School of Sound 2005

LARRY SIDER is the Director and co-founder of the School of Sound and Head of Post-Production at the National Film and Television School (UK). He studied Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University (Chicago) before coming to London in 1976 to work with filmmakers Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey, 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, Institute Benjamenta, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes), Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space, Dwelling Spaces) and Simon Pummell (Secret Joy, Rose Red, Blinded by Light). His work crosses between documentary, drama and animation as evidenced in projects that include The Brother With Perfect Timing, about the jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (Chris Austin); the prize-winning animated short Death and The Mother (Ruth Lingford) and My Mama Done Told Me, a documentary about romance and torch songs (Elizabeth Taylor-Mead).
In 2002, he was appointed to his post at the NFTS to integrate editing, composition and sound in a single, post-production department. In addition to the NFTS, Sider lectures at film festivals and other film schools in London in addition to giving seminars on sound and post-production to industry professionals, here and abroad. He has contributed to the periodicals PIX, Framework, Vertigo and Filmwaves. From 2000-2003, he took part in LISTEN, an EU-funded research project on audio-augmented environments. He is co-editor of Soundtrack: The School of Sound Lectures 1998-2000.

DIANE FREEMAN is producer of the School of Sound. She is also a writer and qualified trainer, an Associate Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development, and provides training in business skills for freelancers in film and television. Diane was formerly a production manager and independent producer, and Deputy Chief Executive of PACT, the trade association representing independent film and television production companies in the UK. She serves on a voluntary basis as an Associate of the Broadcasters and Creative Industries Disability Network, working to improve the representation of disabled people in film and television, and increase the numbers working in the industry.

KIRSTY MALCOLM has many years’ experience in television and films, combining producing with specialist research, in both documentaries and drama. Her producing credits include the feature film Darkness Covers the Earth (a UK, France, Germany & Portugal co-production) and The Score, a documentary directed by Mike Grigsby for BBC2 and the Arts Council of England’s Sound on Film series, and Round IX – the Documenta art event ( Illuminations for C4).
She Field-Produced Charles Guggenheim’s Academy Award-nominated D-Day: the American Experience and also his Berga: Soldiers of Another War for WNET/PBS, as well as Darwin et la Science de l’Evolution for TransEurope Film, Paris and ARTE.
She’s currently developing Hitler’s Little Britain, an Anglo-German co-production on the occupied Channel Islands, and a biography of Lillie Langtry for Channel TV London; she’s also developing Zweck, a radio series written & composed by Stephen Deutsch. This is her 6^th year overseeing the School of Sound.

MARK UNDERWOOD, Technical Supervisor, graduated from LAMDA in 1988, and spent the next fourteen years developing his career in live sound, working in theatre, dance and music.
In 1990, he became Head of Sound for Ballet Rambert, running the company’s studio in London and producing their live sound around the world. Whilst working for Rambert, Mark was able to pursue his interest in contemporary music, working with, and recording works by John Cage, Steve Reich and Gavin Bryars. In 1992 he co-composed the score for Siobhan Davis’s ‘Winnsboro’ Cotton Mill Blues’, which won an Olivier Award for contemporary dance.
Mark went on to work around the world as a senior sound engineer for, amongst others, The Wellington International Festival of the Arts, the RSC and the senior systems engineer for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, Manchester. He has recently graduated with Distinction from the National Film and Television School’s MA program in Film Sound Post Production, and is now developing a new career in film sound.

ADAM CLITHEROE, graphic designer for the SOS, is a film-maker and designer with an interest in the culture of artist’s film. His short films have been shown at film festivals around the world and are represented by distributors such as the Lux, EMAF and Britshorts. Among his other credits as director are television documentaries, Royal Television Society and BAFTA-nominated children’s factual programmes, animations and commercials. He has worked as a freelance cinema programmer for venues including the National Film Theatre and was a consultant to Tate Gallery on the long-term preservation of film, video and audio media.

