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Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University Montreal:
George David Maynard's MFA Thesis Film Project 2010. A short dramatic film entitled "MAMA'S WILL" is described therein. In short, it shows with great detail how such a piece of art work is made. DGM/07-06-14.
Оригинальное название
MAMA'S WILL (2010)_George David Maynard_Thesis Defense Project + Screenplay Included
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University Montreal:
George David Maynard's MFA Thesis Film Project 2010. A short dramatic film entitled "MAMA'S WILL" is described therein. In short, it shows with great detail how such a piece of art work is made. DGM/07-06-14.
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema, Concordia University Montreal:
George David Maynard's MFA Thesis Film Project 2010. A short dramatic film entitled "MAMA'S WILL" is described therein. In short, it shows with great detail how such a piece of art work is made. DGM/07-06-14.
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTERS OF FINE ARTS IN STUDIO ARTS WITH SPECIALTY IN FILM PRODUCTION
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY AT MONTREAL
May 31 st , 2010 2
DEDICATION
This MFA thesis is dedicated to my mother, Rhea Menard Castillo, who stood by me during good and best of times, with her encouragement to continue towards success and inspiration to do it in good style. Finally, Id like to dedicate my film work to those departed ones, especially my stepfather, Horace Castillo, in memory of once fluid and jolly fellows, crammed and distorted by the classical mess.
3 PREFACE
A free style form of writing has been applied to put this relatively quick thesis write up together, since not much time existed between the image edit and sound mix, the period in which it was done. My informal penmanship is meant to flow with ease and grace, but if it doesnt in certain places, please forgive me, and remember that I, too, am a nearly fluid human being, crammed and distorted by the classical mess.
I would like to thank everyone on my film crew for helping me with this equally quick, motion picture production, with two special salutes to my musical composer, Rachel Kidd, and my sound engineer, Maude Coude, both of whom I know for a fact had to push the creative envelope to the limit. Then, a special thank you goes out to my thesis supervisor, Louise Lamarre, and her excellent good friend and fireman, Mario Laliberte, for their exceptional efforts in helping me produce this very short film. And once more, I would like to thank my Mom for letting me use her Last Will and Testament, to tell a proper and true story about her struggle to keep her home standing and family alive.
George D. Maynard October 28, 2009
4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 5
CONCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION 6
SCREENPLAY DEVELOPMENT 10
MASTER SCENE SCRIPT MAMAS WILL 18
CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPROACH 26
MUSICAL SCORE 37
SOUND TRACK 45
CONCLUSION 47
ENDNOTES 49
BIBLIOGRAPHY 58
5
INTRODUCTION
At the end of the cold war, I, and many thousands of other physicists lost our jobs. In the aftermath of this global change, a new urge got a hold of me, to learn, create, and produce again, to offer some kind of benefit to mankind, with a new vision, else a better dream. So I decided to come back to Canada and go back to school to study film production. No easy task since I took the long road, starting in photography, moving to film study, and then to film production. After completing my bachelor in fine arts, I discussed with associate Professor Louise Lamarre, the possibility of registering to the MFA with specialization in film production, to further my skills in fiction approaches. Again I would like to thank Professor Lamarre who agreed to be my MFA thesis advisor, for her personal kindness to have showed me a way into the professional milieu of filmmaking by introducing me to the world of in-camera special effects.
In the following pages you will find all necessary details relative to the production of Mamas Will, a short ten-minute film that constitutes the heart and core of my masters thesis in fine arts.
Moreover, a production book, a binder containing all the technical and administrative information needed for such a graduate student production, has also been carefully assembled and will be available for consultation the day of my defence, offering the members of the jury an extra look at a finely detailed piece of work.
6
INTERPRETATION
The famous Norwegian playwright, Henrik Johan Ibsen, once said that: "To live is to war with trolls in the vaults of the heart and the brain. To write, that is to sit in judgment over one's self." 1
It turns out quite naturally that when we shot the background plates for H.E.L.P. (an acronym for Holo 2 Editorial Layering Process), the Sony HD F900 camera sound tracks registered an unusual quantity of bird songs, all of which have been left intact on the sound channels used for environmental tones of this movie. So it was that the general avian motif came into being and with it a new and descriptively more precise dramatic proposition was developed for the movie. We call it the moral premise because Mamas Will is essentially a true moral story, and after shuffling through the information banks on various old sayings, anecdotes, and aphorisms, we arrived at a moral premise based on the chicken: Only a fool counts his chickens before they are hatched, stead the wise counts on the chicken that sees. 3
Initially, the movie designs were about a grand family feud. Three brothers, a lone sister, and only one of the parents still living, the mother, all of whom made up our cast of characters. The family was envisioned to be of German descent, having the male parent coming to North America during WWII as a POW, and thereafter remaining on the continent permanently through some fortuitous acts of fate. Thus, we have determined the time period for our initial story, that is, any time after WWII. But the temporal difference between 1945 and, lets say 2010, is sixty-five years, a large span
7 of time to treat the so-called dramatic action. Hence, we arrive at our first movie design problem, too large of a time gap to span cinematically, assuming we are doing a contemporary movie.
Now the place was another problem that, at first glance, seemed to solve itself, because, being in Southern Quebec, the natural local for the movie was in the Eastern Townships, not far from the Vermont border. Indeed, it has always been a given that some part of the United States would play into the overall denouement of the story. In fact, there were two constraints driving the initial movie, one of them involved the real life story of the Kylings, an immigrant German family residing in the town of Bedford, Quebec. The other constraint involved another real life story, that of the famous scientist, Gerald Bull, who had built a small aeronautics company, going by the name of the Space Research Corporation (SRC), located in both Highwater, Quebec and North Troy, Vermont, depending on which portion of the property you were on at the time of the GPS reading, for it straddled both sides of the border. Again, we arrive at our second movie design problem, too large of space to properly show in a small production movie.
Yet, with all these design problems, the decision to proceed with a script was undertaken. So, for a two year period, literally thousands of pages of script were written and rewritten, covering variations on a spy thriller genre, almost too many to count. Nonetheless, a final version of the script was arrived at, though imperfect and incomplete it was. The trouble with it, assuming that we could have fixed it, was that it could not be produced under our present budget constraint of, say of less than $10,000. In fact, the script ended up in a no mans land of fifty pages, too short for a feature and too long for a short movie treatment. So we had a dilemma on our hands, not for
8 having lack of ideas, but for too many of them. Thus, too big, too much, too far, and too long, were the too-isms that killed us, meaning, the telling of The Tale of Three Brothers. Yet, the lengthy scriptwriting experience was invaluable because it allowed for an in depth probing of the mind, that is, the world of thoughts belonging to the one who was doing the writing. Hence, the famous quote: "To live is to war with trolls in the vaults of the heart and the brain. To write, that is to sit in judgment over one's self," a remark made by Ibsen to Ludwig Passarge about publishing the dramatic poem, Peer Gynt, is the emblem of learning that begins this thesis, representing the cost and reward of doing business in the writing, directing, and producing of a movie such as this one, Mamas Will. The moral of the argument is that without an intensive period of writing, no finely done movie is possible, because it takes time to exhaust the possibilities of cause and effect, to arrive at the absolute moral premise, a task that is nearly impossible, ideally speaking.
The breakthrough in the script came less than six months ago when it was decided to investigate the story, named As I Lay Dying, written by the famed William Faulkner. Moreover, something belonging to old-fashion funeral rites reigned true in Faulkners story, triggering real memories of forgotten inheritance disputes, which had occurred in the past within my own family, as well as, in other families, of which I can still remember today; and thats when we, or if you prefer, I had that so-called eureka experience, the true stoke of genius. Truly, what we produced inside the corps of Mamas Will is a testimonial to that eureka moment, speaking at least, in terms of its social criticism of the North America personality of your average businessman, and addressing more or less, the universal meaning of equality, justice, and morality among people.
9
Theres no doubt that the movie carries a strong moral story, for if a family cannot get along with each other, at least long enough to bury one of its dead relatives, then what possible hope can our world have to survive its millions of dead?
Mamas Will emulates the myth forming poetry of Ibsens fairytale play, Peer Gynt: A dramatic poem. It does so by creating an envelop of mystery around the character of daughter Jennie; for by the end of the movie, we realize that she is a totally different make of character as compared to the others, more sublime and, above all, unknowable. Jennie is the partial inversion of the pictorial maxim, most famously called Three Wise Monkeys. She represents two of the pictograms, hear no evil and speak no evil and inverts the other, see no evil. Indeed, Jennie is not like the other characters in the movie. Her gentle character is 4 like that of a heavenly bird, flying high above an earthly pit of snakes, to put it crudely. She dramatically exists to represent natures power to renew itself, an allusion to the mythical bird, known as the phoenix. If Jennie does have recognizable avian qualitative characteristics, it is interesting to note that certain aspects of Ibsens dramatic works do too. 5
A final note in passing, Jennies ritual washing of the dead body of Beatrice seems to partially invert the Virgin Marys cradling the dead body of Jesus. This soft idea correlates with observations made by Carlson in the last endnote #5.
