Toxico Cultura

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11334968[/vimeo]

By Carlos Casas (ES)
Music: Andrea Belfi (IT)

EVIL  03:46   |  Prix Ars Electronica 2010  |

Says Carlos:

Evil (3:30) Evil variations 1

is part of a archive works I ve been developing to uncover a certain ghostly fluid inherent in film, a way to deconstruct and use archive material as mortar for a new audiovisual matter. These works are only a way to give new life to this material, as well as constructing a new vision. Evil uses samples expands or extends the opening shot of Touch of Evil, by Orson Welles.  Considered the most remarkable long shot in the history of cinema, it also includes  an amazing sound design work, and music, that at it s time was more than revolutionary and was only understood and applied years later when Walter Murch reedited the film through Welles´s notes.  Evil is the first on a series of variations developed with italian musician and drummer Andrea Belfi.   It is trough these notes that I found inspiration to rework and recompose these scene.

Orson Welles: “In scoring the picture, it was planned to use, for the most part, rock and roll and latin-american rhythm numbers. The streets of a border town are always noisy with the blare of various loudspeakers, broadcasting from the entrance of night clubs…bars and cantinas. Considerable use was to be made of this. It is very important that the usual rancheros and mariachi numbers should be avoided and the emphasis should go on afro-cuban rhythm numbers. …This rock and roll comes from radio loudspeakers, juke boxes and in particular, the radio in the motel. It is very important to note that in the recording of all these numbers–which are supposed to be heard through street loudspeakers–that the effect should be just exactly as bad as that. The music itself should be skillfully played, but it will not be enough in doing the final sound mixing to run this track through an echo chamber with a certain amount of filter. To get the effect we’re looking for, it is absolutely vital that this music be played through a cheap horn in the alley outside the sound building. After this is recorded, it can be then loused up even further by the basic process of re-recording with a tinny exterior horn….  And since it does not represent very much in the way of money, I feel justified in insisting upon this, as the result will really be worth it.” “All the above music of course is “realistic”, in the sense that it is literally playing during the action. For the purpose of clarity in these notes, this music will be referred to as ‘background music’, as distinguished from ‘underscoring’, a term which will be used to designate that part of the music which accommodates dramatic action and which does not come from radios, night clubs, orchestras or juke boxes. In other words, the usual dramatic music (used) in a picture. This underscoring, as will be seen, is to be most sparingly used, and should never give a busy, elaborate, orchestrated effect. What we want is musical color rather than movement; sustained washes of sound rather than…melodramatic or operatic scoring.”

***

(Carlos Casas is a Tóxico padrino, constant accomplice, fellow list maker–with more projects joint coming soon. He also gave a fabulous cinema workshop for “La Incubadora”–a multidisciplinary program created by Tóxico for the 12 best students of a private university in Mexico City.)