Double Exposure film festival shows collaboration between media, music students
Students from The Media School and the Jacobs School of Music will show their collaborative work at the fourth annual Double Exposure, an experimental film festival that starts at 6:30 p.m. March 8 at IU Cinema. Admission is free.
The audience will watch silent films of about four to six minutes created by students in C438 Experiments with the Film Camera, among others. To enhance the storytelling, the audience will hear a live ensemble playing music composed and performed by Jacobs students especially for the films.
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and lecturer Susanne Schwibs, who teaches the class, said projects like Double Exposure are important for students because they introduce them to the world of avant-garde film making as well as show realities of the movie industry, such as working with other creative minds to produce a single work.
“It’s basically exploring the less typical and the less standard, and part of my interest is that during college is the time to really experiment,” Schwibs said.
Creepy music plays in the background. A girl plays a violin. A skull appears. A kitchen mixer spins in black and white.
11 Original Films
A couple is in a grocery store. A man in a black hat walks in.
11 Original Scores
There’s a time lapse of people walking around on IU’s campus. A girl dances by a window. A child’s photo appears.
Live musical accompaniment
A man lays apparently dead on the grass. Photos of the beach roll.
Double Exposure Indiana University Cinema, Sunday March 8th, 6:30 p.m.
Double Exposure reflects a broader IU collaboration as well. Working with Schwibs are John Gibson of Jacobs, Louis Goldford of the Student Composers Association, Mark Hood of the Jacobs recording arts program and IU Cinema director Jon Vickers.
Students submit their final projects in the fall class for consideration in Double Exposure. In the spring, they work with composition students to create an emotional message in sound that matches the visual message.
Last week, performance students rehearsed the music, then students in the Jacobs audio recording program recorded it.
Media School doctoral student and associate instructor Javier Ramirez, the director of Printed Memories (Recuerdos Impresos), has submitted works to Double Exposure four times.
“I’ve always had an interesting collaboration with the composers,” Ramirez said. “I make the film, and I ask them ‘What did my film do to inspire you?’ It’s always been the case that the music they compose takes my film to a level that I couldn’t have done myself.”
Ramirez said he is a “long-distance dad” because his daughter lives in Texas while he attends IU. He said Printed Memories represents his daughter, and also deals with the death of his grandmother of Alzheimer’s and his uncle of brain cancer.
Ramirez has worked on the film for two years, and he was pleased to collaborate again with Alex Blank, a Jacobs grad student in composition.
It’s Blank’s third Double Exposure. He said working with filmmakers such as Ramirez has taught him to be flexible with a collaborative project.
“It provides a different level of interface because a lot of what I do is first by hand on paper, which is transferred to the computer, and things aren’t necessarily intended to be dictated by the medium,” Blank said. “But in this case, it has to fit relatively well within the constraints of the movie.
“To be able to do that, and put it in front of musicians, who are not computers, there’s a little bit of flexibility that’s needed,” Blank added. “It teaches you to be flexible.”
Ashley Chambers, a first time Double Exposure filmmaker and a former student of Ramirez’, was inspired to take part in the project when she was enrolled in C360 Motion Picture Production for Shooting on Film.
(Sam Robinson, junior | The Media School)
Her film, The Things We Bury, is about a man who has to come to grips with accidentally killing his brother. She collaborated with Matt Recio, who composed the music for her project. She heard it for the first time last Wednesday.
“We really wanted the heartbeat effect with the harp, and we were really happy about it,” Chambers said. “We’re really excited to hear it with the film.”
Double Exposure itself is evolving. Schwibs wants to open the festival to the community. This year, a film made by high school students at the Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship in Bloomington has been entered. The Investigator was produced with help of C438 students last year.
“If you really want to learn the film language and the film medium, you should learn different formats,” Schwibs said of the project. “It helps you master the medium.”
See the lineup for Double Exposure 2015:
Warp — 3.45 minutes
Film: Tyler Strzelecki and Exsenet Esner
Music: Patricia Wallinga
Sound Mix: Nate Lasley
The Investigator — 1.59 minutes
Film: Joseph Camacho-Roy, Johnathan Morrison, Massimo Pisano, Wolfe Allen, Reagan White, Asher Nottingham
Music: Ray Kim
Sound Mix: Jonathan Bruns
Circle of Seasons —2.56 minutes
Film: Rachel Johansen, Jade Sharp and Yue Yan
Music: Curtis Smith
Sound Mix: Nathaniel Davis
Soft Rains — 2.32 minutes
Film: Jamie Hook
Music: Chris Poovey
Sound Design: Jonathan Bruns
Beats To Life — 2.41 minutes
Film: Haley Rios and John Hardeman
Music: Texu Kim
Sound Mix: Nate Lasley
Bassline — 4:02 minutes
Film: Bronson DeLeon and Jia Wei
Music: Kim Osberg
Sound Design: Nathaniel Davis
Sneeze — 5.11 minutes
Film: Yun Jin Woo
Music: Jihyun Kim
Sound Mix: Kevin Weinberg
The Things We Bury — 3.27 minutes
Film: Ashley Chambers and Alex Crouch
Music: Matt Recio
Sound Mix: Andrew Marten
Miniature Bloomington — 2:58 minutes
Film: Michael Komasinski
Music: Danny Hansen
Sound Mix: Kevin Weinberg
SUPER MARKET — 3:03 minutes
Film: Colleen O’Keefe
Music: Brady Lanier
Sound Mix: Andrew Marten
Printed Memories — 3:18 minutes
Film: Javier Ramirez
Music: Alex Blank
Sound Design: Nico Useche