Journalism of Courage
The main theatre at Film and Television Institute of India was jampacked on Monday,with several people not finding any seats and consequently,sitting by the door and in the aisles.Theyre watching a screening of The General,a classic silent comedy,in which Buster Keaton bumbles about in the scenes with a comically straight face. The audience watches with a different keenness,as the comedy is underscored by electronic music and ambient sounds such as a puffing train or the heavy dripping of rain. Keaton is working a train engine,and he sees a loose plank on the rail before him. As he races out to remove the plank before the train dislodges on it,the music gets faster,escalating the sense of urgency. And when he does manage to move the plank,the music gets absurdly slow as the engine comes and scoops him up from behind,and the audience laughs right on cue.
What is odd here is that the score is very different from regular comic music. The soundtrack would have fit in at any club or lounge just as easily as it did in the movie.
The effect is so captivating that one almost doesnt notice the man standing alone in the shadows by the stage. He squints in the faint light from a tiny lamp as he flips through his movie notes and adjusts something on his table,and the music changes immediately. The audience may not know it yet,but they are being introduced to a time-worn cinematic tradition by Frenchman Jean-Yves Leloup.
Leloup is one half of the musician duo RadioMentale,famous for developing what they call Cinemix,which is essentially mixing music live during the screening of a silent film. The tradition of live music for cinema has always been around in France. Between 1900 and 1930,every theatre would have their own resident orchestra and the conductor would adapt the music according to the moment. This is how cinema began, says Leloup.
But when the first talkies began to release,these orchestras slowly died out. In the 70s,when silent films made a comeback,live cinematic music also made a return,with orchestras and bands. But Leloup and his partner Eric Pajot were among the first to begin mixing music for films in 2003. Their live soundtracks became so popular that the duo was invited to South Korea,Germany,northern Africa and other places.
A decade after they first began,Leloup has brought Cinemix to India for the first time with a six-city tour to Bangalore,Thiruvananthapuram,Chennai,Pune,Delhi and Mumbai. On our tours,many people say they feel the film in a different way. The power of the image gets much bigger,the emotions become bigger, he says.
About 60 per cent of the soundtrack is prepared in the studio,Leloup says,while the rest is all done live,onstage. Their soundtracks use a variety of different sounds from music to natural sounds and even human voices. We seeks music that reflects the movie; its a very instinctive process. When you choose music,you choose to put a specific power
in an emotion, he says.
