dying 1988, Dandelion Dead 1993, The Healer 1994, Croupier 1997.
PATRICK KEILLER studied architecture and practised until 1979, when he became a student in the Department of Environmental Media at the Royal College of Art in London, and began to make films. His first audio-visual installations were exhibited in the Tate Gallery, London, in 1982. In the 1980s he taught in schools of art and architecture and made short films which were widely exhibited in the UK and elsewhere. In the 1990s his award-winning features have established an international reputation — London was released in 1994 and Robinson in Space in 1997.
PETER KUBELKA, born 1934 in Vienna, Austria, is one of the leading figures of the film-avantgarde after the Second World War. His pioneering film Unsere Afrikareise (1966) brought a new dimension of articulation between image and sound. Kubelka is also well known as a theoretician. He has taught extensively in the United States and in various European countries. He is co-founder of Anthology Filmarchives in New York and the Austrian Filmmuseum in Vienna. He holds a professorship at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main. In 1967, the filmmaker began a process of ‘despecialization’, working also with music and cooking. By comparing the systems of articulation in various disciplines of art he developed his theoretical work on the uses of metaphor.
DAVID LYNCH studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia) in the mid-sixties. During that period his interest turned to film-making as a way of “making paintings move.” In 1970, he made the The Grandmother, a 34-minute film finished with money from the American Film Institute. On that film, he met soundman Alan Splet, with whom he would collaborate on many of his future productions.
Having moved to Los Angeles and installed at the AFI, Lynch began making Eraserhead in 1971. It would take 5 years to finish. Eraserhead established the themes and style that permeate Lynch’s films, especially his idiosyncratic use of sound developed through his collaboration with Splet. Since then Lynch has produced the gamut of films available to a director working in Hollywood from mainstream period-piece (Elephant Man) to big-budget blockbuster (Dune) to personal vision (Blue Velvet) to television series (Twin Peaks). In 1997, Lynch made Lost Highway, a film that defies summarising but is noteworthy in that Lynch credited himself with ‘Sound Design’.
KIRSTY MALCOLM has over sixteen years experience in television and film, combining producing with research. She has extensive experience in documentaries and drama specialising in international co-productions. Credits include Darkness Covers he Earth (Antenne 2/NDR/RTP); Round IX, coverage of the Documenta art event (Illuminations for Channel 4); The World of Geo (Bertelsmann for Discovery); and, since 1993, she has chaired sessions of the EU’s European Association of Animation Film (CARTOON).
MIGUEL MERA is a composer and researcher. He read music at York University where he studied composition with Trevor Wishart and Roger Marsh and film composition with David Kershaw. After graduating in 1996 with first class honours, he received a scholarship from the Dartington International Festival of Music and Arts to study on their film composition course. He subsequently received British Academy funding to study for his Masters degree in Music Design for Film and Television at Bournemouth University from where he recently graduated with distinction. Miguel currently works as the Research Assistant in Screen Music Studies at the Royal College of Music. Although his research interests are wide ranging, he specialises in composing and researching silent film music.
LAURA MULVEY is the Postgraduate Programme Tutor at the British Film Institute. She is the author of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1989), Fetishism and Curiosity (1996) and Citizen Kane (1992) and wrote the commentary for the Peeping Tom laser disc (1994) produced by The Voyager Company, Los Angeles. From 1974-1983, she made several films with Peter Wollen including Riddles of the Sphinx, AMY!, Crystal Gazing and Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti. In 1992, Mulvey co-directed (with Mark Lewis) Disgraced Monuments, a documentary about the fate of public art in the former Soviet Union.
WALTER MURCH was born in Manhattan in 1943. Having studied art history in the United States, Perugia and Paris, he received a Master’s degree from the Department of Cinema, University of Southern California. In 1969, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, joining Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas in forming TransAmerica Sprocket Works which later became American Zoetrope. Their first production was The Rain People.
