Monday, November 13, 2017

The Meadow (New Moon)

https://youtu.be/na8oGIWX5oc

From the film Twilight
For dear C.B.

4 comments:

dianne said...

For you my dear C.B.
https://youtu.be/na8oGIWX5oc
I recently heard this piece of music being played on a Grand Piano and it's beauty made me think of you.
I didn't have much success posting the video on my blog so I hope you will use the HTML to listen to this piece!
Much love your friend Dianne x

dianne said...

https://youtu.be/k19Zz-8DXss

This is the official soundtrack version of the music. I hope you enjoy it as much as I, it carried me away on all kinds of beautiful and romantic thoughts and feelings! Music often touches my heart! X

Anonymous said...

This piece is played very well. And quite accurately. Like you say, Dianne, it's the feelings invoked that are more important. Imagination is so under-rated these days...

Blatancy is all too common in the film-making world today. Loud images. Brash for effect. Dwelt over images. Over-saturated. A bit too much intense colour. All of which does nothing to move the tale itself forward. Focusing on one image then slowly to another image and remaining on it for up to minutes at a time! Why? In literature, such triteness would never be tolerated by the reader. In fact, there are far too many images today, full stop.

I was reading how Irene Jacob had Slawomir Idziak's camera almost touching her cheek as she was walking out of the dark bedroom with him behind her towards Alexandre's room where he was busy making his puppets. At one point, her shadow was seen on the white wall by Alexandre's door and it showed as a kind of double.

In the editing room, Kieslowski, felt it was all overstatement again. Unnecessary... No, no. Cut. Cut. Gone forever. One could say that the editing room was Kieslowski's favourite room. Not that he was carefree with using celluloid. Quite the opposite. He seldom called 'action' until he was absolutely convinced that the film could start rolling in Idziak's camera and for a few seconds only. No money to waste!

Lighting in Restaurant Alize to lift the darkest shadows on one side of Philippe's nose? An extra, half a metre away, holding a circular gold reflector up toward his face would have to do...

Once again, you barely hardly see it because Kieslowski was a master of slightness, of subtlety. The absolute minimum required just to pull it off. When I look at the footage I still see pretty strong shadows but obviously Kieslowski barely wanted to lose the shadows as they were so important in that scene.

So, what he does so, seemingly so effortlessly, is to make shooting a story look simple whereas in real life, as Idziak's testifies today, it was often more a very rare moment of everything just happening to work well together and the amateurishness of Irene Jacob's acting perfectly balanced out the long-experienced camerawork of Idziak.

It was so much a combination of the right things just happening at the same time. Why? I don't know. And I think that Idziak doesn't really know either. It's almost as if it was meant to happen irrespective of the humans involved and their mistakes. Or it may have been simply that Kieslowski worked with what was happening, cutting and editing spontaneously each evening until he got closer and closer to what he wanted. One thing that it wasn't - it wasn't scripted or planned anything remotely like what was finally seen by the audience.

My mind boggles at the enormity of trying to do anything worthwhile in comparison. Un de ces jours, C.B.

dianne said...

Hello dear CB, I hope you are well? It is so lovely to hear from you. I'm pleased you enjoyed the music, I think it is beautiful. There are many musical compositions which I love and they do take you to places of beauty in your imagination. I think the young fellow on YouTube plays very well.
I also enjoyed the hauntingly beautiful main theme music by Philip Glass from the film The Illusionist! I also liked the sepia- tinted colour of this film, it created a mysterious atmosphere. Have you seen this film?

I don't go to theatres to see films, I feel uncomfortable sitting there alone and some people are noisy and distracting. I usually hire a DVD or watch a film on television.
I haven't seen any films advertised recently that I would wish to see. I don't enjoy action-packed, horror or typical American films about college football and stupid concepts. Some just seem so ridiculous. I like a film with a story, gentle caring characters and happy endings! I know that life is not about happy endings but it is nice to imagine and to dream.
Sometimes I don't feel as if I belong in this time, there is too much violence, too much noise. I long for quieter times but I don't think they exist anymore.

I enjoyed your conversation about the making of The Double Life of Veronique! I would say that Kieslowski was a perfectionist and what he didn't like on the days filming he would edit out at night. I read somewhere that he didn't like wasting film and he was exacting in his directing. I would not have thought that Irene Jacob was an amateur, I thought she was wonderful, believable and perfect to play the parts of both Veronique and Weronika. Perhaps it was her perceived innocence, her naivety, her beauty. I don't think I have ever seen another film like it. You were saying that after Kieslowski's editing that the film which was released had little resemblance to the script. Was there ever a script or just an idea of what he wanted, an outline of a story which he wanted filmed as there is very little dialogue. That is the clever part, a story told with images and situations where we let our own emotions and perceptions fill in what we experience... brilliant yet I found it wanting in some way.
Please don't compare your film to his, the story and characters you create will be yours alone and we will perceive your film as an entity in its own right. I'm sure it will be sensitive and beautiful and dare I say it better than the film of Kieslowski!

I must say Goodnight now dear one, it is late, the early hours of Thursday morning.
I apologise but I am tired and need some sleep. Perhaps we can talk some more next time. You always say "Un de ces jours", who knows, perhaps one day!
Take care, much love, Dianne! X