Objetivo general

perspective, focusing firstly on how musical philosophy can be used to underpin the visual music film conceptually and secondly on how philosophical or aesthetic concerns can affect the particular aesthetics and form of the visual music film. However, visual music has always been intrinsically bound to technological experimentation and innovation by individual filmmakers as they strive to express music in visual terms. This chapter will explore the technology employed by individual visual music filmmakers in their craft. Although there are many technical processes used in the creation of visual music films, this section will consider what I have deemed to be three major areas of technical advancement. It will begin with the development of colour processing and the effect that it had on the visual music film (illustrated through the example of Kreise (1935) by Oskar Fischinger). Secondly, it will investigate the direct-to-film animation techniques used by Norman McLaren and Len Lye by specifically focusing on Begone Dull Care (1963) by McLaren and A Colour Box (1935) by Lye.

Finally, following on from this exploration of visual animation techniques, this chapter will closely scrutinise the techniques used for creating an animated synthetic soundtrack. Norman McLaren writes that the term synthetic sound as pertaining to the soundtrack more generally encompasses a variety of ―new, non-traditional methods of making noise, sound effects, music, and speech, by electronic, magnetic, mechanical, optical, and other means.‖1

He prefers to use the term animated soundtrack in a more restricted fashion, choosing to refer to a method of ―producing sound on film which parallels closely the production of animated pictures‖2 and this is the meaning that I use here.

Two different schools of thought emerged surrounding the animated synthetic soundtrack. The first, exemplified by engineer Rudolf Pfenninger and Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, was inherently logical, eschewing an aesthetic discourse. Advocates of this school were concerned with technical development that created a new form of sound writing free from the constraints of existing institutions and notation. The second type of synthetic sound, as developed by Fischinger in his animated sound experiments, was designed to create a greater unity between picture and sound in addition to exploring

1

McLaren, ―Animated Sound on Film.‖ op. cit., p. 166. 2

153 the relationship between graphic forms and their auditory counterparts. Rather than study the graphic forms that tones produced as Pfenninger did, Fischinger explored what sounds particular graphic forms produced. The Pfenninger approach to the animated soundtrack will be considered through close analysis of Synchromy (1971) by Norman McLaren, a film in which the actual drawn soundtrack appears on screen, while the Fischinger

approach will be illustrated through the Optical Sound films Sound Shapes (1972), and Phase Loop (1971) by English filmmaker Guy Sherwin.

In his 1976 ―Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film,‖ filmmaker Peter Gidal writes that in ―arts that seek to ask questions‖3

new technical practice has an effect on aesthetic practice. Likewise technique is inseparable from aesthetics. To paraphrase Gidal, the involvement with technique has two results:

1. Inventions make the development of a new aesthetic possible; 2. Aesthetic usage is inseparable from technical possibilities.4

Even though Gidal was referring expressly to the Structural/Materialist films that were being produced by filmmakers associated with the London Filmmaker‘s Co-operative in the 1960s and 1970s this idea of technological invention influencing aesthetic and aesthetic influencing technological invention can be extended to visual music animation.

The early part of the twentieth century was an era of accelerated movement. It was the age of the Technological Revolution that nipped at the heels of the Industrial Revolution ushering in the great transcontinental railways and revolutionary processes for mass production. There was an emphasis on dynamism and speed and this began to make its way into the world of art in the guise of the kinetic orientated stream that flowed through the art movements of Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Futurism and Abstractionism. This stream culminated in the composition of cinematic paintings infused with motion that had the added element of time such as Rhythmus 21 and Symphonie Diagonale.

Cinema and painting have traditionally crossed paths, symbiotically augmenting and inspiring the developments of one another. The initial visual music films were the earliest attempt to bring painting and cinema together, responding to a kinetic urge that was being called for in an age of accelerated motion. Artists sought to energise their static images by imbuing them with the qualities of motion and temporality. Hans Richter writes:

3

Peter Gidal, ―Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film,‖ in Structural Film Anthology, 1976, London: B.F.I., p 10.

4 ibid.

