kagablog

The world’s first full-length movie to be shot entirely on cellphones has just been wrapped up in Joburg, writes Ryan Fortune

‘We are re-writing the book on cinema here. It opens up a whole world of possibilities for African filmmakers’

IT’S 3AM on Christmas morning 2005 and, while Santa makes his final deliveries to good children around the world, a bunch of filmmakers in the pool bar of Johannesburg’s Melrose Arch Hotel are accelerating the digital cinema revolution.

They’ve been shooting for over a week now, mostly nights. Everyone’s dead tired, so this particular scene is taking a bit longer than usual to get in the bag. “Action!” says the director for at least the 20th time in as many minutes, prompting the two female leads to start doing their thing at the pool table. As the girls hit the balls, chat and flirt, their movements are recorded by the cameras embedded in two of Sony Ericsson’s slick new W900i cellphones. That’s right: once this film, SMS Sugar Man, is completed, it will be the first feature film in the world to be shot entirely on cellphone cameras.

At this point, every tech head in the room will begin to sneer derisively and mutter words like “pixellation” and “let’s just wait and see”. None of them will have reckoned with the persistence of the film’s director, Aryan Kaganof, who loves nothing better than to disprove all doubters and naysayers. In 1996, just a few years out of film school in the Netherlands, he made Naar de Klote! (Wasted!), the world’s first 35mm feature film shot on mini-dv tape — and a Dutch box office hit. A week before shooting began on SMSSugarman, a Swedish lab returned the test blow-up to 35mm film. It looked great, rich in colour, grain and contrast. The doubters will be disappointed.

“We are re-writing the book on cinema here, Ryan, things will never be the same again. From now onwards, all you’ll need [to make a film] is a good idea, a cellphone, a laptop and you’re off. It opens up a whole world of possibilities for African filmmakers …”

It’s another long night on the shoot of SMS Sugar Man and Kaganof — film director, poet, writer, photographer, musician and, for the purposes of this project, a top-end pimp named Sugar Man — is waxing lyrical as he guides his gleaming white Valiant down a deserted Oxford Road. I’m in the passenger seat and the two “hookers” — Leigh Graves and Deja Bernhardt — are chatting and touching up their lipstick in the back. “I haven’t thought about film as much as I have in the past two weeks,” he says, “and I’m learning new things all the time on this shoot.”

That sounds a bit disingenuous, I think, coming from someone who has made nearly 40 films and videos in the past 15 years, many of them such radical breakaways from conventional form and structure that they earned him — besides international awards and critical acclaim — the label “underground cinema’s baddest bad boy”. “I can now shoot what I like,” he says, with the glint of the true believer in his eyes, so I don’t disagree.

Kaganof first hove into my field of vision towards the end of 1999. We were introduced to each other by a mutual friend, an actress. She told me he was a South African filmmaker just returned from exile and that I should interview him, but I never got around to it. His craggy features, hulking posture, combat fatigues and the Glock he wore on his ankle conspired to dampen my enthusiasm for the idea.

Having attended several of his many book launches and performances in recent years, read his online short stories and browsed his website, I have had cause to modify my initial impression, if only slightly. Kaganof is, indeed, a dangerous man, but only because, like the 20th century’s best artists and philosophers, he has a far lower tolerance for bullshit than the rest of us. Poured into art — visual, musical, literary — his particular kind of madness, if that’s what you’d like to call it, poses no threat to anyone on a personal level. Instead, like Ed Norton’s dual character in Fight Club, he is intent on bringing the whole damn superstructure down.

Apart from all of the above, SMS Sugar Man is emblematic of what anthropologists refer to as the “leapfrog effect”. This is when people in developing nations adopt new technology and use it in ways that allow them to overtake users in developed nations. To extract maximum value from leapfrogging, however, you must be an early adopter.

The future is right here, right now.

a composition for solo violin and cell phone orchestra
by michael blake and aryan kaganof
the cell phones play leit motifs from wagner’s ring cycle
and simultaneously film the solo violinist
the composition is written for yasutaka hemmi

I just went onto your website.

You are a true artist! Bit sick, Bit beautiful
Bit fall-in-lovely
Bit “can I please gouge my eyes out with a Victorian fish fork”
You are a true honest!
I would never swap kidneys with you though,
even though you offer them up,
like a child
with your big grey copied eye (s).
You forget that I can see the years of drinking,
the slight grey tinges
the fly that you didn’t flick off
because your big grey eyes
were filled with tears and you couldn’t see right.
Bit drunk on years of tearing.
Needed me to take them,
Needed me too.
I’m not going to show you my kidneys though.
even though any black market dealer would love to have mine more.
they
Needed me different.
True!
I say all this because your kidneys are just fine (bring on the pilling)
even though I love you
would have your child
even if I wouldn’t have you.
You needed me because you took everyone you didn’t need.
And now I won’t swap one for one because,true artist,
I’m not going to be another fly you forgot to flick off.
artist,
I wish I wanted your kidneys.

Love Eternal
Nicole Rouillard

Dear Aryan:

Many thanks for your message. I read your book in the 17-hour flight from Jo’burg to Atlanta and Charlotte. Many thanks for your book of poems. I enjoyed the poems–there is passion and I can capture the strong images you create. I also like the unconventional attitude that makes the themes and images very fresh in the mind. Keep on the good work.

It was a pleasure meeting you too. I hope to send you a copy of my new poems, whose three adavance copies I brought to Durban but soon sold out. I did not want to give the older collections and, as soon as the publishers get the books to me, I hope to send you a copy of IN THE HOUSE OF WORDS.

Again, thanks and let’s keep in touch.

