In search of a new meaning

Rika Asai's recipe for a final project is simple: combine one instructor, 20 students, five composers and five silent films. The end result is this Saturday's Film and Music Festival. The event is the final project for L210: "Interpreting Film Music," a course Asai created and teaches at the Collins Living-Learning Center. The festival begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 12, in Sweeney Hall in the School of Music. \nAsai, who is a Ph.D. student in musicology at the School of Music, said Collins gave her the opportunity to explore the interaction between film and music, which is a relatively new field.\n"Films constitute such an important cultural mechanism in today's society," she said. "Film music doesn't fit in either musicology or film studies."\nFor the most part, Asai's students aren't classically trained musicians. Most don't know how to read notes, but all are interested in a variety of topics related to film and music. \n"This is the first class I've taught to non-music majors, so I wasn't sure what to expect," Asai said. "I have found it tremendously rewarding to watch the students learn to listen to music that is very different from what they might normally be familiar with."\n'A DREAM CLASS'\nAsai has been interested in both film and music since her undergraduate days. Her chance to present a course rooted in these two fields came when she learned of an opportunity to offer a seminar-style course at the Collins Living-Learning Center. All freshmen and sophomores living in Collins must take a three-credit course offered by the center. Most courses fall into College of Arts and Science's distribution categories and help meet diverse requirements. \nBut before students have the chance to experience the courses, the prospective instructors must present a complete plan for a semester-long course to the Collins academic coordinator. According to the Collins Web site, a proposal can be developed around a topic of the instructor's choosing as long as it does not already appear in the IU schedule of classes. Seminar courses like Asai's "Interpreting Film Music" class offer instructors a chance to teach their own class on a one-time experimental basis.\nFor Asai, the work started in the spring of 2002 when Collins began accepting proposals for spring 2003 courses. After submitting the proposal and receiving approval for the course from Iris Yob, former Collins academic coordinator, Asai talked with some of her composer colleagues in the School of Music about the possibility of composing music for silent-era films as the final project. \nAsai invited graduate composition students to compose music for the class. One of the class members also wanted to compose music. As an English major, sophomore James Walsh doesn't get many chances to write music, but he has had a life-long fascination with the process of creating music, he said.\n"As a composer, I have a great interest in film music," Walsh said. "I wanted to explore how music and image intertwine with one another."\nWalsh has been working with some of his classmates to compose music for "Windsor McKay and His Moving Pictures," made in 1928. \nCULMINATING PERFORMANCE\nThis Saturday's film and music festival is the result of a semester-long final project Asai assigned to her students.\nFor the final project, Asai chose seven silent films made before 1930. The object of the project is to write new music for an old film. The class divided into five groups, with four groups taking one film each and one taking three short films. At first, Asai showed the entire class all seven films while playing samples of each composer's music. She then asked students to write short explanations to determine which films they preferred for the final project and which composer's work sounded best with that particular movie. Once the groups were established, students met with their respective composers every three weeks to talk about the music and the film, listen to proposed compositions and discuss the emotional qualities of the different films.\n"The project sounded cool," said freshman and class member Amy Wehlacz. "But the films weren't what I expected."\nOther students in Asai's class and the composers themselves echoed Wehlacz's sentiments. Because all seven of Asai's selections were made before 1930, most of the students in the class had never seen any of the films until recently.\nBut when the groups began to work on the project, the interaction between the composers and the students helped determine the emotions that best describe each film. The music presented in the concert tries to convey these emotions. \nAlthough five composers wrote the music, the students in the class have had a sort of "directorial" role and have consulted with the composers about the music, Asai said.\nEach group heard diverse pieces proposed by the composers. Some agreed on the first try. Others chose more in-depth discussions to create an exact musical expression of the images.\n"The challenge for every group was to decide exactly what music would make the film exciting to watch," Walsh said. "What kind of feel should the music convey? The music can color a visual image in completely different ways."\nNot only have the students learned more about the interaction between film and music, but composers in the School of Music got a chance to experience something different from their usual work. \n"It's given my colleagues in the School of Music a chance to reach out to audiences beyond our normally quite intimate circle of 'new music' listeners," Asai said.\nCHALLENGING THE COMPOSERS\nFor graduate composition student Rafael Hernandez, Asai's project was a chance to explore the relationship between images and sounds. Working on three short films from the 1890s, Hernandez saw this project as an opportunity to interact with students, something he'd like to pursue in the future. \n"It was good to work with creative types who aren't in the School of Music," he said. "It was a pedagogical challenge not to take anything for granted, like we do sometimes in the School of Music."\nInteraction with the students challenged the composers to create music for the average listener, one who is not a classically trained musician. In addition, most music was written with a lot of input from the students. Because composers generally work by themselves, this was a novel experience for Hernandez and the other graduate composition students. \n"The biggest challenge was to match up whatever is going on in (the students') heads and in mine," said graduate student Gordon Williams, who worked on "Moscow Clad in Snow," a 1909 film by the Pathé brothers. \nBut graduate student Jim Holt, who composed music for "A Trip to the Moon," had it a little easier. He worked with three students from Asai's class, but did not have to accommodate live musicians. The entirety of the film's soundtrack, about 12 minutes, consists of electronic music made in the School of Music midi labs. \n"In the lab, I can do anything I want," Holt said. "I can mix sounds, use audio effects and samples."\nHolt said working with the students gave him a new outlook on his work. \nThe composers also had to take into consideration the perspective of the audiences watching the silent films. When silent films were the only films available, audiences watched the film along with reading the subtitles and hearing the organ or a band play in the movie theater, according to www.silent-movies.com, an archive of American silent films and general information about silent cinema.\n"There is a sense of historic nostalgia," Walsh said. "This is a unique opportunity to experience the old movie theaters and to hear new music that will probably never be heard again."\nAN AWAKENING FOR THE IMAGINATION\nFor freshman Meg Campbell, who is is studying for a minor in communication and culture, the class not only offered a chance to learn more about her chosen field of study, but an opportunity to engage her mind in finding relationships between images and sounds.\nAlong with four others, Campbell worked on "Moscow Clad in Snow." Through her participating in this project, Campbell discovered how images call upon memory to awaken certain sounds in one's mind, she said.\n"Hopefully, this project sparks people's imaginations as to how music can affect and change a film," Campbell said. "Music is such an intricate part of a movie, and people ought to take notice of that"