When developing a film project, we encounter cases in which the inclusion of written or spoken language as a guiding principle for imagery might become inevitable. Is there a way to organize images in a way that they comment on themselves? And how does audio fit into this interplay? How do you avoid the pitfalls of a didactic documentary while still communicating clearly? Learn to manipulate montage and the particular associative qualities of sound, image, and text to support your artistic vision!

ASSEMBLING REALITY will explore this triangular relationship, by looking at how filmmakers can organize and assemble material of different mediums, and from different sources to an effective and poetic end. The nature of ‘montage’ will be investigated in a broader sense over the course of three days. Starting with assembling from macro to micro, horizontal to vertical, to an overall structural analysis to editing within a single frame, guest instructors will walk participants through this thought process in their own work.

We will host instructors working in this mode from different corners of moving image production: essay filmmakers, editors, sound designers, writers and more, who will address these highly complex challenges of image, text, and sound montage in documentary film and occasionally other experimental forms of contemporary moving image media making.

While focusing on the legible appearance of language (i.e. written prologues, titles, interfiles and subtitles) the workshop will also draw from analogies to the organization of language itself (syntax, grammar) as well as pulling from microbiology and other scientific fields, comparing the the construction of a film to a social body with the ability of developing itself (film assemblage compared with assemblage theory).

Participants will gain a greater understanding of editing, both theory and in practice, and a deeper connection to the meaning and impact of their choices when working to combine image, text and sound.

Caspar’s film “time / OUT OF JOINT” will be screened at UnionDocs before the workshop, Thursday, May 10. Learn more and purchase tickets here.

10:00a

Warm up, inspiring references, case study.

10:30a

Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique

11:45a

Discussion

12:30p

Share / Discussion / Exercise

1:00p

Lunch (on your own)

2:00p

Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique

3:15p

Discussion

4:00p

Workshop Exercise + Critique

5:00p

Wrap Up

Shambhavi Kaul’s cinematic constructions conjure uncanny, science-fictive non-places. Described as creating “zones of compression and dispersion,” her work utilizes strategies of montage and recirculation, inviting an affective response while simultaneously measuring our capacity to know what we encounter. She has exhibited her work worldwide at venues such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, The New York Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Edinburgh International Film Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the 2014 Shanghai Biennale and a 2015 solo show at Jhaveri Contemporary, in Mumbai.

More comfortable expanding sonic and musical boundaries than being confined by them,

Quentin Chiappetta enjoys an unusually wide-ranging creative career as a composer, sound designer and mixer for the stage, the screen, and the art world.

Quentin created the original score and multi-channel sound design for Panamarama, a permanent exhibition at the entrance to the BioMuseo in Panama City. For Soundscapes, at the National Music Centre in Calgary, Quentin knit together a sound collage of popular Canadian music. The piece was a prizewinner of the 2016 MUSE Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in museum media. He is currently creating immersive sonic works for museums in Idaho, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

He is a favored collaborator of experimental installation artists and musicians, including the legendary Tony Conrad, Zeena Parkins, Kim Sooja, and Christian Marclay. Quentin’s 20-year creative relationship with Marclay culminated in The Clock, the groundbreaking winner of the 2012 Venice Biennale for which he was the sound designer and mixer.

The recipient of multiple Meet the Composer grants and American Music Center awards, Quentin has been commissioned by new music ensembles and leading choreographers, most recently collaborating with the legendary Yvonne Rainer. In 2015, he was a resident composer at La Mama Umbria, in Italy.

Francisco Bello is an Oscar and three time Emmy nominee. He shot and produced Salim Baba (HBO), a 2008 Best Short Documentary Oscar and 2009 Emmy Nominee. Francisco produced and edited War Don Don (HBO), the winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival, for which he was also given the inaugural Karen Schmeer Documentary Editing Award and two Emmy nominations. Additional highlights include editing the 2017 SXSW Narrative Grand Jury Prize winning Most Beautiful Island (Goldwyn), the Peabody winning Best Kept Secret (POV), the Cine Golden Eagle winning Code of the West (PBS), the Karen Schmeer Award winning Our Nixon (CNN), and the Best Editing Cinema Eye Honors nominee The Reagan Show (CNN). His editing will be seen in the 2018 releases Out of My Head (WP: MoMA Doc Fortnight), and Oscar Nominee Richard Rowley’s The Blue Wall (WP: HotDocs). Francisco co-directed Dreaming Against the World, seen at the 2015 Telluride Film Festival, New York’s Asia Society, the Museum of the Fine Arts in Boston, and China Institute.