Cordially,

Tanure Ojaide

SMS Sugar Man, primer largometraje de ficción registrado con teléfonos móviles con cámara incorporada, a un costo de menos de un millón de rands (unos 164 mil dólares) vió su estreno este mayo en su país de producción, África del Sur. Su realizador, Aryan Kaganof, es un artista visionario y experimentador que está bien acostumbrado a correr riesgos de toda clase. En esta, la historia de un proxeneta y dos prostitutas de alta sociedad que deambulan la víspera de Navidad por una Johannesburgo desierta, Kaganof asegura abrir una brecha a aproximaciones más democráticas y baratas, de las que el audiovisual africano está necesitado.

Miradas presenta una entrevista con el director de fotografía de SMS Sugar Man, Eran Tahon.

- Eran, ¿es este el primer largo que ha sido fotografiado usando teléfonos móviles como cámara?
- Hasta donde sé, así es. Un video musical para la banda The Presidents of The United States fue fotografiada con una SonyEricsson k750i y que existen algunos cortos filmados de la misma manera, pero no largos. SMS Sugar Man es el primer largometraje filmado así y transferido a película de 35 mm.

- ¿Por qué Aryan Kaganof propuso la idea de filmar con celulares?

- Fue tanto por necesidad como por inspiración creadora. Él y los productores quisieron hacer una película sin impedimentos, empezando por sostener una estrategia de no-presupuesto. Él quiso usar la tecnología actual, utilizando incluso ese equipamiento que se encuentra disponible al público. También porque la apariencia que brinda esta clase de visualidad es totalmente apropiada a la historia que hacíamos, una de carácter muy emocional. Kaganof fue el primer director en filmar en digital y transferir a 35 mm., en su largo Wasted!, de 1996, antes que Dogma lo hiciera.

- ¿Cómo enfocó la fotografía cinematográfica al utilizar esta nueva tecnología?
- Aryan quería algo visceral. Él entendió las limitaciones del medio desde el principio, pero de algún modo, con su enfoque, las mismas han jugado a nuestro favor. Supe que con una cámara de teléfono celular podría tener tanto alcance como quisiera, y ello me indicó que debía concentrarme en la iluminación. Usamos casi exclusivamente luces prácticas. A partir de ese criterio escogimos las locaciones, predominantemente por su iluminación o, en cambio, por su carencia de luz.

- ¿Cómo fue la preproducción? ¿Qué pruebas hizo?

- Ante todo, hicimos muchas pruebas. Probamos diferentes teléfonos con cámara bajo una variedad de iluminaciones y exhibimos el material en monitores. También filmamos con el reparto potencial (eso era antes del casting final), buscando entre composiciones, movimientos de cámara y diferente estilos de filmar. Queríamos descubrir las limitaciones del medio, ubicar las fronteras dentro de las cuales podíamos crear la película. Dedicamos unas pocas semanas a filmar así, en su mayor parte en las noches.

Sabíamos que hacíamos algo nuevo y era difícil encontrar referentes en otras películas. No hubo muchas discusiones aunque, para nosotros, se hacía de esta manera o no se hacía. No se trataba de sutilezas o de ajustes graduales de la iluminación y el color, nada como el proceso de filmar con película o HD. Simplemente así: donde sentíamos que las tomas no funcionaban, desechábamos enteramente el estilo con que se había filmado. Pusimos todas nuestras pruebas en Final Cut Pro (FCP), cortamos un segmento de tres minutos junto con nuestro experto de VFX, Jurgen Meekel, probamos color, blanco y negro, movimiento rápido y lento, tamaño de cuadro, y lo mandamos a Rekorder en Dinamarca para transfer a 35 mm. ¡Fue una revelación!

- ¿Qué cambios decidió tras emprender y revisar sus pruebas?

- Después de escoger el teléfono con cámara para la película (Sony Ericsson W900i), mandamos algún pietaje de prueba a Rekorder, en Dinamarca, para la transferencia a 35 mm. Cuando vi el material en película, excedió mis expectativas. Las imágenes lucían como nada que hubiese visto antes: altamente saturadas, densas, cálidamente dibujadas, que te golpean derecho en el estómago. Supe que estábamos metidos en algo muy especial. Empezamos revisando nuestra estrategia inicial de rodar portátil, cámara en mano, con muchos movimientos de cámara, en favor de utilizar trípodes y otros soportes de cámara, allí donde funcionaran para la historia. Tanto Aryan como yo nos dimos cuenta de que podíamos tener además largas tomas estáticas en la película, y que con esta apariencia serían muy poderosas.

- ¿Cuál es la diferencia fundamental entre filmar con teléfonos móviles y equipamiento tradicional de cine y digital?
- Para mí lo fue la ausencia de distancia o separación entre lo que encuadraba, en la mayoría de los casos los actores, y lo que ellos atravesaban. Creó un nivel de intimidad que nunca antes he experimentado en el set. Cuando algo sucedía de improviso, tenía que responder inmediatamente, pues una segunda toma nunca es igual. Ello significó que a veces estaba tan próximo a la actriz como a diez centímetros al filmar los close up; puede imaginarse cuán estresante era para ellos actuar así. Nunca podía estar en su camino, más bien tenía que fluir con ellos, y eso creó el ritmo de cada escena. Tuvieron que confiar en que respondería a cada cambio inmediatamente. Así que pienso que estuvo mucho más en sintonía emocional con lo que estaba pasando. Usted no obtiene eso con cámaras grandes.

