Summer is here - time to get to work!

Now that summer is here, it means less time writing papers, teaching or researching, and more time composing.  My main summer project is writing a film score for the 1922 silent film Nosfertu, by F. W. Murnau.  The work will be performed live in Mandeville auditorium at UCSD, on Friday, October 21st, at 8 pm.  This event is sponsored by the UCSD German Studies Department.

I'll be providing updates on the project in both this blog and the related UCSD Noseratu Project blog, which is embedded in our main website: http://www.thenosferatuproject.org/

After touring the auditorium and discussing the technical aspects of the performance with the Mandeville staff, we've decided on screening the film with digital video.  Though we were prepared to screen the film with the 35mm reels from Kino International, the problem of synchronizing the musicians with the analog reels was too much.  Kino authorized us to screen the video with a DVD, so I'm using their video and a custom sound track.

In the live performance, I'm currently planning on using amplified clean and processed acoustic sound from my four musicians, synchronized with a click track, along with some fixed and live electronic sound.

I've started the process of analyzing the film, using Final Cut Pro.  I'm making exact measurements of all of the scenes, along with the locations "hit points."  This is an interesting an somewhat agonizingly slow process of watching each scene a few times before moving on, deciding what are the important points, and marking them with FCP. 

In the process, you get a sense of what signifiers and signifieds lie hidden in the composition of the shots and in the non-verbal cues of the actors.  For instance, the introduction exhibits signs of "masculinity in crisis," indicated by Hutter's insane, childish antics.  Furthermore, in many of the early shots, Ellen stands almost a foot taller than Hutter because of some kind of step she is standing on near the window sill.  This height difference is eventually reversed as Hutter is packing his clothes to leave for Transylvania, but his boyish face betrays the manliness of his sudden embrace of Ellen.

Though the crisis mentioned above is interesting, it is difficult to make scoring decisions based on it.  What is maybe more important is the broad "going off to war" feeling of the entire introduction, while Hutter is still in Wisborg.  This film was shot two years after the end of World War I, and three years after the 1918 flu epidemic hobbled much of the German military.  In the film, we see the obvious connection to the plague, but less so to military conflict.  For more on the connection between World War I and film in the Weimar Republic, check out Shell Shock Cinema.