In collaboration with Tom Simmons
This film is about rediscovering the history of a piano through playing; about a family reclaiming a piano to reconnect with its past; about threads of personal memory and history that are woven together through the act of playing music.
Production techniques and processes: Digital projections onto water, wood and glass; stop-motion animation; pixilation; manipulated live action; digital sound recording
PRELUDE / We are in a dark and mysterious place, suggestive of the interior of a grand piano.
The camera moves slowly, exploring its surroundings. Through the blackness, semi-abstract fragments of wood, felt and metal come in and out of view. A flickering light beam reveals these to be parts of a piano mechanism in extreme close-up: the strings, the soundboard and the mechanical action.
The colours are warm and earthy; years of dust huddle on fixtures and frames. We hear the distant, muffled sounds of someone outside, settling down at the piano to play. An occasional note, the creak of the stool, the groan of the pedals echo through the wood and dust.
Then, in the darkness, the sound of a sharp crackling sound, like an electric shock... /
DEVELOPMENT / ...From these establishing shots, two narrative threads begin to unravel. The first follows a recent event in Bath; the other recalls fragments of memories, many of which take place in Jerusalem.All of the scenes are presented as illusory, flickering and dreamlike projections on wood. At first the pace is slow, the camera dwelling on patterns of light and layers of imagery:
In Bath a removals company have installed a large crane in the street...In Jerusalem music students are talking to one another on the steps of the Conservatory...A man and woman dance in the sun to the music of an accordion... /
BRIDGE / ...The camera slowly zooms out and we see that the shot is contained within a circular frame, as if we are looking through a lens or telescope towards a far distant place.The image of Haifa gets gradually smaller and more faint. We cut to a view out to sea: the surf churns beneath the stern, the horizon far away in the distance. The tension in the soundtrack recedes, to be replaced by a tranquil composition that marks the shift from the vivid collage of memories to a journey on an expansive ocean... /
Michaela Nettell and Tom Simmons, 2008