- ¿Qué apariencia específica trató de conseguir, y en que películas se basó?
- Vimos Alphaville para tener una referencia, pero fue más filmar Johanesburgo como una metrópolis vacía (rodamos durante diez días en Johanesburgo, en Navidad). Como dije antes, sabíamos que tratábamos con un medio totalmente nuevo y con herramientas que nunca utilizamos antes. Seguro todo el mundo utiliza teléfonos-cámaras diariamente, pero íbamos a hacer un largo, a trabajar con un guión o al menos con una sinopsis. Tuvimos que sentarnos y revisar todo lo que sabíamos acerca del proceso. Pienso que la visualidad salió de este proceso. Tuve que explorar lo que esta cámara puede hacer, y crear un estilo cinemático para la historia. Busqué altos contrastes y colores densamente saturados. La paleta del color era semejante tanto en las calles de Hillbrow como en las habitaciones opulentas del hotel, conectando estos mundos separados de Johanesburgo.

- ¿Qué paleta de color específica diseñó?
- Para Hillbrow había mucho fluorescente verde y amarillo. Utilicé cada señal de neón que pude encontrar para encender la escena, y dentro del hotel fue más un color tungsteno / paja lavado, con sombras fuertes. Encuadré bastante las fuentes, de manera que nunca había preocupación por la continuidad o la motivación. Algunas escenas eran de luz muy alta y en otras apenas podías ver las caras de las personas, porque todo estaba oscuro. El hotel proporcionó más azul y rojo, las luces interiores eran de diferente calidad, más limpias y vigorosas. Aunque las fuentes de tungsteno eran igualmente tibias, como en Hillbrow, lucen muy diferentes, definitivamente más claras. Pienso que los tonos tibios funcionaron bien para la película, y realmente los hice más profundos. No puedes obtener un rostro anaranjado con este teléfono de cámara.

- ¿Puede explicar la ruta técnica que diseñó para el uso del móvil?
- Técnicamente, decidimos grabar el material en tarjetas de memoria Sony Duo de 512 mb; teníamos dos por teléfono. Así que ocho teléfonos y doce tarjetas. Tuvimos un trabajo muy serio de sonido, y Nico Louw es el primer sonidista del país. Él utilizó una pizarra digital inteligente para sincronizar. Entonces Greg Van Niekerk, nuestro continuista y asistente de celular, descargó el material de las tarjetas de memoria a una laptop Apple Mac que teníamos en el set, reagrupando cada toma según el número de la escena y sincronizándola. La idea era convertir el material a DV PAL y crear un offline. Cuando la edición hubiera terminado, convertiríamos la película entera a archivos de alta resolución (Cineon), los cuales se utilizarían para el transfer a filme. Así que transferiríamos del disco duro a 35 mm.

- Entonces la película se origina en un Sony Ericsson W900i, que registra imágenes y sonido a 30 cuadros por segundo (fps); graba en tarjetas de memoria. ¿Y a partir de ahí?
- Utilizamos tarjetas de memoria de 512 mb, que almacenan aproximadamente una hora de material. Como teníamos dos tarjetas por teléfono, cada pocas tomas había que reemplazar y descargar a la laptop. Greg estaba encargado de eso, y la descripción de su puesto de trabajo es la mayor. Tuvo que reagrupar los clip según la escena, toma y cámara. Copió el material al final de cada noche de filmación a CD, el cual se convertía en nuestro master. Así tuvimos salvas del material en la laptop y en CD. Para el post teníamos la imagen de video y el sonido separados. Jurgen Meekel digitalizó todo en Final Cut Pro, convirtiendo el material de MPEG4 original a DV Pal, y comenzó a sincronizar audio y video. A partir de ahí, es como en cualquier proceso de edición normal, o sea, clips sincrónicos para que el editor trabaje. La película se va editando mientras se hace. En breve empezaremos la fase final del transfer a fílmico.

- ¿Qué planificación organizó con su equipo de posproducción?
- Desde el principio tuvimos que crear un protocolo para el proceso completo. El asunto principal fue que el sonido tuvo que registrarse separadamente, lo cual significa que tuvimos que utilizar una claqueta. Era chistosa la claqueta en una película con celulares, pero el sistema es exactamente el mismo que en cualquier otra producción. Revisamos las opciones que teníamos en términos de convertir de MPEG4 a un formato con el cual se pudiera trabajar en Final Cut Pro.

Mi principal preocupación era mantenerme fiel a la apariencia de la fotografía original tomada con el teléfono, pues no quería perder esas características y esperaba usar el formato original en la edición. Pero eso no estaba funcionando, y no pudimos editar en MPEG4. Gastamos mucho tiempo experimentando y Jurgen Meekel tuvo que encontrar soluciones para muchos problemas de la post, buscando en la red y consultando a Yoav Dagan, especialista en online. Él propuso la solución de convertir todo a DV PAL antes de sincronizar y editar, pero concordó en mantener el tamaño original de cuadro (que es mucho más pequeño que el DV PAL normal) y hacer una conversión final a archivos más grandes en formato Cineon al preparar la transferencia a fílmico.

- ¿Qué dimensiones tenía el departamento de cámara y luces con que trabajó?

- Casi ninguno. Tuve a un ayudante aprendiz que apoyó con la iluminación y accesorios. Apenas nosotros dos. No utilicé muchas luces, excepto algunas dirigidas y otras flexibles para el interior del coche. Una tarde tuve un pequeño arreglo de iluminación submarino, para el que utilicé luces industriales y 800 watts para el resto. Fue fácil de manejar entre los dos, y cuando se hizo necesaria otra clase de manipulación, alguien del equipo ayudó. No tuvimos accesorios, porque todas las tomas fueron cámara en mano.

Descubría nuevos movimientos de cámara diariamente; es asombroso lo que puedes hacer con una cámara de este tamaño. De hecho, Alphaville fue una buena referencia, porque en ella el trabajo fotográfico de Raoul Coutard creó un nuevo estilo cinematográfico de cámara libre. Trabajamos muy rápido, cubriendo escenas largas en un par de horas. Hicimos un largo completo en diez, once días, filmando a veces seis horas una noche. En SMS Sugar Man tuvimos que improvisar todo el tiempo.