10
SCREENPLAY DEVELOPMENT
Mamas Will is a short movie that was imagined in the form of a screenplay. The final structure of the script was arrived at during the few weeks, two or maybe thee, preceding Memorial Day weekend 2009, but in actuality the scriptwriting took nearly three years of trial and error, to produce nine or ten pages of a completed work. Estimates are that thousands of pages of action and dialogue had been generated prior to the ten or so pages, which make up the movie blueprint of Mamas Will. This fact is just to prove that the hard work of dramatic, or more appropriately in our case, cinematic development, relentless and high sighted as it might be in producing a motion picture of opulent proportion, sometimes pays off only in a small package. There is no doubt that it would have been easier to have realized this truth from the very beginning, but like they say: No pain, no gain.
LOGLINE
After cycles of pitching ideas around to establish a basis for the movie, the realization is that many loglines can be fitted to our story, depending on the point of view taken, but this last statement is not true for the development of the moral premise, a dramatic tool that has to be much more precise. Before we address the dramatic proposition, let us write down some truly famous classical pitches or loglines, and see if they fit into the dramatic structure of our movie:
- Ruthless ambition leads to its own destruction; - Jealousy destroys itself and the object of its desire;
11 - The sins of the fathers are visited on the children; - Shiftlessness leads to ruin.
One can notice immediately that these loglines are negative in form. Lets continue with this kind of negativity, but this time we will use some well-chosen biblical proverbs as our guide and apply them on a more personal basis to some of the characters of our story, keeping in mind that both the protagonist and antagonist work in a quarry:
- He who digs a pit will fall into it; - He who rolls a stone will be crushed by it.
Then there are longer kinds of logline that have definite touches of lyricism built into them. We call them lyrical maxims since the example we give below is taken from the well established repertoire of the America fireside poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who predominantly wrote in the form of lyrical poetry. We specifically apply it to the character of the bad son who is being judged by his father, during their highly classic confrontation, which strongly expresses the clash of the generations:
- We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
The point to be made here is that by progressively adding more and more historical specificity to the old sayings, that is, by letting history be our teacher, as well as, introducing greater histrionic detail to the aphorismic trend of the logline, in other words, to dramatize it, we can formulate a quite exacting piece of propositional drama. Usually, the rate of learning about old adages is slow because knowing them is not to understand them; and so it takes
12 time to shuffle through the cellars history, searching for that perfect dictum. Moreover, climbing a steep learning curve to reach the vast plateau of precision to our thoughts is just half of the process in developing a logical and dramatic premise (we say vast plateau of precision because our own thought processes are inherently uncertain).
MORAL PREMISE
From the collection of loglines seeking greater precision, we can complete the other half of the process to develop a dramatic premise, which, in our case, we call the moral premise. Just like there are principal colours that make up a rainbow, red, yellow and blue, being those hues that are most commonly cited, there are several elements that go into the making of a premise and depending on which school of thought, the number of dramatic propositional elements varies from two, the conflict-based premise, to three, having to do with either the more logically described syllogistic premise, or else and equivalently, the more traditional Aristotlean dramatic premise. In brief, the conflict-based premise is a dyadic type, formed from two loglines, one positive, the other, negative. Next, the syllogistic premise is a triadic type of propositional logic, first introduced by William T. Price in 1908. A great admirer of theatre, Price was a practicing attorney with great control of the English language. He believed that principles of rhetoric and logic could be applied to the construction and analysis of plays. So it was that he came to define the principal dramatic proposition as the brief logical statement or syllogism of that which has to be demonstrated by the Complete Action of the Play. Following the structure of the syllogism, he further articulated that it is a statement in three clauses, the Condition of the Action, the Cause of the Action, and the Resulting Action. Truly, it strongly resembles
13 the pedantic teaching of the Aristotlean dramatic premise, which is perfectly correct and academically proper, except that it takes the point of view of propositional logic, as opposed to the latters conventional views on plot, characterization, thought, diction, music, and spectacle, which are taken from the dramatic school of thought. For those interested readers, they can refer James D. Pattersons White Paper, titled Running Head: Wm. T. Prices Proposition, dated July 24, 1995, in which is described the full explanation to that which we have been discussing in the above paragraph.
We name our principal dramatic proposition as the moral premise because Mamas Will is essentially a true moral story, the writer having been witness to such an event in real life; and after shuffling through many informational data banks with the goal of examining various kinds of old saying, anecdote, and aphorism, we arrived at a moral premise based on the chicken, which, for reasons explained later, has been chosen as for its domesticated bird characteristics, a food value commodity, as an example, and more generally for its avian motif:
The greedy fool counts his chickens before they are hatched, the innocent child counts on the pleasure of the chicken that sees. 6
SHORT SYNOPSIS
In keeping up with the Joneses 7 an ambitious son improperly schedules a meeting with a loan officer and creates a helter-skelter that spooks his mother and hastens her death. In the aftermath he makes a phone call to the notary and finds out that he has been left out of her will, and against tradition her legacy goes to his deaf mute sister.
14
LONG SYNOPSIS
A distress mother finds out too late that her eldest son plotted against the business interests of her family, for he has scheduled an impromptu meeting with a lender from an outside agency, which upsets her proper plans for future negotiations at her local bank. A big shot before his time, he believes that rapid technological progress is the answer to their poor quarterly earnings, and in securing a renovation loan he has promised the unscrupulous lender full collateral and complete control over the power of attorney concerning the newly formed accounts, if contractual obligations are not met. Indeed, he has begun negotiations for the rapid release of large sums of cash, doing so without the permission of his parents.
Even after an emergency meeting they had about the future of their company, when cautionary decisions were made to stabilize its negative cash flow, from which defensive spending measures were established and made clear to him by his father, the power hungry son still conspired to take control of the company. First, he ignored his fathers most direct warning: Not to renovate their mining facilities at the quarry, at least not during a time of high interest loans. Then, fully disregarding his old mans wisdom about rushing into deals with total strangers, even less, his parents conservative views that it is bad to get indebted to any bank, the greedy son throws cautious aside and decides to gamble on his mothers good willingness to help him reach his goal, to become top dog in the mining industry.
Cunningly, his ambitious endeavours have forced his distraught mother to act in haste and in keeping up
15 with social appearances, the desperate house wife rushes to the quarry to get her husband because she needs help to plaster the walls of their unfinished house, saving its high collateral value before next weeks visit by the loan officer. Unfortunately, she falls into the pit, aggravates her weak heart and dies. Yet, the property matriarch still saves the family from any embarrassment, foreseeing the deadly sin of avarice that, like a cancer, grows and spreads its evil roots deeper inside the heart of her shameful son, the good mother aptly goes against tradition and wills the whole property to her deaf mute daughter whom, as an innocent and playful child, always wanted to have the old wooden rooster atop her Papas bureau, which folks called the chicken that sees.
CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
Six characters span the dramatic space of this movie, five of which make up the Caucasian family named Gatlin, a name ascribed to it earlier, when the narrative was at phase one of its development, that is, during the initial development stage of the so-called parent story, which we have called A Tale of Three Brothers (the reader may refer to the appropriate appendix for details about this story).
Now, due to a reduction in the action, affecting both the plot and characterization, the narrative is at phase two of its development, which is the final stage of this present story, Mamas Will. Below, we present a brief description of all six characters involved in that latter story, meaning Mamas Will:
1) FRANK is the protagonist because he suffers the greatest turn of fortune. He is a young Caucasian male in his late twenties or maybe early thirties, possessing a fair complexion with brown hair and light brown eyes. His build is medium in stature at
16 about five feet and ten inches, give or take, weighing around one hundred and eighty pounds. He is overly ambitious, very greedy, and self-centred. He represents the fool who counts his chicken before they are hatched.
2) HENRI is the antagonist but also represents the archetype of reason and intellect. He is an older Caucasian male in his middle fifties, looking a little beaten up by life with his raggedy clothes and warn-out complexion, supporting brown scruffy hair and dark brown eyes. His build is tall in stature at about six feet and five inches, weighing around two hundred pounds. He is industrious, generous, and self-conscious of his actions, especially when things go wrong, he is prone to feelings of guilt. He represents the mediator who is willing to compromise in both ethics and traditions so that the group can survive.
3) BEATRICE is the guardian but also represents the archetype of emotion and creativity. She is an older Caucasian woman in her middle to late forties, looking healthy and exhibiting lots of energy with a beautiful complexion of either Cajun or Caribbean descent, supporting dark brown curly hair and dark brown eyes. Her build is tall in stature, well over six feet tall and weighing around one hundred and sixty pounds. She is nurturing, loving, and strongly assertive in her actions, especially in family matters, she knows whats good or bad in the world and acts appropriately to help her own survive; moreover, she is the estate property matriarch of the family, that is, the master land and sole corporate owner of the quarry business.
