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Just a week after the film industry awards Oscars for original film, musical score and sound engineering, Double Exposure will debut silent films complete with live orchestras performing original work.

Instead of golden statuettes, however, students will receive kudos from friends in attendance and gain pride in seeing their work on the big screen. IU Cinema will show nine films at 6:30 p.m. March 5 that are products of a Media School experimental film class and a Jacobs School of Music composition course.

For both groups of students, the collaboration enhances the individual class experiences.

“There are not very many people who have a score written for their film at this stage in their life, so to see how it goes through these steps is a really cool experience,” said Media School lecturer Susanne Schwibs, who, with Jacobs’ Mark Hood, launched the collaboration six years ago.

During a rehearsal last week, students worked on the presentation for Sunday.

“This is one of my favorite parts of the whole project,” said Schwibs, who teaches the experimental filmmaking class and is an Emmy-award winning documentarian.

She said the projects offer a unique opportunity, one rarely offered to students at this point in their educations. To create a film of their own from scratch and work with composers and engineers, gives both the Media School and the Jacobs’ students real-life experiences in their fields of study.

“It’s not often at the college level that a composer will team up with a filmmaker, a sound designer and audio engineering person,” said Mark Hood, Jacobs School of Music audio engineering and sound production professor. “And the great thing is to learn how to collaborate with different disciplines. As the filmmakers move on to different programs or careers in the industry, they still communicate with the composer and audio engineers. So this is setting up, potentially, a lifetime of team work, and the whole industry is about team work.”

Zachary Watt, media designer production major, was the co-filmmaker for his video project, Permanent, the story of a relationship where the man loses his memory and forgets his girlfriend. As they try to rebuild their relationship, he finds a box that allows him to remember things from his past when he touches the objects inside it. As the film progresses, it follows the couple’s experience and struggles as the man becomes fixated and obsessed with the box.

All of this is squeezed into a seven-minute film.

“The hardest part was figuring out how to create film that couldn’t stand on its own,” Watt said. “The idea behind Double Exposure is that the music and film work together to create a story, so we as filmmakers had to make a film that had little to no dialogue, while telling a visual story that can be built up with the music.”

Fillmmakers worked on their projects fall semester, then handed off to the composing students, and both groups are collaborating this semester.

John Griffith, the composer who worked on the music for Permanent, spent about four weeks on the project. Earlier in the year, he met with the filmmakers and discussed what kind of music they wanted to accompany their video.

“They told me what moods they wanted in each scene, and I made seven drafts of scores and showed them to my colleagues and professors,” he said. “I kept going back and tweaking them to figure out what worked best to tell the story. It was a pretty stressful four weeks.”

Other filmmakers, such as Kali Munro, a graduate student at the Media School, had a different idea. Her team’s film, Why Talk When You Can Dance? focuses on the art of conversation, how it’s more than just words, but also a physical expression through vocal chords and body movement.

“When we were coming up with our idea, we thought, how can we make it a silent film but still use the music to give our characters voices?” she said.

Patricia Wallinga, a senior composition major, made the music for this film.

“I was very influenced with how the dancers and characters looked and moved and treated each other,” she said. “You have contrast within the characters too, and if we do a good job, it will look like they are dancing to the music that I wrote.”

After Wallinga spent a long time watching the multiple drafts of the film for inspiration, she spent about two weeks writing the music.

Teams of students rehearsed last week, detailing every little part of the film and music to match them perfectly. Audio mixers practiced mixing the sound of the orchestra and the videos to create the best balance they could.

“When the performance happens, there are microphones on the orchestra,” said John Bowman, a junior audio engineering major serving as sound mixer. “I amplify that out of the speakers into the theater so that everyone can hear them really well.”

The mixers use the surround-sound system at the IU Cinema during the show. After the performance, students record the orchestra and mix with the movies to balance all of the dynamics.

“It’s really a privilege to have access to that $100,000 sound system,” Hood said of the cinema’s state-of-the-art equipment. “Over the years, they’ve learned to trust us, though I think it was nerve-wracking for them at first.”

At Double Exposure, the orchestra will play in the pit as the videos show on the screen. Each year, the event has drawn a full house.

“As The Media School starts to find its balance of filmmaking and collaboration with other arts, we’re looking forward to lots more of this,” Hood said.

Here are the nine films set for Double Exposure:

Inverse 3:52 min

• Filmmakers: Madison Dowers and Dylan Gray
• Composer: Jake Jung-Wong Oh
• Sound: Jessie Brewer

Tight Breaths 2:53 min

• Filmmakers: Maddie Aybar and Kristen Braselton
• Composer: Zhigong Wei
• Sound: Brian Berger

High Expectations 6:53 min

• Filmmakers: Joel Chapman, Matt Williams, Brittany Berg
• Composer: Lang Chen
• Sound: Walter Everton

Permanent 7:27 min

• Filmmakers: Therin Showalter and Zachary Watt
• Composer: John Griffith
• Sound: Chris Alexeev

Backstage Ballerina 5:09 min

• Filmmakers: Laura Huey and Emily Lovell
• Composer: Kyle Rotolo
• Sound: John Bowman

Ritual 5:16 min

• Filmmakers: Sean Albert and James Hoffman
• Composer: Spencer Haynes
• Sound: Nick Collado

Why Talk When You Can Dance? 4:26 min

• Filmmakers: Kali Munro and Daiyawn Smith
• Composer: Patricia Wallinga
• Sound: Hannah Reich

RE:Corded 4:35 min

• Filmmakers: Kurt Rohn and Brendon BeMent
• Composer: Will Kim
• Sound: Jonathan Black

Caminos 4:02 min

• Filmmaker: Nzingha Kendall
• Domposer: Kathryn Jorgensen
• Sound: John Bowman

More:

• Learn more about the event.