Screening

About Double Exposure 2017

Year Released:

2017

Genres:

Silent/Live Accompaniment

Metadata:

Directed by Various Directors

What kind of magic happens when film students are paired with composers at the beginning of the creative process for a new film? Double Exposure is an experimental program between composition students in the Jacobs School of Music and film students in The Media School. The Indiana University Student Composers Association, with support from faculty members John Gibson, Mark Hood, and Larry Groupé from the Jacobs School of Music, and Susanne Schwibs from The Media School, along with IU Cinema present a program of original student work—film and music—accompanied by a live ensemble. 

“What makes Double Exposure special is that the music score and the filmed image are on an equal level; the music is not in the background or subservient. And, of course, it is performed live as the film is screened … the performance is one-of-a-kind and can only be experienced in the cinema at that moment in time.” –Susanne Schwibs, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker and lecturer in The Media School.

This program is sponsored by The Media School, the Jacobs School of Music, the departments of Composition and Audio Engineering and Sound Production, the Music Scoring for Visual Media Program, and IU Cinema.

Each film will be receiving its world-premiere presentation. (2K DCP Presentation)

Double Exposure 2017 program:

Inverse (3:52 min.)
Filmmakers: Madison Dowers and Dylan Gray
Composer: Jung-Woong Oh
Sound: Jessie Brewer

Inverse switches the way dance and music collaborate. Usually the music is complete before the dance begins; here the dance was meant to inspire the composer. The film also upends the idea of performance: usually we only attend to the final product, not the myriad of iterations, chosen and discarded gestures that preceded it. We are left to wonder: where does the dance happen—in the process of preparation or in the finished performance? With special thanks to Lalah Hazelwood, a professional dancer with Kenyetta Dance Company and instructor at Indiana University, for starring in this film.

Tight Breaths (2:53 min.)
Filmmakers: Maddie Aybar and Kristen Braselton
Composer: Wei Zhigong
Sound: Brian Berger

Breathing is essential, but what do you do when you feel like you can’t take a breath? Anxiety can feel like you’re suffocating, as if each breath is so shallow that you wonder if it was enough. Tight Breaths expresses what this might feel like. The sounds and music reflect the extremely nervous emotions provoked within the film.

high expectations (6:53 min.)
Filmmakers: Joel Chapman, Matt Williams, and Brittany Berg
Composer: Lang Chen
Sound: Walter Everton

When sustaining oneself on nothing, the simplest findings are seen as great blessings. But when these blessings transform, our humanity is shown in how we react. This film explores the complex situation of expectations, disappointment, and coping. We all know the phenomenon of growing accustomed to a pattern only to have it pulled from under us in the form of change. This lost soul experiences this feeling in the form of apples and oranges, in a world beyond.

Permanent (7:27 min.)
Filmmakers: Therin Showalter and Zachary Watt
Composer: John Griffith
Sound: Chris Alexeev

Our film dives into the difficulties of relationships, and how memory loss, obsession, fear and hope affect the bonds between two people. To tell this story, we relied almost entirely on imagery and melody. In the same way that relationships are comprised equally of two people, the narrative of this story can only be understood fully through the equal mix of the film and the music.

INTERMISSION

Backstage Ballerina (5:09 min.)
Filmmakers: Laura Huey and Emily Lovell
Composer: Kyle Rotolo
Sound: John Bowman

Backstage Ballerina looks at a dancer as she prepares to take the stage. The first five minutes of W.A. Mozart’s marvelous Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K. 550) served as inspiration and structure for the filmmaker's editing decisions. Kyle' Rotolo's musical score follows suit. It supplies the film with a private, fantasy world of the ballerina as she dances to music only she can hear. In her mind’s ear, it is not necessary to recall the Mozart exactly. Perhaps it is more meaningful to use K. 550 as a kind of conduit to the deepest, most personal parts of her imagination.

Ritual (5:16 min.)
Filmmakers: Sean Albert and James Hoffman
Composer: Spencer Haynes
Sound Nick Collado

Ritual is a film that explores occult symbolism and patterns of the subconscious mind. Body movement and perception are used to confuse and delight. Step right up! ;)

Why Talk When You Can Dance? (4:26 min.)
Filmmakers: Kali Munro and Daiyawn Smith
Composer: Patricia Wallinga
Sound: Hannah Reich

We usually think of a conversation as an exchange of words—however, words are not always necessary for a conversation to take place. We do much more than just vocalize; we use our bodies as we move in tune to our thoughts, we listen to and observe the other person, and we constantly formulate our responses. Why Talk When You Can Dance? explores these subtler aspects of conversation. It features two dancers of two different styles: modern ballet and capoeira. Capoeira is part Brazilian martial art, part dance, and part a game, and this combination of styles greatly inspired the narrative of the film.

RE:Corded (4:35 min.)
Filmmakers: Kurt Rohn and Brendon BeMent
Composer: Will Kim
Sound: Jonathan Black

Inspired by real world events. Ignore the previous statement.

Caminos (4:02 min.)
Filmmaker: Nzingha Kendall
Composer: Kathryn Jorgensen
Sound: John Bowman

Shot on a mobile phone in museums, state parks, and city streets in Southern California, and on a rehabilitated plantation in Louisiana, Caminos is a meditation on movement and space. The score is deliberately open, both harmonically and in terms of instrumentation, accompanying the audience without demanding a prescribed progression of emotions or thoughts. What limits our ways of seeing? Our ways of being?