4) LUKE is the sidekick character relative to his older brother Frank, whom he admires since they
17 both lust for power and money, while Frank lusts for full control of the family business, Luke lust for the power of the amplifier and the fame of becoming a rock and roller. He is a male Caucasian teenager, not more than eighteen years of age. His young complexion sometimes battles with acne, other wise girl find him sexy and handsome. His build is stringy in stature, at least as tall as his brother, weighing not more than one hundred and fifty pounds. 8
5) JENNIE is the princess ideal or angel figure character, which is so often depicted in myth. Her mother, Beatrice, guards over her like a hawk, keeping her from harm and misfortune, which may befall on her brothers. Jennie is a female Caucasian adolescent, not more than twenty years old. Her complexion is ravishing and her silent demeanour marvellously glowing, like the quiet flame from a candle. Her build is small and delicate in stature, maybe five feet seven, weighing one hundred and twenty pounds. 9
6) His Honour the Judge, the Reader from the Great Scroll, the Notary is the archetype of the Wise Old Man, he is played by a Caucasian male in his mid fifties, with brown hair and eyes, his stature is medium small at five feet and seven inches, and weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds. 10
MAMA's WILL
By George Maynard July 4-6, 2009
FADE IN:
1 INT. MAMA'S HOUSE - DOWNSTAIRS KITCHEN - DAY 1 A very concentrated JENNIE sits at the kitchen table doing the accounts for the quarry, while her mother, BEATRICE, looks mighty upset, pacing the floor behind her.
18
BEATRICE Where can they be? "Don't worry," he told me: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Saturday, we'll finish putting up the gypsum board."
Moving to face the kitchen sliding glass doors, Beatrice stops to look outside, pass the veranda, to the front yard driveway. She turns her head toward the living room, its walls plainly lacking plasterboard. There, standing in the corner next to the fireplace, her droopy-eyed son, LUKE, faces their naked plasticity.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (shouting) Luke! Mama needs help. Do you hear me?
Luke ignores his mother's plight and continues to make a racket, playing his electric guitar.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (even louder) Will you cut out that awful noise? (after a beat) You're driving me crazy.
Beatrice moves away from the sliding glass doors, making her way back to the kitchen window, where she continues to scope the grounds for the return of her husband and eldest son.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) Damn these men! Promises, just empty promises, it burns me up. Don't they realize the importance of keeping up with appearances? The loan officer is coming next week to inspect the property and we've got nothing done.
To worsen the matter, Luke turns on the radio and plays it loud, trying to mimic the music on it. Yet, even with the added noise, calm and collected, Jennie remains impervious to the ruckus. Not so with Beatrice, she reaches her boiling point and explodes:
BEATRICE (CONT'D) Goddamn it, Luke! How many times have I told you: "Keep the noise down?" For once in your life, you could listen to your Mama.
19 Oblivious to his mother's suggestion, Luke persists with the strumming of his crude instrument, mockingly imitating his favourite musician with a cool hand, that is, not until his mother yells out:
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (stomping her foot) Stop making that infernal noise! (after a beat) You're killing my ears.
LUKE (yelling back) All right, I hear you.
Luke throws up his hands in a sign of surrender.
LUKE (CONT'D) I give up.
The commotion doesn't disturb Jennie, not even a bit. Looking down at the ledger and still frustrated with her tabulation, she bites the tip of her pencil.
BEATRICE (exasperated) The walls must get done by this weekend. That leaves me ... (pausing to think) Early next week to paint them.
Feed up with her household stalemate, Beatrice prepares to go out. She grabs her garden bag, a huge pouch decorated with floral designs, it hangs on a chair next to her daughter. Meanwhile, a determined Luke sits in a rocking chair next to the fireplace, where, to kill time, he buries himself in an Archie's comic. But reading quietly bores him, lacking the concentration he intermittently eyeballs his most deafening instrument, as he patiently waits for his mother to leave. Then, a break in concentration, Jennie finally reacts when Beatrice moves in to face her.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (holding her daughter's chin) I'm leaving, Bumpkin.
Beatrice moves closer and gently kisses her daughter on the cheek. Jennie looks up, taking the pencil out from her mouth.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) Later, Sweetheart! Now I'm going to the pit to fetch your father and brother.
20 Beatrice smiles and thanks her thoughtful and most poised daughter. Immediately, Jennie's attention returns with a deliberate fixation to the paperwork spread over the kitchen table. Then, the protectress mother straightens herself up to address her worrisome son, Luke.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (speaking calmly) Luke! Mama is going out now. Take care of your sister.
Calmly, Jennie twirls her beautiful blond hair with her index finger, seemingly not hearing a word of what her mother is saying. Awhile, Luke smirks sarcastically in his mother's direction, before dropping his head down to return to his questionable reading.
BEATRICE (CONT'D) (doubtingly) Yeah!
Jennie taps the ledger with the tip of her pencil.
2 EXT. QUARRY - BLUFF OVERLOOKING THE PIT - DAY 2 It's a clear day with mostly blue sky when Beatrice arrives at the quarry. A cool breeze blows through her hair, making it sway just so gently. The sun warms her face, she lifts it up, wanting more of its golden rays. The tall, black hair woman in a flowery dress moseys about quite nonchalantly, following the road at the edge of the pit. She soon changes mood when the breeze, mixing with bird songs and the chirps of crickets from surrounding woods, turns into a whispering zephyr, an intoxicating sound elixir wholly different from the noise she left back at her house. Entranced by nature's orchestra, Beatrice wanders off picking wild flowers, before visiting her husband in an area of the pit, where, to her knowledge, dynamite blasting has presumably subsided.
3 EXT. QUARRY - DYNAMITE BLASTING AREA - DAY 3 Unknown to her, Henri prepares for another blasting job, plugging electrical wires to a hand-held plunger.
4 INT. FRANK'S TRAILER AT THE QUARRY - DAY 4 Inside his field trailer at the quarry, her eldest son, FRANK, a lowly guard and competent medic at the facility, talks on the phone to a prospective investor. Instead of performing his normal safety duties, the ambitious fellow acts cocky like a big shot, promenading round and round, like a roster in a hen house. Yet, his sale's pitch to the investment banker is pompously convincing:
FRANK (talking on the phone) I can guarantee your investment firm full collateral, when my proposal is
21 FRANK (CONT'D) accepted. Absolutely, complete authority.
5 EXT. QUARRY - BLUFF OVERLOOKING THE PIT - DAY 5 Meanwhile, Beatrice admires the panoramic view atop a bluff rimming the quarry, where she picks flowers near the edge of the pit.
6 EXT. QUARRY - DYNAMITE BLASTING AREA - DAY 6 Henri prepares for a routine explosion by first calling for the caution horn to blow. Then, after a timely protocol, he pulls up on the plunger, waits for a moment, and pushes it down hard and fast. The sound of a huge explosion "Ka-bang" propagates outward, following behind the shock-wave.
7 INT. FRANK'S TRAILER AT THE QUARRY - DAY 7 Frank, still on the phone with his client, hears the blast and then a high-pitched scream, mixed with the low-rumbling sounds of the vibrating trailer. Startled, he performs the emergency protocol of sounding the alarm before rushing out to investigate.
8 EXT. QUARRY - DYNAMITE BLASTING AREA - DAY 8 In a safety area at the far end of the quarry, Henri hears the alarm and bolts away from the blast area, heading for the trailer. Reaching higher ground, he sees Frank running toward the body of a woman, laid out on her back and facing the sky, but still motionless at the bottom of the pit.
9 EXT. QUARRY - BOTTOM OF THE PIT - DAY 9 Frank arrives there first, discovering she's his mother. FRANK (running up to his mother) Stay still! Don't move Mama!
Beatrice gasps for air as she awakens from the shock of her fall. Frank kneels next to her, brushing the sand off her face. She moans as tears roll down her cheek. Then, Henri arrives all out of breath. He pushes Frank out of the way, his son pleading:
FRANK (CONT'D) (addressing his father) Don't move her!