In 1971, Murch co-wrote, sound-edited and mixed THX-1138 with Lucas. He went on to supervise sound editing on The Godfather, sound edit and mix American Graffiti and picture edit, sound edit and mix Apocalypse Now for which he received an Oscar for Best Sound. His filmography includes:
THX-1138 – d. G. Lucas, 1971; Co-writer, Sound montage, Re- recording Mixer
The Godfather – d. F. Coppola, 1972; Sound montage, Re- recording Supervisor
American Graffiti – d. G. Lucas, 1973; Sound montage, Re- recording Mixer
The Conversation – d. F. Coppola, 1974; Picture Editing, Sound Montage, Re-recording mixer — Oscar nomination for Best Sound
The Godfather Part II – d. F. Coppola, 1974; Sound montage, Re-recording Mixer
Julia – d. F. Zinnemann, 1977; Picture Editor – Oscar nomination for Best Editing
Apocalypse Now – d. F. Coppola, 1979; Picture Editor, Sound Design, Re-recording mixer — Oscar for Best Sound and nomination for Best Editing
The Right Stuff – d. P. Kaufman, 1983; Documentary film research and assembly
Return to Oz – d. W. Murch, 1985; Director, Co-script
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – d. P. Kaufman, 1988; Picture Editor
Ghost – d. J. Zucker, 1990; Picture Editor, Re-recording mixer — Oscar nomination for Best Editing
The Godfather Part III – d. F. Coppola, 1990; Picture Editor, Re-recording Mixer
The English Patient – d. A. Minghella, 1996; Editor, Re- recording mixer — Oscar for Best Editing and Best Sound
He has just completed the reconstruction and restoration of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil including a new sound-montage for the opening shot according to Welles’s instructions in a 70- page memo. In a recent interview, Murch spoke of his interests outside film- making. “My other passions are translating Italian poetry, and astronomy. Translation is transformative; and astronomy is the discovery of an underlying order in apparent chaos. Both good descriptions of the editorial process.”
JULIAN NOTT studied music at Oxford University and film scoring at the UK’s National Film and Television School. His composing work since then includes animation, commercials, feature films, television drama and wildlife films. His many scoring credits for animation include all three of Nick Park’s award-winning Wallace and Gromit films, and the BBC production, Flatworld. Feature film credits include A Man of No Importance, starring Albert Finney, and My Mother’s Courage with Pauline Collins. In TV drama his work includes the first series of Granada’s The Grand, P.D. James’ Original Sin, The Chest for Granada, In the Place of the Dead for LWT and the BBC period drama series, A Respectable Trade.
PIERS PLOWRIGHT was born in London in 1937 and spent a lot of his childhood listening to the radio and going to the near- by Everyman Cinema where he saw the classics of European, American and Asian cinema. After a time teaching in Borneo, Iran, and the Sudan, he joined the BBC in 1968, working first for the overseas service and then moving to the Radio Drama Department where he discovered the power of the radio documentary and feature. Since 1977 he has been making radio programmes about real people and events but which often make use of the techniques and structure of drama. He has also been much influenced by film and its use of sound. He has won two Italia Prizes and a RAI prize for his radio documentaries and, most recently, a Gold Award for documentaries in the 1997 Sony Awards.
SIMON PUMMELL has made many short films, in various combinations of live action and animation, for a variety of British television and film funders. They include Secret Joy, Stain, Temptation of Sainthood, Rose Red and Butcher’s Hook. The films have won numerous awards at major film festivals, and have been broadcast internationally as well as in the UK. Retrospectives of his work have been screened at a number of international film festivals. He has worked as a line producer on over 40 TV commercials, many of which involved combinations of animation and live action. He is currently developing a feature film with British Screen based on the William Gibson story, Dogfight, and finishing post-production on a digital animation, Ray Gun Fun, for Channel Four.
