Brand Upon the Brain!

Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin's latest film Brand Upon the Brain! is a black and white silent picture. It was produced by The Film Company out of Seattle and they composed an original score for the film which was performed by members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO). The loges beside us were filled with the foley guys (time for an instructional haiku, courtesy of Ric):

when you see a film
foley is the sound you hear
foley guys are cool

In fact, on my 5M rating scale, Guy Maddin gets 1 and the orchestra and foley guys get 5. Throughout the screening I kept looking over to the loge to see what the foley guys were doing to generate the sounds. They played an oboe-like instrument for the deep fog horn and rolled a big drum to mimic the rustling wind. At one point, they were reaarranging a corpse onscreen and the foley guy was twisting and breaking celery to mimic the bones cracking. Later, there was some flesheating going on and the foley guy chomped on a juicy orange. They slammed a small door, crumpled plastic wrap and rustled a mess of cassette tape. The experience of the live sound and music was amazing. I also thought this would be a great thing to do with kids in the classroom - watch a silent movie and get them to participate in creating the foley.

Not sure when this might turn up again. Since they require live performances, I heard they were going to do it in a couple other cities and then that's it. Seems a waste of the $11 million investment. I guess they could record a performance and sync it with the film but I'm in no hurry to see it again (foley: good, film: bad) but I never would have picked it so I was glad to see it in the series. Unless you're a Guy Maddin fan (like Piers) I wouldn't recommend it. MMMMM (foley) M (film)