154 Problems in modern art lead directly into the film. Organisation and orchestration of form, colour, the dynamics of motion, simultaneity, were problems with which Cezanne, the cubists, the futurists had to deal.5

It was the invention of the camera and film projector that allowed painters Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Walter Ruttmann to introduce the element of motion and temporality to their paintings and allowed them to create a time-based visual experience that could approach the state of music.

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In addition to the invention of the film projector and camera, another important technological advancement to emerge at the turn of the twentieth century was the development of colour processing. Colour is an essential element of the visual music film, allowing the filmmakers to more accurately capture the nuances and subtleties of music. Rather than relying on rhythm and shape to represent music, visual music filmmakers could exploit the different hues, intensities and combinations of colour to create more complex audiovisual compositions. Of course some musical and visual styles call for a more restrained use of colour and form but the coming of colour to film unlocked a myriad of potential for the visual music film.

However, the initial attempts at physically creating visual music films by Eggeling and Ruttmann were black and white affairs. One can speculate that this can be attributed to a number of reasons.

1. Eggeling and Ruttmann had limited skills and knowledge of the technical process of animation and relied on others for support in this area.

2. Although colour processing had been experimented with since the end of the nineteenth century, commercial methods of processing film stock did not yet extend to colour processing.

3. Both Ruttmann and Eggeling‘s scroll drawings that they later developed into visual music films were predominantly monochrome and formal in construction and presumably they wished to extend this aesthetic into their films.

Although colour processing was not an option for filmmakers in the early twentieth century, there were attempts to utilise colour in film. Early filmmakers such as Georges Méliès and D.W. Griffith used hand-tinting techniques and processes that were originally developed for stills photography.

5

Hans Richter, ―The Film as an Original Art Form,” College Art Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Winter, 1951), College Art Association, p. 160.

155 Walter Ruttmann made an attempt to introduce colour into his Lichtspiel films but this was achieved by hand-tinting and toning the negative. This was an extremely laborious approach to applying colour as it involved colouring the emulsion of the film so that the dark areas are given a colour hue, dying the celluloid strip in order to give the light areas another colour and finally painting directly onto the film strip in order to give specific shapes a particular colour.6 Each scene required a separate printing and each projection print had to be assembled from small fragments. Ruttmann loosely employed colour in his first two Lichtspiel films in order to create expressionistic moods reflecting the spirit of the music, for example the use of the colour blue in the second elegiac movement of Lichtspiel

Opus I.

Tinting and toning were time-consuming, labour intensive and expensive processes and so were beginning to be phased out by the end of the 1920s. As mentioned above, experiments with colour processing date back to the very end of the nineteenth century, but colour films were not widely circulated until the 1930s. Various methods were trialled by pioneers. George Albert Smith developed the two-strip Kinemacolor process of running black and white film at double speed, while rotating filters applied the colours red or green to each alternate frame. A similar process would be used during projection of the film in order to create a primitive colour system. Smith‘s system can be seen in his 1906 film

Tartans of Scottish Clans and came to be a major colour process used in Great Britain in

the early part of the twentieth century.

Another colour process in circulation at the conception of full colour visual music films was Dufaycolor. Len Lye used Dufaycolor for two films in 1935, A Colour Box and

Kaleidoscope. Lye was disappointed by the muted colour produced by the process

especially in relation to the vibrant images that he had painted directly onto the film stock in both films. This disappointment reflects the importance that Lye and many of his contemporary visual music filmmakers attached to colour and the dynamic energy that it could bring to a film, extending the potential for better capturing the nuances and subtleties of music.

Once colour became a feature of mainstream cinema, there was a constant striving to achieve ever more natural looking tones and colours that were reflective of those found in the real world. However, as demonstrated in Lye‘s disappointment with the tones produced by the Dufaycolor process, the visual music filmmakers were less interested in capturing reality and natural colours and were more concerned with achieving vibrant,

6

William Moritz, "History of Experimental Animation," Absolut Panushka, curated by Christine Panushka, (Jan-Apr 1997), http://www.iotacenter.org/visualmusic/techniques/techtinting [Accessed: 26th May 2011].

156 intense colour saturation that could better represent the richness of music and/or have a greater emotional effect on audiences. This is one of the reasons why the process of

Gasparcolor became so intrinsic to the visual music films of Fischinger and Lye.