THE QUAY BROTHERS were born in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. They studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art, London. In 1980, they formed Koninck with colleague Keith Griffiths. Since then they have produced a hybrid variety of puppet animation film work: documentaries (Stravinsky, Jandcek, Anamorphosis), interludes (MTV), commercials, as well as films inspired by the writings of Kafka, Bruno Schulz (Street of Crocodiles) and Robert Walser (Institute Benjamenta-a live action feature film for Channel 4). Their work also includes decors for the following opera/theatre productions: Love for Three Oranges (Opera North/English National Opera), A Flea in Her Ear (Old Vic), Mazeppa (Bregenz Festival/Netherlands Opera), Le Bourgeois Gentilbomme (Royal National Theatre); and for the ballets of Kim Brandstrup: Dybbuk (The Place), The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (Malm6 Dramatiska Theatre), Cupid and Psyche (Royal Danish Ballet). They designed A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Almeida) for Jonathan Miller and, most recently, Ionesco’s The Chairs for the Royal Court/Theatre de Complicite.
LARRY SIDER is the Director and co-founder of the School of Sound. He studied Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University (Chicago) before coming to London in 1976 to work with Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey on Riddles of the Sphinx, a relationship that continued through many of their features and documentaries. Since then he has worked extensively with Keith Griffiths and Koninck Studios, editing and sound designing with the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles, The Comb, Anamorphosis, Institute Benjamenta), Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space) and Simon Pummell (Secret Joy, Rose Red, Butcher’s Hook). He works across documentary,drama and animation as evidenced in projects that include The Brother With Perfect Timing, interview and re-creation about the jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (d. Chris Austen); Death and The Mother, the prize-winning animated short (d. Ruth Lingford) and My Mama Done Told Me, a documentary about romance and torch songs (d. Elizabeth Taylor-Mead). He has been a Visiting Lecturer for Sound at the Royal College of Art, taught seminars on post-production in film and TV, is external examiner for Bournemouth University’s MA in Sound Design for the Moving Image, and contributed to the periodical PIX.
SIMON FISHER TURNER began his professional career as a child actor with roles in such TV shows as Black Beauty and films like The Railway Children. In 1969, he released his first album (“It was really terrible early 70’s pop.”) under Jonathan King’s UK Records and took part in Brian Eno’s Portsmouth Sinfonia, “Eno’s orchestra of people who couldn’t play.” The King’s Road punk rock scene found him acting in Michael Winner’s Big Sleep re-make with Robert Mitchum though he eventually found his way to Notting Hill and Derek Jarman. Starting as a runner on The Tempest, he wrote his first Jarman score for Sloane Square, an experimental short, followed by Caravaggio. His work with Jarman continued on The Garden (with The Balanescu Quartet), Edward II and Blue – in which the film is the colour blue projected onto the screen accompanied by Simon’s music and a narration. Since then, he has done live re-mixes for Blue around the world. Other credits include the ‘female vampires in New York’ film, Nadja, by Michael Almereyda (produced by David Lynch) and Schwarma. Most recently, Simon performed a week of live collaborations in Japan with leading musicians Seigen Ono, Takashi Harada and Otomo Yoshihide. “What sums up everything for me,” he opines, “is Robert Bresson’s quote: “The noises must become music.
JON WOZENCROFT is the Managing Editor of the audiovisual publishers, Touch, for whom he designs, art directs, occasionally records and has the privilege of collaborating with some of the most adventurous music-makers of today. He is the author of The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 1 & 2, published by Thames & Hudson in 1988 and 1994. In 1990, he and Brody set up FUSE, a critical forum for the impact of digital media on typography. Other favourite projects in the last few years have been Vagabond (magazine co-edited with Jon Savage, 1992), The Hafler Trio, Stepping into the Dark and Scala (new music, 1988- 98) and Joy Division’s Heart and Soul box set. Wozencroft is a tutor in the School of Communication Design at the Royal College of Art. He lectures extensively. Lives in London.