Film Making
From Emily
[Pic BS9-11] [also stills from film - BS2-8]
In making this little film, I tried to become receptive to what Bernard's experience was, to listen hard and find images that would bring the audience to a closer connection with what he was saying.
Because Bernard couldn't see any more, the experience of talking to him became quite internal; I then gathered the images that accompany him, feeling my way instinctively rather than intellectually.
We also used this approach to the editing. It seemed important to keep the work on it light and in keeping with the way Bernard become involved: just a conversation, a desire to share what he was going through.
In a way, I suppose, I tried to serve rather than impose. When Paul made the music for it he added a whole new layer; the film now feels like a conversation between Bernard, me and Paul.
The Musical Score
[photo PAUL CLARK - to come] [for now select pics from BS2-8]
When Emily first played me her film (with only the dialogue and the atmosphere sounds) - my initial feeling was that it was actually working very well without any music. Often, composers get asked to do two different things - to tell the audience what is happening ('something scary is about to happen' 'they're falling in love') or to raise the emotional pitch of a scene ('this is really sad' 'this is really uplifting').
Blind Spot certainly didn't need this - it seemed pretty stuffed with emotion already (in a good way) and didn't seem to want to tell the audience what to think. This suited me just fine, so I went about seeing if I could 'dance' around the spoken text and the atmos sounds to tie the whole piece together, soundwise, and aiming to keep the music quite emotionally ambiguous. I wasn't working to any sort of structural scheme (although I considered it`) and just worked intuitively.
I decided straight away that I wanted to use acoustic instruments and do something intimate and un-flashy - I went for a very tiny mandolin-like instrument from Argentina called a Charango, which I was given as a present. This is the instrument you hear most prominently - at the end there are two playing together.
Emily and I edited the track together - making a lot of crucial cuts. we were very conscious of not crowding out all the space that the film has. Bernard's eloquence speaks for itself, in a way.