- ¿Cuáles eran las dimensiones de su equipo, en términos de cámaras, luces y accesorios?

- En el departamento de accesorios, yo había pedido a Tink Minster de Camera Platforms que diseñara y construyera dos apoyos ligeros de cámara, especialmente para los celulares. Podía montar las cámaras en el trípode de manera horizontal o vertical, lo cual me ayudó a crear composiciones más dinámicas. Tink también hizo sostenedores a los espejos exteriores del coche, de manera que pude esconder la cámara en ellos y hacer tomas de travelling mientras filmábamos de noche dentro del auto. Así pude obtener excelente material nocturno, especialmente en Hillbrow, donde uno no puede andar caminando mientras filma con un teléfono celular.

Para la iluminación, obtuve un LED portátil diseñado por Litepanels. Trabajó con dos baterías y era fácil de cargar; lo usé especialmente para los close-up. Dentro del coche coloqué dos paneles ELD que obtuvimos del fabricante canadiense Electricvinyl. Son displays electroluminiscentes: fuentes de luz ligeras que podía colocar dondequiera en el coche, y dieron suficiente luz cuando lo necesité.

- ¿Qué relación tuvo con Sony Ericsson?

- Ninguna. Sin embargo, los productores lograron obtener ocho de sus celulares (W900i), y nosotros tratamos de ponernos en contacto con alguien de su departamento técnico para cambiar el “cerebro” de la cámara, pero nunca conseguimos ninguna ayuda. Así que acabamos usando las cámaras tal y como son. Diseñamos un estuche pequeño de aluminio con una conexión múltiple, de manera que pudiésemos darles cargar simultáneamente, y almacenar las tarjetas de memoria con cuidado.

- ¿Cuál fue la reacción de las casas suministradoras de equipamiento en África del Sur hacia este enfoque? ¿Obtuvo el apoyo que necesitaba para esta película poco convencional?

- El Video Lab de África del Sur pensó que estábamos locos. Les mandamos alguna cantidad de material para que hicieran pruebas de transfer a fílmico y ellos lo corrieron con Inferno en un intento por subirle la resolución, antes de TXing hacia 35 mm. Usted realmente no puede hacer eso con lo que filmamos, material en MPEG4 320×240 a 29.97fps, todo de muy baja calidad y con muy poca información, pero ese era exactamente el look que buscábamos.

Lo que quería era que ellos utilizaran el cuadro pequeño original y lo imprimieran, de manera que el resultado fuera un cuadro de 4:3 en medio de la pantalla ancha del cine, pero estaban reacios a hacerlo. De hecho, fueron muy groseros y pensaron que éramos idiotas. Nunca nos tomaron en serio, y finalmente dijeron que era imposible. Los productores habían trabajado con Rekorder en Dinamarca previamente, y sugirieron que fuésemos con ellos. Cuando hablé con Tomas Caspersen, de Rekorder, él se sintió excitado inmediatamente. Discutimos el tiempo, el color y decidimos qué herramientas utilizar para las pruebas. Le mandamos las pruebas (cerca de dos minutos) en mini-DV, ellos lo hincharon a 35 mm, y trabajó perfectamente. Frank Myburgh, de Digital Films, y Julian fueron una gran ayuda también.

Auxiliaron con la cámara y el planeamiento de las pruebas, ofreciendo soluciones técnicas, así como equipamiento, cuando lo necesitamos. SMS Sugar Man es una película de bajo presupuesto y tuvimos que depender de su bondad. Tink, de Camera Platform, construyó todos los sistemas de apoyo de cámara. Todos confiaron en que hacíamos algo especial, una aproximación experimental al cine que no vemos mucho de en África del Sur. Así que las empresas de postproducción estaban muy escépticas y no ayudaron, pero la gente de cámara fue asombrosa. Estamos haciendo el offline y el online en FCP, aquí en África del Sur, y todo el post en Suecia (el diseño de sonido y la mezcla) y el trabajo de laboratorio en Gran Bretaña.

- Cuán diferente ha sido esta aproximación frente a otras películas en las que trabajaste?

- Esta película es como un paseo en montaña rusa de principio a fin. Todos nos sentíamos en la oscuridad buscando el camino guiados por nuestra creencia en Kaganof, la historia, y en que hacíamos algo muy especial, que nunca había sido hecho antes. Tenía que vérmelas con este formato nuevo, pero lo hicieron también el reparto y todo el equipo. Veía la película con una apariencia oscura, granosa y muy saturada. Quise que los espectadores estuvieran allí, en los cuartos del hotel, fuera en las calles y dentro del coche. Quise también mostrar Johanesburgo de noche, como un personaje en la película, darle vida y una personalidad.

La película sucede durante una noche en Johanesburgo. Pienso que haber estado limitados a los teléfonos-cámara realmente ayudó Así que la diferencia está mayormente en la necesidad de planificar en función de lo que teníamos alrededor, en oposición a crear sets e iluminarlos. Escogimos locaciones que tuvieran luces disponibles, atendiendo a la apariencia y el color que funcionara para nosotros. Aryan escribió las escenas en las locaciones que habíamos escogido. Trabajar así es muy raro. Las actrices utilizaron también los teléfonos, pues eran parte de sus personajes. A veces tuvimos hasta cinco teléfonos utilizándose simultáneamente, cubriendo una escena larga y complicada, convirtiéndola en maravillosa e inmediata.