Yet, by this time, Beatrice has her arms stretched out, her head slightly raised. Looking toward her frantic husband, she barely voices the words:
22 BEATRICE (barely audible) Take me home.
10 INT. MAMA'S HOUSE - UPSTAIRS BEDROOM - DAY 10 Beatrice lies in bed with no serious injury, just a few nicks and bruises marking her face. Yet, she is very sick, for the pale looking woman agonizes with her breathing, just as she did before when she laid flat at the bottom of the pit. Frank, a former platoon medic, stands guard nursing his ailing mother. He still wears his old army dog tags around his neck, they entangle the stethoscope he uses to listen to her heart, almost strangling its rubber hoses during his quick diagnosis. Just like it was in Vietnam, as it is here and now, death is his business, and upon hearing the swishes and murmurs of an irregular heartbeat, an ambitiously determined look suddenly moves across his face. Ghoulishly, Frank tries to hide his most inappropriate excitement. Then, a knock at the door is heard. The heartless man turns around to see an angelic Jennie, as she enters her mothers bedroom. Beatrice awakens from her stupor upon hearing Jennie's voice.
BEATRICE (speaking weakly) Jennie, my angel, Mama needs you.
Beatrice stretches out her hands like she did to Henri at the pit, prompting Jennie to come closer. Standing there in second place and looking rather useless, Frank's previous excitement turns to jealousy. Resolute to be number one, he tries to divert the matriarch's attention:
FRANK (shifty eyed) Mama! It's your heart.
After moving to her bedside, Jennie, her face filled with compassion, caresses her mother's forehead, every stroke of her hand appears to make Beatrice's pain go away. But all of those gestures, "laying on of hands" and "deeply intimate touching," make Frank furious, so much so, that he moves in closer, pushing Jennie away:
FRANK (CONT'D) (trying to control) You should be in a hospital.
Yet, his seemingly caring demeanour changes after he turns to walk away. His eyes roll up and an evil smirk moves across his face, as if he wished her dead.
23 BEATRICE (agonizing from the thought) People die there.
Jennie returns to her mother's bedside and sees her with an outstretched arm, trying to reach the drawer positioned below the night table. She hurries to help her get a small box out from the drawer. Then Jennie removes a letter from the box and attempts to hand it to her. But her mother's hand opens just long enough, only to fall totally limp onto the bedside. By this time, her daughter is fully in tears. Jennie throws herself over her mother's body, dropping the letter from her hand. Desperate, she tries to revive her, first by rubbing her face to make her see, and then her ears to make her hear. Yet, her beloved madonna dies in her arms, the horror of it so great, Jennie's wailing becomes barely audible. True to form, Frank returns to her bedside where he picks up the letter, pausing for a moment he hesitates. Then he walks away, leaving Jennie to mourn, silently.
11 EXT. MAMA'S HOUSE - VERANDA - DAY 11 Frank steps onto the veranda but never mentions about the bad news; instead he speaks to his father about his plans to renovate the facilities at the quarry:
FRANK Listen Pop! I've been talking to this banker who's willing to give us a low interest loan to modernize our equipment.
HENRI Later, Son!
FRANK He asked if I had collateral and I said "yes."
Henri angrily rebukes his pretentious son for jumping the gun on a deal he doesn't have the authority to make.
HENRI (shaking his head) God knows I tried to raise you right. Somehow you got your mother spooked with this loan officer, who is supposed to come to the house next week. But that's all changed now. Mark my words: "You won't get what you want."
Henri turns to spit, nearly striking his predatory son in the process.
24 HENRI (CONT'D) (disgusted with him) A big shot you've become. God help us! You'll get what's rightly coming to you. Until then, you keep away from me.
12 INT. MAMA'S HOUSE - DOWNSTAIRS KITCHEN - DAY 12 Frank returns inside the house to read the instructions written in the letter. At some point, he stops at the kitchen table, puts the letter down, and dials the phone.
FRANK (talking on the phone) Hello! May I speak to his Honour the Judge? Tell him Bee died. Medic Frank Gatlin. Yes, I'll wait.
13 INT. MAMA'S HOUSE - UPSTAIRS BEDROOM - DAY 13 Still in her mother's bedroom, Jennie prepares her Mama for a traditional wake. She gently washes her face and then her hands, repeating the process several times over. Quietly, like a protecting angel, she stands guard over her beloved Mama.
14 EXT. MAMA'S HOUSE - VERANDA - DAY 14 Hot tempered and mad, Frank rushes out of the kitchen and onto the porch, nearly unhinging the front door of the house in the process. Then, he continues to move with great fury to confront his father on the verandah. There, the foolish man curses both of his parents, first his dead mother and then his bereaved father, with some most hellish words:
FRANK (shouting loudly) That bitch just had to go against tradition and you (leaning over and pointing with his finger) stupid bastard let her. What kind of father are you? Goddamn you!
FRANK (CONT'D) (after a beat) None of us are invited to the reading of the will.
His father gets up from his seat, strongly shaking his head in admonishment to his son's idiocy. Frank is ready to cuss out his father even further, for letting his mother betray his ancestral rights, but he seems transfixed by Henri's towering posture. Proxy to God's wrath, standing on the veranda, Henri speaks:
25
HENRI (looking up to Heaven) What kind of father? A good one God willing, but the question is: "What kind of son would curse the memory of his dead mother?" (taking a drink) May God have mercy on your soul, Frank!
Henri walks off in total revulsion to his son's inexcusable behaviour.
15 INT. NOTARY'S OFFICE - DAY 15 In the office of the Notary Attorney, his Honour the Judge begins to read Beatrice's last will and testimony. Bereaved, Jennie sits quietly in front of his large wooden desk, her face sadden from the dreadful affair. She turns her head to watch a sign interpreter translating into deaf language the final wishes of her mother, for Jennie is a deaf handicap person. She is taken aback when she sees the signer gesture that she is to become the sole owner of the large, industrial mining complex, which rightly belonged to her mother, Beatrice Gatlin. His Honour the Judge tips his head just so slightly forward to honour her in her newly acquire socioeconomic position, as he continues reading the conditions further described in her mother's will. As we come to the story's end, the image of wild flowers, Beatrice's favourites, is held onto the screen as the will's conditions are heard during the beginning of the end credits.
FADE OUT.
THE END
26 CINEMATOGRAPHIC APPROACH
The production of Mamas Will consists of properly developed ideas about the studio implementation of the script and one of them is the cinematographic approach. First, as mentioned above, the movie is to be made entirely in a studio environment because we are using the Holo Editorial Layering Process. 1 1 An internationally patented invention, this process is a shooting stage new technology developed by our thesis supervisor, Louise Lamarre. Being inside a controlled environment, we are to produce the movie in the subbasement of Concordia Universitys EV-building, where Hexagram manages the Black Box. 12
The production team for Mamas Will consisted of a minimum of fifteen film production students, either about to graduate or having done so recently, aided by some junior professionals who helped run the second camera for the cinematography department. All were necessary members of a small movie crew that helped make the production happen, filling the standard roles that give the production consistency with a smooth running schedule.
The schedule for shooting the movie was set at a mere three days, July 4-6 2009, starting early on a Saturday and finishing not too late on Monday. This schedule is short to say the least, not much more than is done during a weekend class shoot, but with a big added difference, we are using the studios equipment in a deftly manner, not only to project predetermined background plates that we have already shot and finely tuned through editing, but to apply the systems optical projection principles to our advantage, that is, it allows us to control the depth of field, which, in turn, helps us emphasize more or less, the dramatic sensibility of the scenes.
27 Thus, the cinematographic approach taken by the director was to use two cameras, simultaneously. In short, we effectively doubled our shooting time to produce double the footage, so to speak, since we are using digital cameras. The director made the decision to increase his cinematographic teams manpower, that is, more people with the necessary experience to handle two Sony HD F900 cameras.
A young and talented motion picture artist, named Pawel Pogorzelski, a graduate student in his second year at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, was chosen to be the director of photography. Being at ease with our approach, he would coordinate an extra camera operator to work camera-B, at the same time that he would operate camera-A, eliminating the need for a principal camera operator. Of course this is not a standard practice in the professional milieu, letting the director of photography operate the primary camera. Yet, it is not unusual to see this happen on an independent film production with a small crew on a tiny budget, especially like one for Mamas Will.
Though it took more time to do the camera setups between shots, not so much for each shot but the clocked setup time adds up with increasing number of shots, it was well worth it because we were able to shoot wide and close at the same time, eliminating the need to do close ups, for the most part. Next, this so- called two-camera approach brings us to talk about the choice of method for the shot breakdowns, which naturally produces our shot list.
Here we are dealing with the shooting scheme needed to implement the cinematographic content of the master scene script. The choice of method for the shot breakdowns is taken to be the classical shot and reverse shot approach, which we simply applied in its general form with necessary adjustments added along the
28 way. To keep everything consistent, we decided to use camera-A as the wide-angle device that, for the most part, was kept relative fixed. On the other hand, we let camera-B be freer, that is, able to move more easily in and out for the close ups, since it used long lenses that captured less of the surface area of the screen; in other words, its distance to the screen was less critical than that of camera-A, which had to operate with much wider angled lenses so it could fill almost all the screen inside its field of view. In all that was said above, or even implied, the simultaneous camera approach worked out just fine. We recommend it to others who may have similar needs, especially when dealing with the time-budget pair.
