DPs and composers

[David Edward Keen]

I'm a professional musician. Violinist and composer.

 

I'm shootin flicks when Im not performing. yep, film making is a similar mt everest of information and practice. Optics make my head explode.

 

Musical composition has much in common with cinema, events set up and organized in time. The world of light and colors and dark and cinematography is a revelation for me. Music has levels of relief, differences in exposure and depth of field. In an aria in a Mozart opera, the orchestral introduction will end with all the parts getting quite quiet but maintaining the excellent quality of sound (classical training helps that happen) and the singer comes in, filling the space..a lot like the actor being in focus with the rest of the frame in bokeh, or some number of stops brighter than other things in frame.

 

And the musical lines underneath the singer, the accompaniment, will, with Mozart, always continue to serve different functions that make you feel good and are justified when you analyze them, just like small lights shone on the actor's eyes, or camera movement.

 

Mozart even has special effects, things he does between two instruments that composite in such a way, because of their sound properties and timbres, that they combine and lead the ear to hear what can only happen with the two, not either alone.

 

There's differences in light and exposure that is minute like with pitch in music. I recommend the music of Harry Partch and Dean Drummond to hear microtonal music, where there are 41 pitches per octave and there are exact shades of notes.