Blow Out/Blow Up: Two Movies

Blow Out is a movie set in Philadelphia during the 1980s. Sound engineer Jack Terry (played by John Travolta), is out at night getting some field recordings for a teenage slasher movie when he accidentally records the murder of a prominent politician. The media and police department claim that it is accidental. Terry tries to reveal the truth, but the powers that be follow him and undermine his every attempt. It is very over the top at times and the entire movie has that neon tinge that you associate with the 80s.

Beyond the aesthetics, there are a lot of scenes dedicated to the art of audio engineering. We get to see the entire process of recording and editing done on vintage analog equipment. There are many shots focusing on the "tools of the trade". These shots allow each piece of equipment to be the main subject, only featuring humans through their disembodied hands which operate the tools. In a way it is a 'love letter' to
audio recording.

You could also connect theme to the issue of all recorded media which is that you cannot guarentee the authenticity of an event just because there is a recording. The whole process of engineering: cutting and splicing the reel to get the desired result is indicative of this. In fact, the film starts with Terry trying to find the perfect scream for a killing scene. He is unable to find a voice actress who can scream realistically enough for him; none of the screams capture the real terror of the scene. In the end, Terry eventually does get his scream bringing this idea of authenticity and recorded media full circle.

My good friend Evron recommended this to me. When he mentioned the plot in the car while he was visiting from Philly and it sounded oddly like the movie Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonini. It turns out it was inspired by Blow Out! There are some obvious parallels in terms of the plot, with a few details switched around. Blow Out is set in mod-era London and the main character is a fashion photographer named Thomas who unknowingly captures a murder attempt occurring in the background of one of his photoshoots. 

Eventually he does spot the murder taking place after developing the film. He gradually becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened and creates a blow up of the background. He tries to show people what he's found but everyone around him is too high to understand. Like Blow Out, there are a lot of scenes dedicated to the art of analogue media. The process of developing film, enlarging it to create prints, and finally developing the prints is all captured in excruciating detail.

One difference I did observe in the plot of the two films is that there is an inversion between the two with regards to the relationship the main characters have with their environment. Both Jack Terry and Thomas are the only ones privy to a horrible secret. However, after the revelation, Thomas is unable to communicate this secret to anybody since they are all high. On the other hand, Terry goes out of his way to contact the authorities and the media, but everyone around him thinks he's the insane one.

Another contrast between the two movies is the atmosphere. Blow Up is set in mod-era London during the 60's and the characters and their surroundings are very detached, even the coloring is pretty flat. It left me with an unsettling feeling. In this particular aspect, I think I much prefer Blow Out. The shots of Philadelphia, especially those of 30th Street Station, bring me so much more life.

A look through the past: a skateboarding part which shaped my teenage years

On my walk home from my meeting today, I saw some skateboarders outside of my office. It makes sense why they would congregate there, the area had a nice bank with a good long run-up next to a wall (good for wallrides) and a shallow set of stairs which could serve as decent nollie pad so that people could film lines. I began reminiscing about my teenage obsession with skateboarding and how the sport essentially shaped my attitude and aesthetics for better or worse. To clarify, I was not one of those 13 year olds that could kickflip down a set of stairs or grind a handrail my own height. I was more of a push around ollie type and I was mediocre at best. But that didn't stop me from trying to participate in the culture at large. I was a skate nerd- a connoisseur of the sport and all of its intricacies.

To those that are not familiar with skateboarding, skate videos used to be the most important measure of achievement in the community. They were essentially hour-long videos released by a company which featured their sponsored riders. Each rider would get 3-4 minutes to showcase footage of their best tricks from the past few years. This is a lot of tricks if you realize that one trick can take only 15 seconds of footage at most (or footy as they would call it). If you consider the amount of tries needed to land a trick, you begin to realize that an inordinate amount of bleeding, concussions, and bone fractures are needed to produce a single video part.

A skate video part is not only a collection of tricks- it is a piece of art. A lot of care and thought is put into choosing the music and editing the clips that comprise the part to be in harmony with the music. There are also other considerations such as the ordering of the tricks so that they match the ebb and flow of the soundtrack. The sound of the original footage remains in the video and it is meant to meld with the soundtrack to form a unique audio experience. For example, many parts have the tricks land on beat so as to synchronize the sound of the wheels smacking concrete with the drums.

There are also variations in style in skate videos depending on the company. Some companies such as Girl release themed videos (such as Mouse) where they put skits before each skater's segment. Other companies may interpolate clips of tricks with clips of animals and insects with purposely distorted VCR filter over them for aesthetic effect (think of Radio Television by the short lived company $lave). To put it more poetically: a skate video part is a mosaic of a skater's individual sensibility.

To illustrate further - I will try to analyze one classic video part.

Mark Gonzales - Video Days (Blind)

I wasn't around during Blind's heyday, by the time I had started skating, they had become an uncool bargain brand catering to moms and scooter-kids with their smartly priced complete skateboards with the cutesy but mischievous skull logo. All the shenanigans associated with the infamous founder Steve Rocco, were long past. Video Days was the first video released by the company. This was the fledgling company's attempt to establish itself in the forefront of Street skateboarding, which was new at the time.

The video starts off with a quote from Willy Wonka: "We are the musicmakers and we are the dreamers of dreams". It\'s quite common to intersperse clips from different media within a video part in order to illustrate the taste of the skater. The quote is quite fitting for Mark Gonzales (affectionately nicknamed "Gonz"), who is in a way the Willy Wonka of street skateboarding.

Mark Gonzalez has one of the most influential styles of modern skateboarding. I don't know how many summer days I spent, trying to copy his effortless weaving around the streets and his sketchy nonchalance. There was a common thread playfulness that is apparent throughout the part. An example of this is that multiple tricks being tried at a single spot in succession as if the skater were just hanging out with his friends and one of them happened to have a camera that day. Nowadays, such an editing choice is rarer. Teams try to get many different locations in their videos and many embark on international skate trips to achieve this effect and videos have lost the sincere and earnest energy of Video Days.

Another aspect of the part that has stuck with me is the music: Trane-ing in by John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio. The beginning of the piece is easy-going with the piano taking the melody - the Gonz riffs about wearing his iconic striped tees, performing long sloping lines that criss-cross in a beautiful interplay with the mellow, detached sounding piano riffs. As the piece progresses, the saxophone takes the lead, sometimes the sax has a litle bit of an edge: hissing and spitting like a human with phlegm stuck in its throat. It quickly smooths out within the same breath, transitioning into a rolling smoothness that we would've rolled our eyes at had we not experience the grimy bit before it. The arrival of the sax is accompanied by clips of tricks that have a sense of urgency - the lines are hard hitting and the Gonz no longer does his little shoulder shimmy in between tricks instead popping quickly in and out of boardslides and shredding in and out of various sliding tricks on a parking block, peppered in with extremely high ollies - so high that I can feel the reverberation of the tail smacking the concrete inside the parking garage the lines are filmed in.

The video part ends with footage of a little girl speaking with a British accent, without a doubt the filmers found her on the street and convinced her to be a part of their video. In her cut off dialogue, she says: "I hope you've all enjoyed the skateboarding and everything else, that's all folks and this is from-". The girl makes a confused face to somebody off camera and with that, Gonz's part ends abruptly with a comical note.