The original screenplay for Mamas Will, referring to the writers master scene script, before any on set changes, had exactly fifteen scenes, from which production design setups, properly speaking, had to be built, numbering at most ten, if memory serves me right. Imagine for a moment that you are part of the set design crew on our movie and nearly half a dozen foreground sets have to be built.
Its certainly a non-trivial task to lug down to the subbasement of the EV-building, even with the help of elevators, many material props, chairs, tables, beds, tree branches, flowers, lamps, well, you get the idea, not to mention numerous boxes containing assorted lights of all kinds, screens, filters, and so on. Once you have brought those items down into the EV- buildings subbasement, they need to be ordered into their proper locations so that there is minimal labor and movement of the crew during shooting. Even before you have done this tremendous moving task, you have already installed the set-up required for H.E.L.P.
Further imagine the physical facts about the studio. The foreground area can be approximated at about 25
29 feet deep and 25 feet wide, which, as a rough estimate, is enough to give the reader a good idea about the staging space involved. Lets run through the procedure to build a set in that space.
First, we take a predetermined background plate from our image bank of stored tapes and project it onto the rear screen. Then, by carefully examining the projected image for a proper perspective layout of the cameras, and if needed by checking with the collected data from the continuity sheets that were produced during the capture-phase of the plates, the movie director, director of photography, and production designer can come to a mutual agreement about how to create the desired image for the shot, awhile taking into consideration the positioning of the two cameras and practicality of the props.
After some procedural debate about the use of two simultaneous cameras within the H.E.L.P. shooting environment, which included the particular considerations for the limited foreground space and its widely changing set designs, the director of photography arrived at a consensus with the movie director concerning the proper lighting technique for Mamas Will, and decidedly a chiaroscuro method was chosen. This meant that variously sized pools of brightness and shadow were going to be spread about the staged space, not necessarily to create a natural lit space but more so, to accentuate the emotional impact that the lighting environment has on the story characters.
Of course, the decision was made to use colour and not black and white, for the background plates were already colourful and enhancing them with indirect lighting hitting the foreground objects would add to their natural beauty within the overall visual composition.
30
Once we have set up the strong primary key, we can build up the desired chiaroscuro effect with other lights, some of them maybe fill lights to soften the luminous transition between lit and dark places, while other lights maybe secondary keys creating extraneous pools of brightness at certain auxiliary places, where we want the eyes to grab onto after they start wandering off again, looking for new interesting things to see. In fact, without being condescending on good planning with regards to a lighting scheme for every scene, not until you are on the movie set can you truly effectuate the full potential of your artistic vision.
Lets briefly look at the productions continuity book, where our continuity girl, Sophie Kroetsch, has drawn out the lighting setups for many of the scenes, including writing down the types of filter used on the differently powered tungsten lights. Pogorzelskis filtered lighting setups often use bounced light reflected from either adjacent objects, like the wooden desk used for the scene at the Notarys office, or white and wooden reflectors placed on the floor at an angle to return the light from an upward direction, like those used for the bedroom scenes.
Pogorzelski also spent time and energy to finely tune the colour temperature of his lights, and even though some of his lights were sometimes left open without any filtering, he often used diffusers on them to reduce their intensity. Yet, you can easily see in the continuity book that many of his lights have values tied to CTO (colour temperature orange) or CTB filters (colour temperature blue), with most of them averaging at the quarter value, but rarely at the half value.
For an example to a lighting setup, take Scene 10, Shot 1, in which a group of lights are placed at a height of four feet or more, but not over eight feet, forming a
31 rough semicircle around one side of the mothers bed, wrapping at its bottom like a hook. There, inscribed in the book of continuity, starting near the head of the bed and directed to its foot, we have 2,000 Watt-light " CTB (repeated twice), 650 Watt-light " CTO (repeated twice), then at its foot a set of Kinos with four fluorescent tubes to simulate tungsten light and a " CTB filter, and finally going around the other side of the bed but still at its foot, an open or non-filtered bounce light on wood, most likely positioned lower than the others, not less than three or four feet, and probably of the tungsten brand (yet, its not indicated).
The viewer may verify from his or her own screening of Mamas Will that this section of the movie, with the supine mother sick in her bed, is perfectly lit. The strongest lamps are at the head of the bed, projecting a colder, bluish filtered light on the face of Beatrice, in an attempt to convey her state of illness and pale facial look; while toward the foot of the bed, the adjacent lamps have nearly dropped to half intensity, projecting a warmer, orange-to-reddish filtered light on the bed covers, in a way that contrasts its liveliness with the dead face look of Beatrice. However, interesting this might be to the professional, this intricate description is all hocus- pocus for the uninitiated in the art of cinematographic lighting. So lets go on to another topic, the description of the acting performances from our six players.
Out of the six players, only one of them could be counted on to give a precisely defined performance, and that was myself. The reason is simple since I did not try to act. Playing the part of Notary required only that I read the Last Will and Testament. I did so to the best of my ability. Still errors of hesitation, word stumbling, and a persistent drawl made the job
32 difficult, so we, the director and sound engineer, decided to replace that dialogue in post, to ADR it (additional dialogue replacement).
Managing the other actors was a different affair since you had to direct them. In preparation for this project, I studied the practical aspects to film and theatrical acting, starting with the 19 th century French acting teacher, Francois Delsarte, whose striking statuesque poses reflected the emotional feigning of an aristocratic hierarchy, certainly making the case for a radical change in theatrical acting by the famous Russian actor and theatre director, Konstantin Stanislavski.
In brief, the latter developed a theorized praxis, treated the theatre as a serious endeavour, and pioneered ideas in a quest for theatrical truth. So it came to be that Stanislavskis System crossed over to America in the early 1920s, after which it changed again into Method Acting, first popularized by the Group Theatre in New York City in the 1930s, and further advanced by Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio from the 1940s until his death in 1982.
Though it takes many years of physical exercise and mental training to develop the understanding and skills needed to become a successful actor, the poor mans approach taken here is the best and most honest effort that a measly want-to-be director can do to make himself better. Of course this is not saying much, but we do what we can. To return to the acting for Mamas Will, lets look at those fine people who gladly gave their time and energy to perform for us.
The remaining five players were willing actors with different skill levels. We use the term willing to refer to the capacity of a person to reach inside of him- or her-self, and pull out the emotional rectitude
33 necessary to become the character that he or she want to play. To keep it brief, they fell into two groups, one professional and the other amateur. The two professional actors were Tom Rack and Janique Kearns, playing the part of Henri and Beatrice, respectively. I can remember clearly that both of them possessed a special kind of poise with a spirit of certainty that seemed to say: No big deal, no problem, its a piece of cake, lets get it done. There was a certain grace of action about their every movement, a mastery of dialogue with every word. A psychic aura seemed to emanate from their entire being when they each transformed into their respective parts. In short, my approach to directing such fine actors was to let them alone with their mastery to the dramatic arts.
On the other hand, it was much harder to handle the amateur actors because there I had to direct their actions as well as words, at least in some small parts. Theres a kind of moral story about having directed these young actors. In life as it is on stage, no one likes to tell people what to do. The unfortunate dilemma of directing people is that you sometimes find yourself in situations where the old blind man leads the young blind kids. Im certainly being facetious here because Im exaggerating the problem to its extreme, for Im not just the writer of the story but also the person who saw this sadly melodramatic tragedy happen in real life. So I know instinctively, if not practically, what theatrical truths must go into each of their performance.
Lets first take the character of Jennie. Louise Lamarres daughter, Genevive F. Lamarre played her, gracefully. We allowed dialogue to be spoken by this young, deaf mute, female character, since it allowed our actress to remain perfectly natural. Simple remarks about correcting her body posture and lifting her face up were par for the course. Attempts at
34 stirring up past memories of sad feelings from within her, in a style akin to Method Acting, were done; but theres no way to know if that worked. In all, my approach with the character of Jennie was to leave Genevive to be Genevive.
Secondly, lets take a quick look at the character of Frank, who is played by Ian Ellemo. A smart chap with a lot of talent, Ian has recently graduated with his bachelors in film production. Though I personally goofed at one point in the shot by saying to him that his acting was bad, when certainly his performance was stiff, mechanical, and unresponsive; well, we both corrected our mistakes and moved on with the show. In the heat of the emotions we say things that we dont mean, else if we do, one should not use the word bad with actors since they may take offence and clam up. Of course, Ian did neither. Thank God! The truth of the matter is that I dont remember ever making such a statement, but the moral of the story is that the director should always be kind, courteous, and generous with his actors, to whom I certainly was on every possible basis. To finish speaking about Ians character, namely Frank, we could have not picked anyone better than Ian. He acted Frank out perfectly with regards to my visions of him in the script. He was forceful and bold when he needed to be, and appeared soft and kind in a feigning manner otherwise. In the end, he bitches out his father, Henri, to near exhaustion, after he finds out about his exclusion from his mothers Last Will and Testament. In all, Ian Ellemo played the part of Frank to the hilt.