DEDE ALLEN has worked as a film editor with some of the most influential American directors of the last five decades – Robert Rossen, Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, George Roy Hill and Barry Sonnenfeld are but a few. Starting as a messenger and then sound editor at Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, she is renowned for her exceptional work on The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, The Missouri Breaks, Reds, Serpico, Night Moves and, most recently, John Q. As well as her editing credits, Allen was Executive Producer on Reds and in the 1990s served as a creative consultant for post-production at Warner Bros holding the title of Vice President and then Senior Vice President of Theatrical. She has been nominated for the Editing Oscar three times: for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Reds (1981) and The Wonder Boys (2000).
In his review of Serpico, critic John Simon wrote. “Miss Allen has an almost uncanny knack for sensing the right moment at which to cut off a shot…She lets it speak to us, as it were, subliminally, and the eruption of joy with which we realize that we have worked out its meaning is the very energy that carries us forward to the next scene.”

MICK AUDSLEY began editing with Scottish director Bill Douglas on My Way Home (1978). Since then his career has been marked by his long-time collaboration with Stephen Frears. Audsley cut Frears’ acclaimed TV dramas, Walter (1982) and Walter and June (1983). These were followed by The Hit (1984), the ground-breaking My Beautiful Lauderette (1985) and Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. Audsley continued to work with Frears, editing the highly successful The Grifters (1990), High Fidelity (200) and, most recently, Dirty Pretty Things (2002). Audsley has worked with a number of other British directors, notably with Chris Petit on Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Terry Gilliam on Twelve Monkeys and John Madden on Captain Corelli’s mandolin. He is currently cutting Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with Mike Newell.

JOËLLE BOUVIER and her partner Régis Obadia, having formed their company in 1980, created 15 choreographic works which have since been seen around the globe, and co-directed 4 short films.
Working solo after 1993, she created Le Pressentiment, a short film which went on to win the Grand Prix at the Grenoble Festival as well as the Innovation Prize at the Festival of Montecatini. From 1998 she launched into a period of independent creativity – with Où en est la Nuit for 11 dancers at the Centre National de la Danse Contemporaine – L’Esquisse, as part of their series titled ‘Avant-Premières 99’. Working with the actress Lilo Baur , she created a solo piece titled Depeche-toi! in January 1999, followed in June by Fureurs at the Montpellier Dance Festival.
Bouvier created L’oiseau Loup with 6 dancers, for the young audience at Sartrouville in November 2000, followed two years later by De l’Amour for 8 dancers.
In October 2003, Didier Deschamps, director of the Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine, commissioned Joelle Bouvier to create Jeanne d’Arc. Late in 2003 she was appointed choreographer-in -residence at Sceaux, where in March 2004, during a choreographic workshop she created Le Voyage d’Orphee. Most recently Joelle choreographed Les Bacchantes, directed by André Wilms at the Comédie Française.

MICHAEL CHANAN is a seasoned filmmaker, beginning with documentaries on contemporary music for BBC television in the early 1970s, and a number of films on Latin America for Channel Four Television in the 1980s. He has written books on various aspects of cinema, including most recently, Cuban Cinema (Second edition, 2004); on the social history of music; and on the history of recording (Repeated Takes, 1995). He is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of the West of England in Bristol, and director of Bristol Docs.

MICHEL CHION was born in Créil, France, in 1947. He is a composer of music concrete, a writer, and a visiting lecturer at the University of Paris III and various international colleges. He has also directed short films and videos. Chion has developed the study of sound, particularly the sound of cinema, in several books of which two, Audio-Vision, Sound on Screen and The Voice in Cinema were published in English by Colombia University Press (translated by Claudia Gorbman). He has also written numerous essays on film directors, and films as well as music. The BFI published his monograph David Lynch and two essays on Kubrick, ‘Kubrick’s Cinema Odyssey’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (Modern Classics Series). His most recent works are The Thin Red Line, about Terrence Malick and The Films of Jacques Tati. Married, he lives in Paris and is now preparing a historical work on sound in cinema while continuing to compose.