Gasparcolor is intimately linked with the development of the colour films of Oskar Fischinger. It was first created by Hungarian chemist Bela Gaspar and his brother Imre in 1932 and used a subtractive process not dissimilar to the one that Technicolor was using during the same period.7 However, there was one major difference between the two processes. Gasparcolor employed three separate emulsion strips rather than two. These three strips used a magenta and yellow layer on one side and a cyan-blue layer on the other. This allowed Gasparcolor prints to be made from any three colour separation negative. This is why the colour produced by the Gasparcolor process was so rich, vibrant and particularly suitable for the type of visual music being produced by Fischinger. There were two processes through which Gasparcolor prints could be made. The first entailed using a single strip of black and white film being subjected to three successive red, green and blue exposures to produce the final colour image. The second, more precarious method, involved the use of three separate strips of black and white film, each strip containing different individual colour sensitive information. The first method proved to be more favourable as it required only a single pass to create a print. The second method, which was essentially the same method that Technicolor was employing at the time, required the print to be rewound twice thus leaving the print open to the dangers of scratching or misalignment of colour.8

Aside from the convenience and relative safety of the Gasparcolor process compared to that of Technicolor in the same period, the unique chemical formula of Gasparcolor produced intense colour saturation, which made it the perfect format to capture the vibrancy and movement in Oskar Fischinger‘s animations. Moreover, once Gasparcolor, like many of the animations for which it was intended, became a victim of the

7

In the subtractive process the camera negative holds both red and blue-green versions of the filmed material. The blue-green image is upside down while the red image is the right way up. Matrix film stock that is half as thick as normal film stock is used to make two separate mirror image prints that are placed back to back following the application of colour dyes. These matrix films contained both the typical light sensitive silver halides that are constituent elements of black and white film and a gelatin layer. On development, the silver halides are removed leaving the layer of gelatin with a map of the image embedded in it. The celluloid was then placed on a dye bath of a colour that was complimentary to the original colour image. Subsequent to this application of colour dyes, the two half thickness prints were connected back to back to create the final projection print. For a further explanation of the technical processes involved see Scott Higgins, ―Technicolor: "Early Three-Colour Aesthetics and Design," Film History, Vol. 12, No. 4, Color Film, 2000, Indiana University Press, pp. 358-383 and ―Technology and Aesthetics: Technicolor Cinematography and Design in the Late 1930s,‖ Film History, Vol. 11, No. 1, Film Technology, 1999, Indiana University Press, pp. 55-76.

8

William Moritz, ―Gasparcolor: Perfect Hues for Animation,‖ Lecture at Musée du Louvre, Paris. http://www.oskarfischinger.org/GasparColor.htm [Accessed: January 27th 2011].

157 Second World War and the company was forced to relocate to London, it was the colour process to which Lye turned to help capture the bright colours that he hoped to replicate in

A Colour Box and Kaleidoscope (1935).

Fischinger was instrumental in the development of Gasparcolor. Like many of the visual music filmmakers that this thesis has looked at, he was extremely technically proficient and had originally trained as an engineer, draftsman and tool designer at the Pokorny and Wittekind Machine Manufacturing factory in Frankfurt. This invaluable training would allow Fischinger to build and design his own animation and sound recording equipment and, more importantly for the development of colour animation, put him in a position to engineer a camera mechanism that synchronised the shutter with the wheel which contained the three filters that rotated to produce the three different colour exposures (cyan, yellow and magenta).

KREISE (1933)

In 1933 Fischinger used the Gasparcolor process to create an animated commercial for German advertising agency Tolirag. He had initially intended for the film to function as an absolute animation in its own right but Fischinger could not get a permit from the Nazi censorship board, who considered abstract art to be degenerate.9 Fischinger circumvented the problem by adding the title card ―Tolirag reaches all circles of society‖10

to the completed film.

9

William Moritz, "Gasparcolor: Perfect Hues for Animation," Animation Journal 5, Maureen Furniss, Ed., (1996), p.55.

10

Fischinger, op.cit.

FIGURE 4.1: STILL FROM OSKAR