- ¿Para qué plataformas de distribución se diseñó la película? ¿Cómo se va a exhibir?
- La película acabará teniendo por lo menos cuatro o cinco versiones. Se distribuirá en Mobile TV, Internet, cines, televisión, y luego DVD. Después que tengamos el transfer habrá copias en 35 mm para cine. De esta versión haremos un master digital. Queremos retener la transferencia a 35 mm como una mirada más. Habrá entonces versiones en 35 mm., en HD y master de digibeta, y también MPEG4 para Internet y celulares.

- ¿Piensa que revolucionará el futuro de la cinematografía, y si es así, de qué manera?

- No sé si esperamos tanto. He experimentado en SMS Sugar Man una libertad creadora que no había experimentado antes. Hubo siempre este impulso de intentar algo nuevo sin el temor a fallar, porque hacíamos algo que nunca se había hecho antes. En África del Sur, que ofrece buenas historias y locaciones, apenas hay presupuesto para películas, ni para distribución, y este enfoque nuevo estimulará a los demás a hacer sus películas.

- ¿Hará otras películas de esta manera? ¿Qué haría diferente?

- Seguro que quiero hacer más películas de esta manera; para mí, esto no es un asunto de tecnología. Utilizar teléfonos celulares para filmar una película de largometraje demostró que con la gente correcta, la historia y el espíritu creador podemos hacer que suceda. No importa si fotografío en teléfonos celulares, HD o fílmico; la cuestión es ser creativo, innovador y comprender que en Sudáfrica podemos y debemos crear una nueva clase de cine. Debemos encontrar los caminos para trascender nuestras limitaciones de recursos y crear algo nuevo, en vez de hacer copias de bajo presupuesto de lo que ya se hace fuera.

Equipamiento usado:

Teléfonos Móviles: 8 x Sony Ericsson W900i
Tarjetas de memoria: 12 x 512KB Memory Disks
Luces: 1 x LED por Litepanels
2 x ELD por Eletricvinyl
Accesorios: 2 x Camera Platform Cellphone Heads
1 x Suction Mount
Offline/Online: Apple Mac Duo y 16” Powerbook G4

Traducción: Dean Luis Reyes

Última Actualización ( 29 de junio de 2006 )

this interview first appeared on miradas

photo by lauren oliver

My name is Sugar Man.
I don’t know where I was born.
My mother said one thing.
My father said something else.

I was born outside the law.
Illegitimate. A bastard. Me.
I’m keeping this diary so that you’ll know
exactly when things went wrong.

The lossie is Afrikaans.
She’s got enormous ears and a moustache.
Hair pulled back in a bun.
She looks very tense.
She could pass for Greek.
The moustache helps.

I was smoother than I thought.
Got her talking about herself straight away.
I needed this break.
It’s good for the ego
when they don’t struggle.

“I’m very religious. I have to be.
I feel very guilty about being white.
I’m neglecting myself.
Ancestrally I’m from Persia
where all civilization began.”
Hmm, ancestrally I’m from Roodepoort
where all civilization ended.

“Do you like this kind of music?”

I’m going to relax her.
Get into the inside of her insides
by the end of the night.
It’s a very big project.
She must be made to understand.
To see my point of view.
I mustn’t sweat. I must unwind.
I owe it to myself.
She touches me somehow.
I’ll touch her. I’ll get her drunk.
She’s giggling. Am I entertaining her?

“The music’s terrible.
Your cheapest handbag house.
Strictly cheddar.”

She’s solarising now. It’s quite liberating.
She talks in jump cuts which I slo-mo using
the dagga. I wish I had this on video,
I could watch it over and over again.
She likes me. She hasn’t stopped talking
since I said “Hello, what’s your name?”
I must remember that opening line.
A classic.

“So listen, can I get you another couple of
drinks?”
“I don’t drink gin….not without tonic.”
We laugh. We drink. We laugh.
We go out into the road to smoke.
We go back inside.
We drink. We laugh.

She’s from Ceres.
“You grow up in wine country you develop
gout by the time you’re 23.”
We don’t talk for a while. Steady drinking.
“I lived with a Pisces for a year.
Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m a rock ‘n roller.”
“Look away! Look away! I beseech thee.”
“When I get bored I’m lethal.”
“So what do you do when you’re not
bored?”
“Would you like to see my thing? It talks.”
“Let’s go to Forries first.”

We drive to the illustrious Forrester’s Arms.
Not my choice of pub, believe me,
but it’s too early in the relationship to
bother arguing about anything.
It’s best to leave that until after the dipstick gets oiled.

“That’s thirteen twenty.”
“Thanks.”
It’s not cheap here.
The fresh hake is R19,90. Calamari R26,90.
Chicken Trammezini R21,50.
Regret no cheques accepted.
Steak roll R22,90. Greek salad R16,90.
Forries Burger R17,90.
Pork Schnitzel R23,90.
“I shouldn’t generalize, some of my best
friends are Vegans.”
“The best thing you can do for the Vegans
is not become one of them.”
“What’s the definition of a South African
intellectual?”
“Someone who had to be forced to play
rugby.”
“I love the word “carvery.””
“A gomtor is someone with very bad taste.”
“Do you want to make a donation for the
blind?”
“Absolutely not!”

It’s time. I make my move.
Tongue down her throat and finger up her
skirt. Both get wet.
Now I’m sure she likes me.

Later, at home, after it’s done,
smoking the inevitable Marlboros,
she suddenly turns to me with a serious
look in her eyes and a deep frown
etched across her forehead.

“Nowadays it’s called Iran.
But it used to be Persia,
and before that Mesopotamia.”

She is my first Mesopotamian.

Michael Blake composed the music for Aryan Kaganof’s cellphone film SMS Sugar Man between May and July 2006.

Q: Michael, you have known Kaganof for a while, how did you meet and what have you done together previously?