Finally that leaves us with the character of Luke. Genevives young friend, Francois Abbott, played Luke just like I had imagined him to be, as a young rocking roller dreaming of fame and fortune after the youth revolution of the 1960s. Here again we experienced a situation of panic on the set when the acting
35 performance did not fit with the ideas that I had when I wrote the script. By minimizing the screen presence of Luke after converting his emotional response to a fully classical form, the more important performance of Henri was made to dominate the drama on the screen. From the directors viewpoint, the efforts at fixing such dramatic on-set problems were successful.
To conclude this section, Ill mention about the specific time frame for this movie since only a few hints have been incorporated in its structure. For those folks living as English speaking adolescents during the late 1960s, you must have notice that one of the syndicated T.V. broadcasting companies introduced a new series, an adaptation of Archie Comics, originally started in 1939 by MLJ Comics Incorporated, but in 1968 an animation company named Filmation made it into a Saturday morning television cartoon, called The Archie Show.
To be brief, I assumed that my Luke-character would be about 14 or 15 years old at the time when this T.V. show would have come out. In my character description of Luke, I gave him an age between 17 and 18 years old. So our story unfolds in the early 1970s, just about when, the rock-and-rollers, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison tragically die, September 18, 1970, October 4, 1970, and July 3, 1971, respectively. These time benchmarks are important dates, among others. For instance, the Beatles disbanded sometime in November 1969, not long after the awful helter-skelter killings brought about by the Mason Family. Remember, one of the songs on the Beatles White Album is called Helter-skelter. In effect, the Beatles breakup marked the end of the Youth Revolution. Looking at it the other way: What started it? Yes, another important event, not fully understood, that marked the start of the counter-culture movement, was the firing of two renown psychologists by Harvard University, namely,
36 Timothy Leary was terminated on May 27, 1963, for leaving Cambridge and his classes without permission, and Richard Alpert booted out too, on the same year, for giving psilocybin to an undergraduate. Another important personage from the famous Harvard Psilocybin Project is Ralph Metzner, a graduate student of theirs, who later helped in writing the book, titled Psychedelic Experience.
What is it about these events that make them key to our story? Theyre the pillar-like bookends to an expanded library (ref. expanded cinema) spanning a kaleidoscopic decade of consciousness expansion, and from this psychedelic bibliothque Ive pulled out another one of these interesting books, titled Be Here Now. Authored by Ram Dass, alias Richard Alpert, I used a teaching tool imagine from within this book, that is, the chicken sees, to build my moral premise for my story (as it was explained in another section). It also sets me up in a specific time period for the storys unfolding narrative, for the early 1970s was a time when people had to decide what moral course to follow. Certainly, we know the strange trip our world took and it is far from ideal. Moral? Thats another question, not easily answered. 13
The cinematographic approach is a plan of action to be taken during the production, constructing the foreground sets, putting up the lights, staging the actors, and judging their performances, but it also seems to be driven by a constant state of flux, for it may reflect certain aspects of our human nature certainly, mine.
37 THE MUSICAL SCORE
Henrik Ibsens Peer Gynt, A dramatic poem, written in 1867, is our starting point, specifically the section dealing with the Death of Aase in Act III and Scene IV. 14
It is the famous Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg 15 who wrote the music for Peer Gynt. In a letter to a friend, Grieg once wrote that: The realm of harmonies has always been my dream world. 16 This Romantic composers imaginative disposition suggests an attitude towards the roles of harmonic function within a diatonic pitch space. 1 7 In fact Griegs chromatic language is manifested in subtle interactions between different pitch spaces along the dualistic lines of harmony and melody. His distinctive style reaches beyond commonly practiced tonality trends of his day, in ways other than modality. Even though he used a variety of common 19 th century harmonic devices, the Picardy Third 18 is one such example, Griegs synthesis of modal elements within a diatonic or chromatic framework leans towards Impressionism.
Grieg develops an approach to chromaticism that reflects the Romantic themes of death and despair. There are two techniques that serve to characterize certain aspects of his multifarious harmonic language. First, there is his musical technique of chromatic juxtaposition. 19 Like side-slipping in Jazz, it entails the insertion of highly chromatic material within a principally diatonic passage. Second, another musical technique of his involves the use of flatted seventh scale degree as a particular type of harmonic juxtaposition. 20 The latter serves as a congruent agent among the realms of diatonicism, chromaticism, and
38 modality, at the time as providing markers for death and despair.
The themes of death and despair represent, on one level, elements frequently encountered within the poetry that Edvard Grieg selected for his songs, including that of Ibsens Peer Gynt. At another level, these dark sided elements provide semiotic markers of events that transpired in his life, for he experienced the deaths of his parents within a six-month span of each other.
Well, without going any further in the details of his musical techniques, which would necessitate the analysis of some of his songs, we say that enough of the groundwork has been set to give us a starting point for Mamas Will. Certainly, death and despair are themes that we encounter in our movie. Moreover, they also become semiotic markers in my life since they both point to a real and grievous future in which my mother will die, for the movie is a deep inner reflection at such an event. In truth the taboo reading of her authentic Last Will and Testament certainly scares me, especially since the movies premiere is on her eighty- fifth birthday, November 10, 2009. However, she and I have talked about producing such a real work of art, in which authentic materials would be presented to the public via the apparatus of cinema. No one can say that my film art didnt try to achieve the greatest significance of meaning, for myself, the lives of others, not only my Moms. Because truly, Mamas Will makes one pause at reasons meaning of the significance of being human and alive.
Score Notes
Peer Gynt: A dramatic poem or its later cousin, Peer Gynt: The Play in Five Acts in Verse, offers a wealth of possibilities for visual imagery, sound effects, and
39 musical composition. The latter of these treasure troves Edvard Grieg took advantage of, and amid the deaths of both his parents within months of each other he produced the incidental music to Peer Gynt, Opus 23, in 1875. Later, in 1888 and 1891, Grieg extracted eight movements to make the two four-movement suites we know of today, Suite No. 1, Opus 46 and Suite No. 2, Opus 55, respectively.
In homage to Ibsen and Grieg, I extracted from the play a dialogue line quotation from the scene, titled The Death of Ase. Here it is reproduced below, just as it is seen in the beginning of the movie, written white on a black background:
Mother! Have you gone out of your wits-?
You mustnt lie there and stare so-!
Speak, mother; its I, your boy!
(Ibsen, Peer Gynt: A Play, Act III, Scene II)
The beginning musical cue to the movie is a musical quotation or phrase from Griegs Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Opus 46. Specifically, The Death of Aase is Opus 46, No. 2, which has been design to go along with the written quotation or line of dialogue, described above. It has been transposed for convenience from Griegs original Bm (B-minor) composition to the same key that Luke uses when he is playing his guitar, that is, Em (E-minor).
Rachel Kidd, the movies musical composer, explains that the strings underneath the guitar let the audience know that the films mood is not that of a rollicking rock and roll song, but has more serious undertones. Rachel says: Perhaps something can be drawn from the
40 fact that Luke cannot hear anything but his guitar, and that he does not realize the seriousness of whats going on. 21
Continuing with the same beginning cue and the kitchen scene, where Beatrice paces the floor behind her daughter, Jennie; particularly later in that scene when the strings come back into play, adding a higher intensity to an emotional buildup that will lead Beatrice out of the house, and progressively closer to her ultimate fate. Figuratively speaking, the strings represent what is happening subconsciously inside Mamas head, for it is not hard to imagine the kinds of visual and auditory turmoil associated with a mind scrambling for a release of pressure, trying to escape total melt down. Rachel Kidd tells it in a simpler way: They (the strings) help us understand why this extra noise from the guitar is unbearable. 22
Then the next sequence of scenes, especially the three scenes, starting with Mamas walk to and about the bluff surrounding the rock and gravel pit, leading subsequently to her fall to the bottom ground level of the quarry, and followed by her death in her own bedroom after her husband, Henri, grants her feeble request to take her back home, certainly, are all linked together in a cause and effect sort of way, and consequently the musical underscore is also linked causally to follow the dramatic pacing of these three most important scenes. Hence, the developing score is designed to carry the same chord progression throughout all three scenes, that is, Em G Bm D, with some variations, but the bass line always returns to the E G B D pattern, and the music is made continuous.
We start with Mama walking to and about the pit, the music has the Em G Bm D chord progression, but the melody is simple, sad, and played by a single violin. If you listen to it very carefully, a folkie half-tune
41 can be heard, not fully developing into a recognizable melodious piece, yet theres a country home feeling about it and decidedly we call it a melody. The solo melody line is supporting Mamas solo efforts to get her house ready for the visit from an investment banker. No wonder Mamas worried!
