Discover Top Posts Tagged with #coupigny

Screenwriting: Dissonance and Musique concrète.

The importance of music in my screenwriting process cannot be understated. There is perhaps no greater driver of images, ideas and conventions than my music collection (which now stands somewhere around 2,000 records). With my current writing I've decided that I need to evolve, and I've applied music in a new perspective that has really opened things up and fundamentally changed my approach to creativity and composition. Through music, I've embraced the ideals of dissonance and Musique concrète, and the results have been nothing short of magical.

Image from vacantsmile.com

So my 'Music for the Weekend' selections are generally more accessible types of music, but the real treasures of my collection are the more difficult finds, albums that contain 'music' in the loosest sense of the word. It's these records that provide me with the greatest inspiration, in large part because they embrace the idea of dissonance.

But before we get into the impact of musical dissonance on my current screenwriting process, let's take a trip into the past, specifically to Paris, France in 1942. There a young theoretician and composer named Pierre Schaeffer - inspired the advances in editing and montage found in cinema - experiments with layering and sound manipulation using various radiophonic techniques found at the Studio d'Essai, the radio station where he was employed. This would become the early foundations of an artistic movement called Musique concrète.

One of the key developments in Musique concrète was magnetic tape, which, when passed through a Shellac tape recorder, could be reversed, slowed down and spliced. This allowed musicians to go out and make field recordings of everyday sounds and manipulate them into musical notes and textures. With these recording techniques, the entire planet became a musical instrument. The artists of Musique concrète pushed even further, developing new recording devices such as the three-track Morphophone and creating devices that controlled sound spatially using induction coils. The next advancement came in Schaeffer's development of the Coupigny synthesizer and Studio 54 mixing desk, and the advent of computer storage meant an unprecedented level of sound manipulation. It was a confluence of art, science and engineering that provided limitless possibilities.

pierre schaeffer - "etude aux chemins de fer" c. 1948

Most of the music produced by this movement is rooted in the idea of dissonance, or the collision of two sounds that lack harmony. A lot of the music I love - by artists like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tim Hecker, Grouper, Philip Jeck, Julia Holter, Throbbing Gristle, Piano Magic, Einsturzende Neubauten, Faust, Can, Thomas Köner, The Hafler Trio and even Lilith composers dälek all create music by collisions of seemingly random sounds. The resultant music is therefore without precedent, resonant, and highly thought provoking. Sure you can't sing to it in the car or even dance to it (although dälek knows how to bring the beats). It's very much like the dialectic of editing, where tertiary meanings are derived from the collision of thesis (established) and antithesis (unfounded) to create a synthesis (unknown).

dälek - Vague Recollections

In my current writing, I've very much approached the creation of the film's plot this way. When I write a scene that I like, it becomes my thesis. Through notecards and outlining, I propose several antithesis scenes - scenes that seem to have no connection other than that they feature the same characters. These scenes are conceived very much in the way Musique concrète composed - I take real life moments culled from observations, or patterns found in random historical events that piqued my fancy, or something completely off the deep end from a dream or vision I had, and turn these into notes. I can manipulate the tones of these events through my toolbox - pacing, dialogue, mise-en-scene, action, etc.. - and then ram them up against what I had previously written.

When we do this, our minds will make their own connections, and most of the time it doesn't work. We know it doesn't work because on every logical front it doesn't make sense. Our minds can't make that connection in an efficient amount of time. But when it works - and we know it will work because it makes us feel - the results can be astounding and revelatory.

I get that feeling when I listen to "difficult"music. It's like watching / hearing someone sketch, crafting something new and following a line and not knowing where it is going. There's real mystery in that, and a sense of entropy within a massive-but-closed system. It's a step towards a greater cognitive dissonance, where we hold conflicting ideals together and this creates discomfort. When we have discomfort, our characters and minds seek a way out. That way out is the plot to your story, and when reinforced with the fleshed-out personalities of your characters, that way out will ring true almost every time.

I find that writing - the best writing - is putting yourself and your characters in very disconcerting situations and letting them find their way out of it. Your characters will find the path of least resistance if you allow them to breathe. Cut the marionette strings and let them work it out. Sometimes the results aren't what you anticipated (I've had many characters die mid-script) and that's the God aspect of writing. Revive them and put them in a different situation, and see where they go. It's an exhausting way to write and the number of drafts and ideas that emerge are enormous, but I also view this as building up your treasure chest of ideas. One idea that doesn't work becomes solid gold in another script, another context. But to write this way requires immense discipline, because you will get derailed frequently and often, but you just have to stick with it. It's a process just like any other, and like anything else worth its while, it requires a firm commitment. But the effort is well worth it, as I feel I've produced some of the strongest writing in my career in the past few months. It's daunting but if you're adventurous then I urge you give it a try. Even if it doesn't work out, you will forever be richer for the attempt.

Grouper - 'Soul Eraser'