reneSat, May 30, 2009 Jazz is such a great metaphor because it's about working together to make something much bigger than the sum of its parts. Jazz is about team work celebrating every individual involved; it's about improvisation, riffing, jamming; it's about pushing the boundaries of traditional forms, etc etc. I've always been impressed and inspired by Duke Ellington's creative m.o. to write jazz symphonies that were essentially musical vehicles inspired by the individual voices of the musicians in his band. Few forms of collaboration have been able to attain the heights of collaborative creativity as spectacularly as jazz groups, and it's organizational model has always motivated me to search for collaborators with matching sensibilities or for that matter expertise.
That's how I sought out Peter Greenaway one day when I was exploring an early version of the high definition medium he was using for his film Prospero's Books. At the time the technology was still in its infancy and failed to create the intricate visuals Greenaway envisioned for his film. It was particularly traumatic since more than one hundred hi-def shots had to be composited in time for a screening at the Cannes film festival. So instead of using video I ended up helping him to put a number of old fashioned optical printers together that were manned by a team of old-time Hollywood compositing artists whose considerable photographic skills nevertheless resulted in a much less versatile aesthetic. It was a technical nightmare, aggravated by the fact that Greenaway had stylistically counted on the much greater fluency of the electronic compositing techniques for his film.
Filmmaking often involves these kinds of traumas and the medium seldomly offers the improvisational spontaneity that is the essential creative ingredient of jazz. Because of that it often becomes just too painful to revisit the results of one's cinematic agony.
It's good to see that what technically should have been a failure is mentioned here with so much appreciation. I can well imagine that in retrospect these old school imaging techniques may have by now acquired a special attraction of their own.
Jazz is such a great metaphor because it's about working together to make something much bigger than the sum of its parts. Jazz is about team work celebrating every individual involved; it's about improvisation, riffing, jamming; it's about pushing the boundaries of traditional forms, etc etc. I've always been impressed and inspired by Duke Ellington's creative m.o. to write jazz symphonies that were essentially musical vehicles inspired by the individual voices of the musicians in his band. Few forms of collaboration have been able to attain the heights of collaborative creativity as spectacularly as jazz groups, and it's organizational model has always motivated me to search for collaborators with matching sensibilities or for that matter expertise.
That's how I sought out Peter Greenaway one day when I was exploring an early version of the high definition medium he was using for his film Prospero's Books. At the time the technology was still in its infancy and failed to create the intricate visuals Greenaway envisioned for his film. It was particularly traumatic since more than one hundred hi-def shots had to be composited in time for a screening at the Cannes film festival. So instead of using video I ended up helping him to put a number of old fashioned optical printers together that were manned by a team of old-time Hollywood compositing artists whose considerable photographic skills nevertheless resulted in a much less versatile aesthetic. It was a technical nightmare, aggravated by the fact that Greenaway had stylistically counted on the much greater fluency of the electronic compositing techniques for his film.
Filmmaking often involves these kinds of traumas and the medium seldomly offers the improvisational spontaneity that is the essential creative ingredient of jazz. Because of that it often becomes just too painful to revisit the results of one's cinematic agony.
It's good to see that what technically should have been a failure is mentioned here with so much appreciation. I can well imagine that in retrospect these old school imaging techniques may have by now acquired a special attraction of their own.
Thanks for the great post.