Then, we see Henri and then Frank performing their actions, which, directly or indirectly, lead to Mamas death. Either way, these intermediate scenes do so symbolically and the musical score explains this lethal congruence in a tonal manner. It keeps the same chord progression, but adds tension with dissonance, which leads up to Mamas fall.
For Mamas fall to the bottom ground level of the quarry, the musical score becomes much more intense. Rachel adds a human touch on top of the same chord progression and full strings, bringing into the mix a high vocal line with quotations from Griegs Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Opus 46, once again. We return to a single voice and a single violin at the very end of this cue, which represent Mama and Henri.
The third scene, Mamas death, is done with only strings. The high strings and the upward melodic pattern mirror Mamas ascent to heaven. At the end of this scene, the bass line E G B D comes back as Frank picks up the envelope that contains instructions for the implementation of her will. The music confirms that this greed of Franks is what started this sequence of events in the first place.
The next scene of musical importance is when Jennie is washing Mamas body. Rachel calls it Mamas angel. 23
The music starts with an ostinato 24 just as Frank says: Ill wait, while he waits on the phone. In fact, the ostinato serves two major purposes. First, it shows the passing of time. Second, it makes the following scene
42 feel more ritualistic. The piano ostinato pattern is moving upwards, again confirming Mamas ascent to heaven. The voice comes into play as we see Jennie. The vocal part is sad and pure. It helps to show that Jennie has only the purest intentions, showing what is happening subconsciously inside her, no turmoil here only emphatic compassion. The music ends as we return to Frank who had been waiting on the phone.
Franks Anger, as Rachel Kidd calls it, is a powerful musical cue that balances extreme emotions with intelligent reasoning. The scene associated with it is the confrontation between Frank and Henri. The music is dissonant while Frank talks, just as before when we first see him in the trailer at the quarry. But the musical score changes to a less dissonant level when Henri speaks, yet the vocal tone is still angry but reasonably more intelligent. Also, one should notice that the voice is far off in the background, giving the impression that Mamas haunting cries are like the murmurs from a crowd, which is a rubberneck witness to the fact that this awful conversation is happening.
To recapitulate important details about the musics instrumental design, first, as far as the bass line is concerned, E G B D are just the notes played by the double bass. Second and more importantly, the chord progression, Em G Bm D, is describing how the other instruments fill in the music over the top of that bass line.Again, the fact that our composer, Rachel Kidd, transposed Peer Gynt from Bm to Em was really only for convenience, that is, to fit the music with Luke's guitar playing. Moreover, Rachel also re-harmonized Griegs Peer Gynt. She cleverly put different chords under the melody and offset the rhythm, so it's more how Peer Gynt fits into our story, as she said. 25
As far as the ending cue, Rachel spent much time and effort in getting the timing of it just right. She
43 optimized the order of instruments' entries for maximal emotional impact. In this final ending cue, she mainly focuses on a not too different chord progression, that is, Em G C D. Similar to what we had before, Em G Bm D but here, the B chord has now changed to C. Deftly, she points out that B is the leading note of C, meaning that B wants to go to C. Again we have musical theory staring at us right in the face except that here, it is put into practice because the note of C is the so- called tonic note because it is the first note of the diatonic scale, on which all of our Western music is based. Isnt that interesting? Hence, by returning to the source or original starting point of the diatonic scale, some tension is resolved in the score just as it's resolved in the plot. Finally, just one last remark about timing, the time signature is 3/4, which is different from the rest of the score, and if Im correct in reading my music sheet, Griegs original composition for Suite No. 1, Opus 46, and Section No. 2 is common time at 4/4. Thus, our brilliant young composer changes the numerator 4 into 3, as she remarks that the number 3 is the holy trinity number. Another interesting twist because if Heaven exists then the Godhead, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit must be waltzing up a storm in the spiral of the Great Beyond, since the so-called triple 3/4 is the simple time signature for country ballads, waltzes, minuets, and scherzi. 26
The ending of Mamas Will is truly engulfing. The so- called "half-tune" that I nonchalantly remarked about earlier, when Mama took her walk to and about the pit, well, it has fully developed in the here and now ending of this movie. If you have ever been to one of these Last Will and Testament readings, which are not quite the same as solemn funerals, Ram Dass rooster seems to be perched somewhere in time, crowing out Be Here Now. Truly, the ending cue gives the piece an epic feeling, but without going over board. We have experienced a situational event that has turned the
44 generational page on the changing of the guards with regards to the continued survival of this bewildered family. Not quite historical, maybe a little metaphorical, yet something important has happened. Lets call it that uncanny dej vu feeling, for no better words. The extraordinary seems to have exploded out of the ordinary but cyclical instability is its singular nature and it immediately returns to the state of the everyday, like that of a flower going to sleep for the night. Mamas Will has taken us on a long journey, somewhere beyond the horizon of our everyday imagination. Rachels ending cue sings to us with its music, almost in a folk ballad kind of way, it testifies about how long and winding the trip has been. The solo melody composition Rachel begun earlier is now completed, for it characterizes Beatrice with its ballad-like folk tune, which elevates the movie into another worldly place that brings us back here and now.
45 SOUND TRACK DESIGN
The soundtrack design work and important audio repairs has been dutifully performed by our sound engineer Maude Coud, who laboured long and hard to clean the tracks from the noise produced by the HD projector, as well as, the unwanted acoustic effects produced by the cubic space of Hexagrams Black Box. Two interesting observations about Maudes acoustic design are: 1) An insertion of an escalading cicada sound effect just before the fall of Beatrice and 2) another sound effect insertion that attempt to repair a non-removable noise.
First, Maudes relentless pursuit for the perfect sound track design has won her my acclaim since she has been able to use a simple cicada sound effect to heighten the emotional intensity of the movie. This interesting acoustic escalation occurs when the camera cuts to the upward view of the rock cliff where Beatrice will soon fall from, landing at the bottom ground level of the quarry. By letting the cicada run on with increasing intensity, Maude has been able to achieve a kind of sustained natural note from Mother Nature. Lets listen for it next time we screen the movie.
Second, Maudes diligence pays off again when she encounters a non-removable noise during the heated verbal argument between Henri and Frank, when they are outside on the veranda. Apparently one of the crew workers dropped an object on the studio floor during the shooting of this simulated outside scene. It sounds like a clang. Our deftly resourceful sound engineer decided to use the distant sounds of hawking crows, moving toward the location of the veranda, to cover up the clanging sound. Lets listen and evaluate how well Maude did this acoustical fix-up.
46 Theres so much that could be said of Maudes work but the above two example is significant enough for anyone having been exposed to her work to evaluate her highly competent performance. Being the director of a truly fine crew, I salute them all, especially those folks who have spent lots of their time on the sound and musical tracks.
47 THE CONCLUSION
I met Louise Lamarre in 2002, at which time she introduced me to the intricacies of professional milieu filmmaking. I immediately saw potential in her invention for shooting background plates on set. From that point on, I helped her develop H.E.L.P. to what it is today, that is, an effective tool for in-studio and in-camera special effects. One of the interesting jobs I did for Louise was to help her rewrite the H.E.L.P. patent. This experience was invaluable since it showed me the technical work done by other inventors, for instance, Byron Haskin, the director of the original 1953 movie War of the Worlds, invented and patented a turntable, which was used in the studio as a convenient platform to shoot large objects, such as cars, airplanes, and so on.
During the intervening years, from 2002 to 2009, we shot nearly one thousand background plates. These scenic backdrops are mostly from the Eastern Townships and the regions surrounding the village of St. Calixte, Louises country home.
In 2005, we went to Quebec City to shoot Inuit artifacts at one of its largest museums. This footage would later prove valuable since it was incorporated into a short documentary that depicts the plight of the aboriginal natives living in the Northern territories of Canada.
Just a few years ago, circa 2007, I participated in the making of the movie trailers for Louises impending feature film, Breakfast in New York. The project was conducted at the Mel Rose Studios, next to the military airport in St. Hubert, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, adjacent to Montreal. This adventure in
48 production cinema offered us a glimpse at the logistics in moving crew and equipment to remote locations.
In all my experience at Concordias Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema has been good even though, at times, it was tedious since not much emphasis was given to graduate level fictional filmmaking. I took it upon myself to develop my skills in the field of fictional movie making by choosing course in the MFA program that best fitted my interests. Fro examples, I very much enjoyed Carole Zuckers class in Narrative Theory, as well as, Mario Falsettos fine class on Avant-garde Cinema. From all the graduate classes I took in film production, it was Marielle Nitoslawskas class on the postmodern aspects of a so-called Expanded Cinema, including her film art style of documentary filmmaking.