GUSTAVO COSTANTINI began his career as a musician (synthesizers, keyboards) and graduated in Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. He began his academic work studying music semantics with the award-winning composer and Professor Francisco Kröpfl as advisor. This led to research into film music and film sound and their relation to the cinematic image which, in turn, has evolved into his current studies. He is now a Ph.D candidate for the UBA, under the co-direction of the French composer and theorist, Michel Chion, author of Audiovision and more than 30 books in the field. The project discusses Chion’s theories and other approaches by film scholars in combination with Costantini’s own ideas and analyses.
He participated in the Academic Committee that created the Sound Design Programme in ORT University at Montevideo, Uruguay. He is professor of Sound Design and Montage at the University of Buenos Aires, in which he also is the Director of a research project on Sound Design Rhetorics and Production of Meaning. Under two international fellowships he has conducted research into the aesthetics of two Toronto-based filmmakers’ – David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan – and the transition between silent and sound cinema and how sound affected film representations.
He has published many essays and articles on sound design and cinema in Argentina, England, Mexico and Brazil. Some of his work can be found at www.filmsound.org and more recently in the British film magazine Filmwaves (articles on David Lynch, The Manchurian Candidate, The Exorcist and Steven Spielberg). As a musician and sound designer he has created the scores for short films, documentaries and features films in Argentina, and also the music and sound design for stage productions.

PAUL DAVIES first became interested in sound design through a passion for electronic music. With a friend, he ran a small music studio in the mid-eighties, based in Cardiff South Wales and through this became involved in the local film making scene. After recording and being involved in the sound post of a couple of low budget features, he enrolled in the sound department of the National Film and Television School in 1988. After graduation he worked as a location sound recordist, sound editor and re-recording mixer on a variety of productions including television documentaries, low budget films and corporate productions. In 1995 he joined Videosonics, a well known London sound post facility, and in 1998 became head of sound editing and design there. He left in 2000 to set up his own sound design/editorial company Paul Davies Sound Design.
In addition to working with Lynne Ramsay on Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Caller (2002), his most recent credits include John Maybury’s The Jacket (2005), Mike Radford’s Merchant of Venice (2004) and Charles Dance’s Ladies in Lavender (2004).

GERHARD ECKEL, born in Vienna in 1962, takes both an artistic and scientific interest in matters of sound and music. In 1989, he took his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Vienna with a thesis in the area of psychoacoustics. Further studies include electro-acoustic music composition and sound engineering at the Vienna University of Music and scholarships abroad (at the Institute for Sonologie in Utrecht in 1985 and at IRCAM in Paris in 1987). Eckel’s early works incorporate aspects of improvisation in the analogue studio, digital tape music, electro-acoustic performance and concert installation. His scientific work at IRCAM has focused, since 1989, on the construction of computer tools for composition, sound synthesis and visualisation (from 1993 in the department ‘Interfaces et representations des sons’ he founded and headed). His artistic work is now focussed on the possibilities of sound installations to convey formal openness to the audience in a tangible way. His studies of virtual space and architecture (1995 and 2000 as Composer-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts) result in an intense exploration of the technology of virtual and augmented reality at the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication, where Eckel worked starting in 1996. There he created sound and music installations for real and virtual spaces which are presented at international festivals, conferences and trade fairs (including CeBIT, ICMC, Expo2000, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Inventionen, Archipel). Since 2001 he has been coordinating the EU project LISTEN which he initiated and which defines and explores immersive audio-augmented environments from a scientific and artistic perspective. In 2002, he served at the Electronic Studio of Berlin Technical University as an ‘Edgar Varèse’ visiting professor. In 2004, Eckel worked as Artist-in-Residence in Krems an der Donau / Austria. Since March 2005 he is teaching at he Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics of the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz as a Professor for Computer Music and Multimedia.

TOM FLEISCHMAN, the son of legendary film editor Dede Allen and television documentary writer/producer/director Stephen Fleischman, and the protégé of the late re-recording mixer Richard Vorisek, has lived with film all his life. Although Tom began his career as an apprentice film editor, it was not until he left New York University’s School of the Arts Film Department that he became truly interested in sound. In 1971, Tom went to work for Image Sound Studios (which later merged into Sound One Corp.) creating a sound effects library and recording sound effects and foley. In 1974 Tom left Image Sound and went to work for Trans/Audio Inc. where he was given the opportunity to learn and hone his craft under the tutelage of the great re-recording mixer Richard Vorisek.
During his career Tom has developed long-term working relationships with many illustrious directors, including Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Spike Lee, Barbet Schroeder, John Sayles, Robert Benton, Neil Jordan, Warren Beatty, and Oliver Stone. In 1979, he mixed his first commercial feature film, Jonathan Demme’s, Melvin And Howard, and, in 1981, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound along with Dick Vorisek for their work on Warren Beatty’s, Reds. Tom moved from Trans/Audio to Sound One 1985 and, in 1991, earned his second Academy Award nomination for Demme’s, The Silence of the Lambs. In 2003 Tom received a third Oscar nomination for his work on Martin Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York. Tom now works out of Soundtrack Film & Television in New York where he earned a fourth Academy Award nomination this year for another Scorsese project, The Aviator.