I met Kaganof around 2000 through a mutual friend Trevor Steele Taylor (film festival curator and an old school friend of mine). My wife and I had just bought a bolthole in Cape Town and Trevor bought Kaganof to the flatwarming. Kaganof and I talked about a number of mutual interests and he put me in touch with Frank Scheffer, the Dutch director who has made marvelous films about new music (Cage, Boulez, Stockhausen, Zappa etc). I later saw some of Kaganof’s films at the Grahamstown Festival and I was blown away.

We met again early in 2003 at his house in Johannesburg over several bottles of wine; on that occasion I gave him a CD of several pieces of mine. He phoned me a few days later, or maybe even the next day, I don’t remember now: “Michael, would you come around, I’d like to show you something”. He had edited images to a 12-minute piece for two pianos, Reverie, which I wrote in 1995. By the next day he had another version, different images – in fact just one image that took the duration of the piece to come into focus. It was the most stunning response to a work of mine that I had ever seen. It’s not been shown because we’ve been waiting for a new version of the music that will appear on a CD of my piano works, which I’ve just about finished editing and which will be released in 2007.

After that Kaganof and I began meeting regularly at The Ant in Melville, and conceived a number of projects, one of which we pursued with some tenacity. We wanted to make a multimedia piece for the interior of the ABSA building in Johannesburg, and even had a meeting with the original architect. But convincing the conservative powers at ABSA was…so we moved on. In 2004 Kaganof filmed the rehearsals and South African premiere performance of my piece Untitled for clarinet and piano, and he made a short portrait as well as a radical remix.

In 2005 during a visit by an Australian ensemble on the last leg of their world tour, Kaganof heard them perform my First String Quartet. We conceived the idea of making a piece for violin, cellphone and video for the leader of the ensemble, brilliant Japanese virtuoso Yasutaka Hemmi. This was premiered at the Grahamstown Festival/New Music Indaba in July this year.

Q: Tell me a little about yourself, what is your background?

My musical background is fairly conventional. I studied music from an early age, did a music degree at Wits University in the 1970s and then moved to London in 1977 where I read for a masters degree at Goldsmiths College. I spent most of the next twenty years composing, playing the piano, organising new music concerts, writing articles on new music, and teaching at various institutions (including Goldsmiths College). I moved back to South Africa in 1998 and taught composition at Rhodes University where I also met my wife Christine Lucia, and obtained a doctorate in 2000 for work composed during the 1980s and 1990s. We moved to Johannesburg in 2002.

Since my student days I have always programmed and performed radical new music. My own work, mostly written for the concert hall, has evolved out of a merging Western and African aesthetic – quite overtly ‘African-sounding’ in pieces loosely collected as my African Journal (late 1970s to early 1990s), when I lived outside South Africa, and much less so since I’ve been living and working back in South Africa.
I have been a film junkie since I was at school. I used to go with Trevor (Steele Taylor) to see horror films every Saturday afternoon at the Cape Town ‘bughouses’: those tearoom cinemas that sadly no longer exist. 1960s horror films had some of the most experimental soundtracks I’ve ever encountered (modernist composers like Elisabeth Lutyens used to do these to earn bread and butter, their concert music not being the most pleasing to the conventional ear).

In the 1970s I did some music for documentaries in the early days of SATV, and back in South Africa I worked on director Liza Key’s two debut films The Furiosus (aka A Question of Madness) and The Man Who Knows Too Much. I’ve worked on a few pilot projects and so on, but my main experience as a composer (and performer) in the area of feature films to date has been ‘silent’ movies. In 2000 I composed almost 90 minutes of live music for Gustav Machaty’s Erotikon, and in subsequent years improvised scores for Joan d’Arc and Nosferatu. These were all commissioned by Trevor Steele Taylor for the Grahamstown Festival.

Q: How did Kaganof approach you to work on SMS Sugar Man?

Sometime in March this year, he came around to have lunch and listen to a computer version of my recently-completed Quintet for Piano and Strings, which I was about to go and premiere in England. Before he left he said, “Mr Blake, if you are free on Friday I would like you to come to a viewing of SMS Sugar Man, and if the film takes your fancy I would like you to compose the score.” Just like that.

Q: What is your attitude to the fact that the film was filmed on mobile phone cameras, and how did this affect your approach to the music?

When we first talked about it, before I’d seen even an early edit of the film, I thought of using ringtone-sized bytes as the basic material. And that stuck. Ideas such as recording the music on cellphone microphones did enter my mind, but they seemed a bit unnecessary in the end. After all, the innovation here was to do with cellphone cameras, and the music was going to be part of a soundtrack with songs that had been recorded conventionally, so I did not want to disadvantage the level of the film score recording. But I hope that different versions of the main theme of the film will become available as downloadable ringtones!…

I was nevertheless quite influenced in my approach by the intimacy of the cellphone camera images - the settings and shades or colours. This prompted my use of intimate chamber ensembles rather than an orchestra. I was also fascinated by the almost microscopic structure of the surface of the images, the fact that the montages were not conventionally smooth and you could literally see the pixels rearranging themselves - well that’s how it struck me as a non-technical film person. Musical (and painting) surfaces interest me enormously.

Q: How did you and Kaganof collaborate? What were your starting points?

We only took up the initial discussion after the re-edit in which the structure of the film changed quite drastically. At this point the structure was no longer linear (ABCDE) but could be read as CADEB. I’ll explain later how this structure was reflected in the music.