Much time was spent in learning how to write, years in fact, and after burning the pen on more than a thousand pages of junk, I finally arrived at writing a proper eight pager for my script. For those younger folks who may want to go down the writers road, let me give you this advice.
Dont live the life of a troll, for: "To live is to war with trolls in the vaults of the heart and the brain. To write, that is to sit in judgment over one's self." 27
N.B. Endnotes are incomplete and uncorrected. Errors abound as their grammar, syntax, and spelling. The main text is in better shape but it too needs work. Thanks!
49 ENDNOTES
1 A quotation referenced to Henrik Ibsen who tells Ludwig Passarge in a cautionary letter written in 1880 about publishing a German translation of Peer Gynt. Its no accident that one of the major dramatic works of Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt: A dramatic poem (1867), finds itself in a place of immanent importance at the beginning of the short film, Mamas Will (2010). To be more precise, just a minute part of this fairy tale play, the Death of Aase in Act III and Scene II of Peer Gynt, A play in five acts and verse, becomes a critical steppingstone to a story about social discrimination and long held traditions of inheritance, for it is true now as much as it was then, in Ibsens times, that: A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view. Present-day critics may have objections to such digging into the past, especially in reviving old sayings from Ibsens huge repertoire, but theres no doubt that bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice hold strong roots in our postmodern society of today. Experience shows us time and time again, that old traditions die hard, especially when they involve power and money. This statement is true for all people and in all culture, a universal ill of civilization in general, unfortunately as it may be.
Mamas Will is an ironic inversion of modest proportion placed in an authentic photoplay, a film resembling a play, almost like a soap opera when viewed for the first time, but with greater depth and meaning, making it an original work of art. Melodrama or not, it is a finely made movie that gives us a different perspective on an old problem, the question of inheritance rights, as applied to the so-called North American family units, French, English, or Spanish, those filial entities with European Judeo Christian values and the associated civil laws historically implemented by such constraints.
Mamas Will is a movie about a house with interiors walls that have been left undone, unfinished, bare to the skeleton, with only their naked plasticity showing, that is, thin polyethylene sheets covering the underlying two-by four wooden, interior structure of the house; and if the above description is highly specific, yet not interesting, from a construction standpoint, its tropological structure of meaning is exceedingly interesting, within the unfolding drama of this highly charged, little movie. The idea of using the House, the Family Home, Mans Castle, as an important tropological signifier, is not a new one, for it has made its way into dramatic form via some of Ibsens plays, well over a century ago. Take his very famous play, A Dolls House (1879), from which we extract an exemplary remark, a pronouncement made by its main protagonist, Nora Helmer, who says to her dutiful husband, Torvald: Our home has been nothing but a play-room. Ive been your doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papas doll-child. And the children have been my dolls in their turn. I liked it when you came and played with me, just as they liked it when I came and played with them. Thats what our marriage has been, Torvald.
From these remarks about the restrictive social boundaries of the old- fashion European family nucleus, the template for its North American counterpart, a workable dramatic premise for the movie, Mamas Will, came into being; though its not perfect in its concise description of the dramatic span of the action, nonetheless it is the formal beginning leading 2 H.E.L.P. is a descriptive acronym standing for Holo Editorial Layering Process. It is the modern equivalent of the more ancient rear screen projection systems, used in the past by the major movie Hollywood studios. Mamas Will was entirely shot in studio with this internationally patented invention, which was produced by Professor Louise Lamarre of Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec. 3 The chicken that sees is a pictorial representation for spiritual enlightenment, it is referred to and shown in the famous book, titled Be Here Now, a 1971 book on spirituality, written by Dr. Richard Alpert, who later changed his name to Ram Dass.
It can be shown that Mamas Will reflects certain aspects of the mythopoetic nature of Henrik Ibsens work, particularly that of Peer Gynt. The movie accomplishes this feat through its use of poetic imagery, particularly in two scenes, both of which emphasize the storytelling power of the imagery over the dialogue. First, theres the scene with mother Beatrice in her bed, dying from an ailing heart condition. Then, a little later in the movie, theres the scene with the daughter, Jennie, who tenderly washes the lifeless body of her mother Beatrice. Here, more than the previously mentioned scene, the deeply felt visuals of the long take, with its attention drawn on the action of laying on of hands touching, are most cinematically poetic. The highly charged thought-images elevate the character of Jennie to that of an angelic figure, enabling her to fully become woman, in the Deleuzian sense of the phrase.
50
4 To start with, Jennie is the first character we see and the last and on that basis, we could presume that she is the main protagonist. But, for dramatic reasons, this position is given to the character of Frank. One might say that there could be two principal players in the movie; and in some cases, that is true. But structurally speaking, the action of the movie centers on the elder brothers attempt to take over control of the family business, after the death of the mother. Simple as it is, this little synopsis is enough to identify Frank as the main character, for no other form of action in the movie is greater. Aristotles Poetics firmly establishes that character is action and the greater the action, the greater the character, and so Frank must be the main protagonist because the climactic action unfolds during the opposition between Henri and Frank. This highly dramatic situation begs disclosure to the identity of the protagonist, as well as, the antagonist in this story. Looking at it one way, it can be said that Frank antagonizes his father with his plans to renovate the quarry. Does this mean that Frank is the antagonist? If so, Henri is logically the protagonist. Truly, our old- fashion ideas about the structure to a classical story, referring to the classical battle between father and son, get inverted in Mamas Will, for we no longer can tell the difference between the good guy and the bad guy. Moreover, certain ethical problems cannot be resolved by such a story; for instance, it becomes difficult to tell right from wrong when open questions about inheritance rights come down smack on the table of moral justice.
Referring back to our story with its subtext about the first born, male childs rights of inheritance, we ask ourselves the question: Whom are we to judge if it is wrong, for an eldest son to immediately apply for the advise of his father, when the corpse of the family matriarch has not yet made it to its grave? Without a doubt, the fathers overly ambitious son lacks tack, but such a bold move doesnt mean that he is bad or that his actions are wrong, just particularly heartless. This sad fact is sufficient for us to have suspicions about his subsequent intentions, but not enough for us to condemn him to the pit of Evil Doers, figuratively speaking. But all of this is just rhetoric, having deviated from our purpose, which is to reveal the true nature of Jennies dramatic character. 51
5 Lets assume that it is true that Henrik Ibsen is a major mythopoetic artist
of the stature of Shakespeare, Racine, and Sophocles, as conjectured by Harry G. Carlson, for he focuses on a cluster of avian images that appears again and again in Ibsen's work. The image cluster takes shape in a passage about the statue of Memnon
in a prologue that Ibsen wrote in 1855 and in the song he assigns to this statue in Act IV of Peer Gynt. The elements of the cluster in the song include: dawn, birds, a mother grieving over a child in a piet scene (the word piet refers to the Virgin Marie cradling the dead body of Jesus), and the promise of resurrection, while the passage in the prologue provides the further elements of the challenge of freedom and the demands of the spirit. With his eye on what this cluster suggests about the characters associated with it, Harry Carlson surveys recurrences and seeming recurrences of it in the final scenes of Peer Gynt and in A Dolls House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, The Lady from the Sea, and The Master Builder, which marks, according to Carlson, the high point of Ibsen's experiment with the avian image cluster.
6 Referring to the naked self, an idea akin to Jungs archetypal self, Ram Dass explains that once you know theres no place to hide then you wonder whom are you hiding from anyway? It is at this point in his book that he tells us an enlightening story about a chicken that sees. There is an ancient Sikh story about a holy man who gave two apprentices each a bug-eyed chicken and said: Go kill them where no one can see. One neophyte went behind the fence and killed the chicken, the other novice walked around for days and came back with the chicken, at which time, the wise old master said: You didnt kill the chicken? The student said: Well, everywhere I go, the chicken sees!
7 "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a catch phrase in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbors as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.
8 The Luke-character seeks fame and recognition from his peers, and is relatively greedy and mostly self-centered, resembling his brother in a less destructive way, for he may not want to gamble with the respect of his family, as does his ambitious brother Frank. Luke is the anti-contagonist because, normally by definition, the contagonist is the second in command to the antagonist, the antagonists henchman, so to speak, who diligently works to place obstacles in the path of the protagonist and to lure him or her away from their goals. But in our movie Franks, as well as, Lukes interests are the same since their common aim is to get their hands on either the property or inheritance money. What is important to discover from the story is the real ambiguity in the functional characterization of the players in our story, for the role of the protagonist could be ascribed to, say, either the father, mother or even Jennie; of course, it all depends on how one wants to describe the action. If Luke is anti-contagonistic to Frank, then that makes him a kind of sidekick to his older brother. Yet, he is a noisy hindrance or obstacle that mother Beatrice must escape from or at least evade, so he is also a nuisance to her and thus, he is contagonistic character to mother guardian, who possesses characteristic nuances belonging of the protagonistic 52