KERSTEN GLANDIEN, born 1953 in Germany, studied Philosophy, Aesthetics and Art History at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia. She worked as lecturer and researcher at the Technical University Dresden, at the Music College Dresden (1977-1982) and as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Aesthetics and Art Theory of the Academy of Science in Berlin (1982-1989); 1985 PhD in Philosophy/ Aesthetics. Her fields of expertise span the aesthetics of Architecture, Design and Music. In 1989 she moved to England, where she currently teaches Postmodernism and Contemporary Visual Culture at Richmond – The American International University in London and Sound Art at the University of Brighton. She also works freelance in various countries as curator and author in Aesthetics, Experimental Music and Sound Art.

HEINER GOEBBELS, born August 17, 1952 in Neustadt/Weinstrasse, has lived in Frankfurt/Main since 1972. He studied sociology and music.
While making several record productions and concerts with the Sogenanntes Linksradikales Blasorchester (76-81), the Goebbels/Harth-Duo (76-88) and the art-rock-trio Cassiber (82-92), he also wrote music for theatre, film and ballet. In the middle of the 80s he began composing and directing audio plays of his own, most of them based on texts by Heiner Mueller.
Since 1988 Heiner Goebbels has composed chamber music for the Ensemble Modern and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. In 1994 followed Surrogate Cities, a composition for orchestra commissioned by the Alte Oper Frankfurt. In 1996, as a commision for Donaueschingen, he composed Industry & Idleness. Walden for extended orchestra was created in 1998 for the first tour of the newly founded Ensemble Modern Orchestra.
In 1997 he participated in Documenta X in Kassel with his musical theatre sketch Landscape with man being killed by a snake. Together with the Ensemble Modern he created a tribute to Hanns Eislers’ 100th anniversary called Eislermaterial – a staged concert premiered in Munich in May 1998. In 2000 Goebbels created the sound installations timeios and fin de soleil at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the music theatre piece Hashirigaki in Theatre Vidy and the staged concert …même soir.- with Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Nearly all of his music theatre works have been performed in Europe as well as in the USA, Japan, Australia and Singapore.
From April 1999, Goebbels has worked as a professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, in the Justus Liebig University in Giessen (Germany). The institute is dedicated both to scientific research and to artistic practice (contemporary theatre and performance) and especially to the possibilities of linking both.
In 2002 Goebbels premiered his first opera, Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten/Landscape with distant relatives. In the context of his 50th birthday Heiner Goebbels released his first book “Komposition als Inszenierung”. Also ECM released a CD of Eislermaterial. In 2003 he premiered his orchestra piece From A Diary commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. In 2004 he premiered his latest piece, Eraritjaritjaka – museé des phrases, from words by Elias Canetti with the actor André Wilms and the Mondriaan String Quartett at the Theatre Vidy in Lausanne.

TOMLINSON HOLMAN is Professor of Cinema-Television and Electrical
Engineering at the University of Southern California, and President of TMH Corporation. At the university, he teaches in cinema and engineering and does research at the Integrated Media Systems Center. As president of TMH, he spearheads new developments for the industry, such as the MicroTheater desktop sound system for professional monitoring and 10.2 channel sound. He is the author of Focal Press books Sound for Film and Television, 5.1 Surround Sound Up and Running, and the forthcoming Sound for Digital Video. www.tmhlabs.com

REN KLYCE is a sound designer, composer and musician. He studied electronic music and composition at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His detailed and emotive sound production reflects his musical background and an eclectic blend of influences: “Henry Jacobs and Walter Murch for sound, David Cope, Gordon Mumma, Laurie Anderson for music, Francis Coppola John Korty for film… San Francisco 60’s culture for air.”
His sound design credits include Panic Room (nominated for a Golden Reel Award), Fight Club (Academy Award and Golden Reel nominee) and Se7en – all with David Fincher with whom he has worked since he was fifteen – and Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich. Recently, he has worked with Marc Forster on Finding Neverland (uncredited) and the soon-to-be-released Stay and will be doing his upcoming, Stranger than Fiction. His collaboration with Spike Jonze will continue on his next film, Where the wild things are.