I should say, importantly, that working on SMS Sugar Man always felt like a collaboration. It was not, as so often happens in the cinema, a case of the composer brought in at the last minute when the film is complete, to add the music. I felt that the music could affect the images as much as they in turn inspired the music; and on several occasions Kaganof said: “I’ll re-edit that scene to your music”. Music can complement images, but it can also go much deeper and take one to places that images simply cannot go. Such is the importance and power of music in the cinema.
We talked about the music giving textural cohesion to the various sex scenes, for example, and about the haunted hotel space and creating a horror effect for which Kaganof suggested the cello.

As it happens the cello appears in a more conventional role underscoring some of the love scenes, and in the hotel corridors instead we have music played on the theatre organ – perhaps appropriately for such ‘silent movie’-type scenes.

We worked like this: With the DVD on my screen, I created pieces of music on the computer, gave Kaganof a CD, he laid them down on the film soundtrack and called me up to go around to his house to look and listen. We would change things, try things elsewhere in the film, or simply abandon them. Eventually I started going to him with new stuff on my laptop, so I could alter things on the spot. I think eventually we were both happy with the result.

We discovered early on that we both work intuitively, and this is something that has drawn us together artistically. I tend to jump in, not quite knowing the outcome and simply letting my music take me where it will, making important decisions on the way rather than deciding too many things in advance. I know that Kaganof’s approach to his medium is comparable. In the case of this film, my only real pre-planning was the construction of several themes. The rest happened en route.

Q: The underlying narrative structure of the film is innovative and unusual. It is not a linear plot. How did this affect the score and you approach to composing the music?

Back to CADEB, and getting a bit technical. ABCDE are letter-names for musical pitches, and using the German nomenclature for B (B-flat), the SMS Sugar Man musical structure reads like this:

Fortunately this turned out to be a pleasing musical line with enormous potential for harmonisation (adding chords) and so on. This becomes a musical motif in the movie, signifying the structure (quite unconsciously, for most people) throughout the film. I used serial manipulation (in the Schönbergian sense) so this theme is also heard backwards and inverted. I should say at this point that I have not previously worked much in this way in my concert music, but it is an acknowledged fact that many composers experiment in film scores with techniques that they haven’t yet used.

So with the structure of the film firmly encoded in the musical score, I went a stage further and encoded the musical letter-names of Kaganof, myself, Trevor and even Adorno in the score. Theodor Adorno, the great Marxist philosopher and writer on music, for whose work Kaganof and I both share a passion, also wrote one of the finest books on film music, in collaboration with Hans Eisler.

If we take Wagner’s music dramas (Der Ring des Nibelungen, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal) as the prototype of the cinema and multimedia art, it is not surprising that the use of the ‘leitmotif’, which identifies particular characters and so on in the music, plays an important role in film music, though much less so these days. So perhaps my score is also a statement of regret about this ‘loss’.

Q: What overall mood did you want to achieve in your score?

I suppose the overall mood I was after was underlining the ‘fairytale’ element in the film, an element that could so easily be lost in the seedier scenes in the film. Its Christmas Eve setting is referenced in one of the piano pieces (a parody of The Twelve Days of Christmas), and the fairytale mood is brought out in for example the particular music that reaches glorious fruition in the Love Theme. However, I did not want to – and I don’t think I could even if I tried - write music that was conventionally sentimental. Too much of this around already! I was in film composers’ heaven with SMS Sugar Man, working with a director who has a rich musical sensibility and who reacts to what one writes on far more sophisticated a level than one normally gets. Another thing I wanted to achieve was some kind of link between my music and other music (songs and instrumental pieces) used in the film. I did this in one or two places through references either to material or texture or mood.

Q: What other films or music influenced you in preparing for the score?

I’m very interested in the way that director-composer teams have worked: Eisenstein-Prokofiev, Hitchcock-Hermann, Greenaway-Nyman and Kieslowski-Preissner. These have given us some of the finest scores for ‘classic’ movies, such as Ivan the Terrible, Psycho, The Draughtsman’s Contract, Three Colours Blue, and so on. Each film builds on a previous one too, and the collaboration gets tighter and more inventive. And of course Ennio Morricone is one of the greatest movie composers, whoever he’s collaborating with; but then many people don’t know that Morricone is also a ‘free’ music improviser (he plays the trumpet) so he has a much richer musical sensibility than, say, John Williams or Hans Zimmer.

When I’ve lectured to film students at AFDA, I‘ve always talk about these collaborations and shown students how well they work. Then I take for example some Williams from one film and transplant it onto another film to show how little collaboration seems to count in his case: the music interchangeable, the same mood every time.

I don’t think any particular music influenced me except perhaps for Astor Piazzolla in the Love Theme – it’s a kind of tango, and ironic (in a sense) because this is not a traditional love scene. Kaganof commented that he could ‘hear’ the musical gestures Piazzolla would have composed, but of course they aren’t on the surface, they’re a kind of built-in memory. You can’t write a tango in 2006 without referencing the history of the form in some way.

Q: What specific instruments did you choose, and why?

There are several different kinds of music in the film with attendant instrumentation. Firstly the horror-type music in the corridor of the hotel which is always played on a theatre organ. Secondly, pieces of piano music that accompany slightly ironic scenes. Thirdly, a rather ominous recurring piece, which I called the Bad Feeling Chorale, played by a small 6-piece brass ensemble of trumpets, horns and trombones. The rest of the music is mostly played by a string quintet (two violins, viola, cello, and double bass). I love strings because they are so versatile. They can be warm, melancholy, seductive; they can be chilling, and so on.

Additionally I used a clarinet in the Wallet #3 scene (with John Matshikiza) to underscore the melancholy of that particular scene in the film. (I think this is one of the best image-music marriages in the film.) In the Love Theme I shadowed the solo strings discreetly with synthesised strings to underscore the almost dreamlike quality of this scene in which there is no diegetic (source) music or any other soundtrack, apart from the musical score. I experimented with an electronic harp as the rhythm section – it provides a colour that you do not normally hear in tango, and an ‘attack’ that the orchestral harp doesn’t have.

