Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making Dissonance. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
I started experimenting with stop-motion animation aged six, inspired to reimagine sequences and camera movements from the films I was watching with handmade models, my friends and a Flip camera, the ‘Super-8 of the 21st century’. In the spirit of Buster Keaton’s dream in his short film The Play House, I learned how to make films by performing all of the roles in front of and behind the camera. Between 2013-23, as my ideas for Dissonance began to take form, I released almost one-hundred-and-fifty short films online, several of which involve musical performances in the context of both fictional narratives and concert documentation. It was rewarding to share my work with an audience, nurturing my craft and experimenting within a variety of genres. In these early films I would giddily look to the techniques of horror cinema in particular, understanding how to build tension throughout a sequence.
Tell us about Dissonance. How do you describe it?
I have always wondered how a musician’s state of mind in the midst of performance or rehearsal, particularly in the context of chamber music-making, could be portrayed honestly in narrative film. Dissonance is a ‘silent’ film whereby the opening twenty-two bars of Mozart’s String Quartet in C Major, K. V. 465, nicknamed the ‘Dissonance’ quartet, provide the sole framework within which the characters involved can communicate.
String quartet playing invites a rare intimacy into the rehearsal space that is empathetic and dramatic: deep listening casts an atmospheric spell as endless interpretive possibilities are considered through sensitive communication and experimentation. I share this experience in Dissonance by conflating musical and cinematic conventions, offering the audience the opportunity to ‘get under the skin’ of a piece of music with a quartet in rehearsal where each moment is precariously inventive.
The haunting harmony of the opening Adagio of Mozart’s quartet is mystifying. Its attributed nomenclature allows a pertinent pun that operates as both the title of my film and as a structural device; the rehearsal narrative unspools as a set of variations on this theme.
Please tell us about your favourite filmmakers
My imagination is haunted by the dark and balletic monochromatic imagery of German Expressionists, namely F. W. Murnau, Robert Wiene and Paul Wegener. My engagement with silent cinema has intensified over the last two years while presenting live improvised soundtracks on solo viola accompanying their films at the Prince Charles Cinema in London’s West End. This heightened viewing scenario facilitates close observation of the tangible craft behind these films and it has been rewarding to memorise their powerful rhythm.
The films of Nicolas Roeg have informed my process, in particular his five works made between 1970-80 from Walkabout to Bad Timing. While thematically disparate, in each of these films Roeg employs similarly observant yet erratic cinematography and elliptical editing, every shot related symbolically to those around it which I found inspiring while working on the final cut of Dissonance.
I am intrigued by the interplay between cinema and video installation; how one might spill into the other and expand the world of the work. I find Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films alluring in their texture and tenderness and am compelled by their playful approach to form, whereby offcuts from his features might enter the gallery space.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
Over the last three years I have researched the life of my great-grandfather who fled Vienna in 1938, only to be interned on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’. Mystery surrounds this chapter of British history whereby hotels on the island were requisitioned as internment camps. Contrary to the oppressive limitations of this environment, creativity blossomed behind barbed wire. This forms the basis of a feature film screenplay I am currently writing and would love to realise.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule while making Dissonance. What steps would you take?
Embracing improvisation kept the shoot on schedule. Having dreamed of making Dissonance for seven years, the first days of filming were overwhelming and exciting, preciously capturing the shots I had long imagined. Working chronologically through the screenplay, against the clock, the creative process became more electric and fast-paced when I took the camera off the tripod. We captured whole pages in single handheld takes which suited the film’s central sequences as tension builds between the musicians, and the performances became more natural as a result. This also matched my intention to have the camera ‘learn’ the music: Mozart opens his nineteenth quartet by building the instrumental texture from the cello’s haunting quavers, joined by the viola and then the violins, illustrated in a tracking shot that recurs and gains assurance throughout the film.
This handheld process, closer to documentary filmmaking, focusses the edit on teasing fiction and strangeness out from between the images. The quartet had little time to rehearse the music together outside of filming and so Dissonance remains a real-time portrayal of their musical and personal relationships taking form.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Dissonance’.
I had known the on-screen quartet for many years through playing chamber music together. They are incredible musicians and generous communicators, but it was a challenge to elicit multi-dimensional performances from non-trained actors. I learned so much from working with them all, and while the script’s nuances deviated in the process, the result would not have been as atmospheric without the raw quality they brought to the film.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
I relish working on lots of different projects simultaneously that develop at different speeds, interweaving my practices of filmmaking, painting and musical performance. I am currently at work on my third book that explores the story behind a film trilogy I created last year, akin to my previous publication charting the creative journey behind Dissonance.
A follow-up music-related short film is also in development. At this point, the narrative trajectory appears to be more linear, less suggestive, than that of Dissonance. I somehow doubt it will remain this way.
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