RE: WE DON'T CARE ABOUT MUSIC ANYWAY

I was starving, i was itchin to go home after a looong day at traffic court, pickin up cameras, etc etc. it was 11:35pm. then i remembered there was a set of midnite screenings playing at this year's hot docs festval for $5.
i could make kd at home. and am i glad i did (watch the movie, not the kd)

the film by two french expats in Japan about Tokyo's avant garde noise music movement treated its characters with intimacy and allowed their film style to be a visual counterpoint to the dissonance-driven, speaker smoking improvized sets driving the film. The thrust of the film is that many will continue to not get the music, but they will get the artists. The meanings f the music is inherently dissonant as a reaction against the commercialized noise of the tokyo soundscape.
For me, the best thing the film did was affirm for me in living color that some of the approaches i'm planning in my own film can and will work (using the image / sound relationship to make the relationship between electrni music and the digitized nature of our daily lives). But it also gives me pause that these filmmakers managed to weave a very good 75 r so minite film out much fewer locations and artists. Toronto Sounds plans to work with many more artists in many more places...and the question of budgets arise...anyway, food for thought, i got in touch with the director last night and hope to have a dialogue with him about these questions.

The music of a city is not the music about a city...it is a reaction to the realities of that city, for good r ill.

im gonna transcribe a bunch f notes i took in the dark, cuz right after i do this, im chucking that ol program:

• event / studio shoot in a garbage dump? still sick sounds...with smart miking any space will add to it. every shoot requires 1 track music, straight from the line...1 premixed track (several mikes if nec), or several time-cued tracks w separare mikes (well-documented)
  
• gaspar said he just kept clean and controlled miking and had a sound designer pull it all together, thats what i thought would be best as well
• use BW for discussion sequences. it works cuz the space was probably shite (said it was behind a club super hot)
• the film found artists who has profound insights on the nature of music, of their society, of their place in it and their goals as artists...articulately. without this, my film runs the risk of being seen as a bunch of inarticulate party ppl...which this film dows not want to tread. FINDING THESE SUBJECTS WILL BE CRUCIAL
• what is a FUCKIN CONTACT MIC? its sick! buddy had a contact mic ad stethoscope taped to his heart...mixed into a board and a software that translated his midi signal into electrical pulses that turn on a bunch of lightbulbs...every heartbeat the lights flash. very very cool.
• the film lacks humor, but so does corporate imperialism and urban decay...so understandable
• any city has a million faces and symbols. they focused on the urban decay and homogenizing asets of the city (and any city, but tokyo++). for toronto maybe the approach is that it has many faces, shown indepednently through each essay
• I GOTTA SHOOT THE TIME LAPSE SEQUENCE AT 6-8AM. they had a subway sequence that was righton. this is the face of the city electronic music ppl see