Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The beauty of sound

In the 1970s, a Frenchman named Claude Lelouch made a short film called C'etait un Rendez-vous (It was a Date). He made it by strapping his camera to the bottom of his car and driving around the early morning streets of Paris. The film was shot in one take and is just under 10 minutes because that's all that his camera could hold. A few years back, Lelouch allowed the band Snow Patrol to use some of the footage from this film for a music video for their song, Open Your Eyes (off the album Eyes Open). I didn't realize that the footage was from a short film, I just thought it was stock from somewhere random but I just watched C'etait un Rendez-vous today and was struck by how essential a soundtrack really is to a movie. It changes your mood completely. In C'etait un Rendez-vous, the only sound you hear is whatever sound the car makes (and it's quite loud). You feel more stress than you do the calm of an early morning drive, which leads you to think that this driver must be very anxious to get to the person he's about to meet up with. In the video for Open Your Eyes, the nature of the song makes you feel something more of a longing to be with the person at the end of the film, something more dormant than a high-speed car chase through old Parisien streets. Anyways, I found it very interesting so I'd like to share that with you all. I've posted the links to both of the films below so you can experience the difference for yourself and let me know what you

A bientôt!



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