WALTER NEWMAN started as an apprentice at Warner Bros. in 1979 learning to cut sound fx on The Dukes of Hazzard television series. He worked as an assistant on various features and television programs in the early 80’s including Altered States, The In-Laws, Oh God and most of the early 80″s Warner Bros features.
Since then, he has supervised the sound production on both features and television including ER for the last 11 years and The West Wing and Third Watch for the last 6 years. In that time he has also done three features, Deep Impact, White Oleander and Truth or Consequences. In the last 10 years his sound editing crew has won 5 Emmy’s and the sound mixing crew 6 Emmy’s. They also won 8 Golden Reel Awards for Excellence In Sound Editing. Newman was also nominated for a British Academy Award for Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (“which I wish I would have won”). Currently, along with the 3 shows listed, he is supervising the series Jonny Zero. Other credits include Fried Green Tomatoes, Lethal Weapon II, The Thornbirds and Up Close and Personal: Walter Winchell for HBO.

DAVID OSSMAN has spent 45 years performing, writing, and directing for the audio medium. Best known as a founding member of the ‘legendary’ Firesign Theatre comedy recording quartet, he has also written and produced major broadcast series and important individual programs for American Public Radio and Public Radio International, National Public Radio, the BBC, XM Satellite Radio, WETA (Washington DC), WGBH Radio (Boston) and Pacifica Radio; plus countless individual programs, comedy and advertising spots, guest appearances, performances and interviews. Ossman was seen and heard as ‘Cornelius’, a crotchety little ant character in Disney/Pixar’s #1 international box-office release, A Bug’s Life. His award-winning, three-time Grammy-nominated body of work includes plays, poetry, humor, broadcast journalism and a number of historic firsts in FM broadcasting and spoken word production Ossman was creator and original host of NPR’s 1982 Peabody-winning weekly arts magazine The Sunday Show. He also created the seminal poetry series The Sullen Art, in New York City in 1960 and edited a collection of interviews derived from it for Corinth Books in 1963. He has been a nominee for science fiction’s Nebula Award and was among the founders of the Mark Time Award for Excellence in Science Fiction Audio Production given each year at CONvergence in Minneapolis.
Ossman has written and directed many live-on-stage radio shows and ‘Golden Age’ recreations, often starring his celebrity alter ego, 1940s radio star George L. Tirebiter. His poetry, translations, scripts, humor, and miscellaneous non-fiction have been published in limited editions, little magazines, national periodicals, local weeklies, and several anthologies.
Ossman’s recent stage work includes Replay>Tom Stoppard>Radio at Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre, Love Letters with Michael Learned, and the role of Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal. Ossman also wrote and created the title role of the poet in love is a place : an e. e. cummings cabaret, and has just presented a Firesign Theatre double-bill in which his son Orson starred in the roles originally created by his father.

JUDITH WALCUTT is a writer and director of theatre, radio/spoken word and television, and has worked with such actors as Jason Robards, Steve Allen, Colleen Dewhurst, David Ogden Stiers, Bonnie Bedelia, James Earl Jones, Ed Asner, Harry Anderson, and writers such as Norman Corwin, Jon Krakauer, Robert Fulghum, and Ursula K. LeGuin She has produced and directed live broadcasts, dramatic works, books-on-tape, news features, production workshops, child performers and voice-overs for commercials and other media uses.
Judith Walcutt has most recently been executive producer, line producer and co-host of Live From The Islands, a variety program of music, comedy and conversation, presented from various locations and events in the Puget Sound region.
Judith is CEO of Otherworld Media, a non-profit corporation she founded in 1981, and is a specialist in family-oriented media productions. Her work includes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in an all-star 4-CD set that won the 2001 Gold Parents Choice Award. She also penned a musical comedy for kids, Frankenbean and the Monster Carrots. It toured over 25 cities before a final run at the Smithsonian in Washington D. C.
Walcutt and Ossman have co-produced a distinguished series of audio plays. Their up-dated The War of the Worlds 50th Anniversary Production, starring Jason Robards, was nominated for a Grammy in 1988. Their other audio works include Empire of the Air, a dramatic account of radio’s early tycoons and Norman Corwin’s We Hold These Truths, a celebration for the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel and three Gold Medals at the N.Y. International Radio Festival (Best Special Event, Best Writer, Best Director).