Q: How did you differentiate between theme, mood and incidental music? And how did you weave these threads together into the score?

The basic CADEB motif binds the whole film score together, but it appears in very different guises (horror organ music, tango Love Theme, Bad Feeling brass chorale etc) and with different degrees of variation (sometimes exact repeats). The instrumentation has a lot to do with creating moods for the different guises. The only real incidental music might be the Hillbrow Tower piece for viola and piano and the two piano parodies for the Wallet #5 and Wallet #2 scenes. I would go so far as to say that the music is integral to the emotionality and expressivity of the story and its characters. I’d like to think that it takes the viewer beyond the place where the image goes and adds further layers to the meaning. If that happens then I feel that my contribution to the film has been a success.

Q: The film is quite specific in terms of its locations. Did this influence you in your choice of music to complement the sound?

Not really. The images do that so well and the music’s function in this film was, I felt, not so much to do with literal place as with imagined place; for example at the beginning and the end where the music locates the action in Sugar Man’s mind. There is no music that specifically locates us in Hillbrow, or an urban setting or anything like that.

Q: Did you lay down a temp score for Kaganof to edit with, and if so with what technology?

Well Kaganof had laid down a temp score for me to compose with, and in some cases I used this as a point of departure, for example in terms of mood or emotion or instrumentation but in almost every case we lost the temp score very quickly and the composed score took over and then sometimes migrated into other scenes. Although I compose at the piano initially, I migrate to the computer pretty quickly, using the standard music writing software used by most composers worldwide – Sibelius – into which video can be imported. I then tweak tempi and other details so the music fits exactly. The downside is that the instrumental samples are not as good as live instruments, but they do give you an idea of what is intended.

Q: What technology did you use to score the film?

So I used Sibelius to create a score and individual parts for live musicians to read from – an enormous labour- (and money-) saving device. The music was recorded in August at the SABC Studios, Johannesburg with my own ensemble, MBE, made up of very good local musicians. It was mixed and mastered in Grahamstown at Sonic Art Studios. Engineering by Corinne Cooper, a fantastic sound engineer that I have worked with since 1998. Unusually for engineers, she reads music very well, so I can give her the score and she can just get on with the editing, even when I’m not around.

Q: What plans are there for releasing the music for the film on other platforms?

I suppose first prize (for me) would be a soundtrack album of all the music in the film – the songs as well as the score. But I am working intermittently on a Concert Suite possibly in two versions: one for orchestra (and gun!), and one for a smaller group that might be played by MBE (Michael Blake Ensemble) and toured next year.

Motlhabane Mashiangwako began his fine art studies in the house of Geoff Phakati, a tireless cultural worker and activist who mentored a generation of fine artists and jazz musicians in the sixties and seventies. Under the tutelage of such masters as the late Fikile Magadledla and Winston Saodi, Mashiangwako soon developed into a distinctive stylist. Although his first works were unmistakably political in their subject matter he soon moved away from overt polemics and became known for his studies into materials such as stone, rock, sand and wood, which he would burn or melt onto mixed media canvasses. Mashiangwako infused these works with a cosmic afro-spiritualism that was highly influenced by the writings of Cheik Anta Diop. His current work retains a strong period feel, there is a timeless quality, as if Mashiangwako has been entirely unconcerned with the vagaries of fashion, with digital media, with all the hip and epemeral fancies of the art world - but has solidly continued his afrocentric cosmological studies, uses his canvasses as self-contained time capsules spreading his vision of an afro-humanity freed up and operating at full potential. These are spiritual canvasses which speak the language of myth - truly ancient to the future.

Bra’ Geoff Mphakati was a tireless cultural worker who shepherded a generation of musicians, fine artists and writers from his home in Mamelodi. The likes of Don Laka and Vusi Mahlasela cut their jazz teeth at his Pretoria Jazz Appreciation society meetings.

Lefifi Tladi was mentored by Bra’ Geoff after he was kicked out of school for being a “stupid”. Lefifi, inspired by The Last Poets, formed Dashiki, a cultural ensemble that became closely allied to Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement.

In 1976 Lefifi went into exile.

Giant Steps is a documentary that sees Bra’ Geoff and Lefifi re-united, the two of them taking a generation of younger poets, musicians and artists on a journey of consciousness that is an afrocentric approach to blackness now. Taking poart in this exploration are the likes of Kgafela oa Magogodi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Mac Manaka, Zim Ngqawana and Afurakan.

Bra’ Geoff passed away unexpectedly on the fourth day of shooting Giant Steps, which is his first documentary as director.

South Africa, 2005, 52min, DVcam
directed by Geoff Mphakati & Aryan Kaganof
produced by Michelle Wheatley & Ziyanda Ngcaba
original music score by Johnny Dyani & Lefifi Tladi
director of photography AK Thembeka
sound recordist Basiami Bitsang
sound editor The Dark Magus
final mix JA Assegai

GIANT STEPS is an Afrocentric approach to Blackness Now!

Dashiki poet Lefifi Tladi guides us on a journey of consciousness, analysing and interpreting the meaning of independence as opposed to freedom. He is accompanied on this radical exploration by the cream of South African poets, musicians, dancers and visual artists, including Zim Ngqawana, Don Laka, Kgafela oa Magogodi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Afurakan, Mac Manaka, Thabo Mashishi, Moshe Maboe, Moeketsi Koena and Motlhabane Mashiangwako. GIANT STEPS is a moving tribute to its co-director, Bra’ Geoff Mphakati, who passed away tragically during the filming of this, his first documentary.