ANNABELLE PANGBORN trained as a singer and composer at the London College of Music and with English National Opera. She later went on to graduate from the Film School at the Royal College of Art, specialising in Music and Sound for Film.
She has created sound tracks for award winning dramas, dance films and animation, both for broadcast TV and cinema. Recent credits include The Death of Klinghoffer, Penny Woolcock’s acclaimed feature length film of the opera by John Adams, and Pleasureland, Channel 4’s confrontational feature length drama on teenage sex directed by Brian Percival. She has also worked with award winning directors Beeban Kidron, John Henderson, Simon Pummell, John Dower and Sara Sugarman. She has been awarded the Fuji Zonal Scholarship Award for her sound track for Ben Hopkins’ film, The Holy Time, and the Kodak Short Film Award for her short film, Stung.

CHRIS PETIT is a novelist and film-maker. His films include Radio On, Chinese Boxes and (with Iain Sinclair) The Falconer and Asylum, and London Orbital, a film on the M25. Radio On was re-released in 2004 at Tate Modern. His novels include Robinson, The Hard Shoulder and The Psalm Killer.

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.
Piers has won two Italia Prizes and a RAI prize for his radio documentaries and a Gold Award for documentaries in the 1997 Sony Awards and ditto in 1998 for ‘Services to Radio’. He retired from the BBC in 1997 but continues to listen, look and lecture.
This year he explores the acoustic space radio creates and fills.

LYNNE RAMSAY was born in Glasgow in 1969 and was educated at Napier College in Edinburgh, where she studied photography. From there she went to the National Film and Television School, specialising in cinematography and direction. Her graduation film, Small Deaths, won the Prix du Jury at Cannes in 1996, and her other short films Kill the Day and Gasman (both 1997) also garnered numerous awards. Hailed as one of the brightest new talents of British cinema, in a short directorial career Ramsay has already produced a promising and distinctive body of work.
Relentlessly experimental, Ramsay brings a photographer’s eye to the cinematic image: through silence and space within the frame her films unfold in expanded time, showing rather than telling. Everything is on the surface; there are no hidden depths. Against this visual canvas, sound assumes a special importance, carrying weight and resonance in its own right. “Sound is the other picture,” Ramsay has said, and this is certainly true of Morvern Callar‘s sophisticated use of the music on Morvern’s compilation tape (a posthumous gift from her boyfriend), which works at every level from (apparent) underscoring to expression of Morvern’s near autistic relationship with her surroundings.
Lynne Ramsay acknowledges the influence of US avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, with her trance-like meditation on detail; and of Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer (“If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear”). Other filmmakers whose work has been likened to Ramsay’s include Bill Douglas and Terence Davies – both influences which probably have less to do with cinematic style than with a shared openness to the silent, brutal and magical world of the child and the innocent.

GABRIEL YARED, born in 1949, knew very early in life that he wanted to become a composer. Passionately fond of music he learned by himself, he decided, in 1970, to abandon his law studies in order to dedicate his life to music. He made his professional debut in Brazil, working with Elis Regina and Ivan Lins. Moving to Paris in 1972, he studied composition and orchestration under Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana.
Gabriel Yared started his career composing, orchestrating and producing songs for a variety of popular French performers (Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Bécaud, Johnny Halliday, Michel Jonasz, Françoise Hardy…) as well as composing a lot of jingles and signature melodies for television, radio and advertising.
In 1980, Yared collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard, the director of the French film Sauve Qui Peut la Vie (Every Man for Himself), for which he wrote his first film score. Since then, the majority of his work has been essentially dedicated to music composed for the cinema, much of his work having merited various prestigious awards. In 1997, he won international acclaim when awarded an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Grammy for the musical score of Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient.
In addition to the cinema, Yared still finds time for other projects. He has composed ballets for Carolyn Carlson and Roland Petit with whom he created Clavigo, performed at the Paris Opera House in November 1999.