IN A LANDSCAPE, DREAMING
A film by Ross Morin
A film by Ross Morin
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In a Landscape, Dreaming (2018)
Shot in five meticulous panning shots throughout the mountains, the film choreographs the moving landscape in an exploration of Zen Buddhist concepts of peace and terror in the infinite. The film is equal parts experimental, documentary, landscape, dance, and music film as it contemplates questions about the relationships between art and artist, human and nature, conservation and destruction. The film features world renowned pianist, Pedja Muzijevic, performing the work of John Cage. The film was shot at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana. |
PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL
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Official Selections, Nominations, Awards: Tallahassee Film Festival. Tallahassee, FL - Official Selection Kansas City Film Festival International. Kansas City, MO - Official Selection Utah Film Festival and Awards. Vineyard, UT – Semi-finalist ABQ Indie Film Festival. Albuquerque, NM – Nominated – Best Experimental Film Solaris Film Festival. Nice, France Northeast Mountain Film Festival. Dillard, GA Pune Short Film Festival. Pune, India - Winner - Best Foreign Film Northeast Mountain Film Festival. Dillard, GA. – Nominated – Best Experimental Film Solaris Film Festival. Nice, France Oaxaca FilmFest. Oaxaca, Mexico University Film and Video Association Conference. Minneapolis, MN Artists Forum Festival of the Moving Image. New York, NY Winner - Best Music Video, Nominated – Best Cinematography St. Cloud Film Festival. St. Cloud, MN Blow-up International Arthouse Film Festival. Chicago, IL 
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TECHNICAL INFORMATION
TRT: 7 minutes Shooting format: 4k UHD video, 16:9 aspect ratio Sound: stereo Music: "In a Landscape" by John Cage. Used with permission. Performed by Pedja Muzijevic. Recorded at Tippet Rise Arts Center. |
CAST AND CREW
Writer/Director/Producer: Ross Morin Cinematographers/Editors: Ross Morin, Charlie Losiewicz, Maggie Newell, Christian Vazquez Starring: Pedja Muzijevic LOGLINE: A pianist's reverie carries him through the mountains. |
PRODUCTION STILLS
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DIRECTOR'S NOTES
Overview:
In the summer of 2018 I directed In a Landscape, Dreaming, featuring the world-renowned pianist Pedja Muzijevic. Thanks to a grant from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, I was able to take three of my students to the Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana to make an experimental landscape film featuring a John Cage piece called, appropriately enough, In a Landscape. This particular piece seems to me to be one of Cage's most accessible works, almost explicitly referencing Debussy's Reverie (recently infecting brains of fans of HBO's Westworld). Cage's piece, too, seems to be about dreams. As I listened to the track in the months leading up to the shoot, I found myself drifting into daydreams about the sky and the plains. And so the "story" of my film took shape - a pianist gets lost in his work and wanders through the landscape that bore him, inspired him, or maybe was even created by him. I was thinking equally of Owen Land's New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops as I was Peter Hutton's Skagafjordur. In both films I find themes that connect to my fascination of Zen Buddhism - namely regarding the insignificance and ephemerality of humanity in either the sublime nature that preceded us, or the hysterically sublime structures that we have created. And with these influences in mind, I set off with my students, a camera, and a tripod (no special rigs, no automation, no motion stabilizers) to make a film about a man who daydreams himself to float like the speck of dust he is through the infinite landscape.
The full circle:
The original plan was to shoot the entire film in seven 360 degree panning shots, inspired by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's masterpiece, Riddles of the Sphinx - but while Mulvey had the luxury of an entire feature length film to include her shots, it took us the length of nearly the entire Cage piece to make one complete circle around certain landscapes. Although we filmed almost everything as a complete 360, only one of the shots remains in tact in the final film; the rest we truncated. We let go of the geometrical structure that inspired us and embraced a new form, one revolving around rhythm and pace. We recognized that so long as we panned at a constant rate, the shots could be stitched together to create the feel of an infinite landscape, one that transcends the locus of a particular perspective.
Mathematics and algorithms:
There is a subgenre of experimental cinema known as the structural film. Most structural films have a pre-determined mathematical or spatial algorithm that determines the overall form of the film (my favorite example is Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity - although you need to play this clip at .5 speed to get it at the actual rate Gehr intended). In the case of our film, all shots needed to pan to the right, each shot needed to contain landscape elements that articulated the music (more on that below), and, most importantly, each shot needed to appear to be moving at the same speed. That meant we needed to account for focal length and subject-to-camera distance as we determined the speed at which we panned the camera. Sometimes that meant we would spend two minutes panning across a 20 degree angle like the extreme wide shot that opens the above trailer. Other times, like the closer shot of the piano under the rock formation, we could pan more quickly and complete a 360 shot in two minutes. And even other times, we would pan at different speeds within a given shot. For me, the magic of the structural film is how, despite being restricted by a hard mathematical algorithm, nature and spontaneity find a way. The art of the structural film is finding the right input variables into the algorithm. In our case, with the music pre-recorded, and the camera speed and movement being "locked" as the algorithm, it was up to us to choose the variables location and time of day. And here I'll highlight the beautiful intersection of math and art.
Music and dance:
As we chose the locations for each shot, we were guided by the objective of choreographing the movement of trees, rocks, valleys and clouds to the rhythms and tones in the music. We thought of the landscape as a dancer, and we helped it to dance with our panning shots. There are moments where the music lowers in pitch and so we moved the camera to trace along the valleys to do the same. There are moments where piano notes come in, and we found trees or rocks that would move through the frame as well. Sometimes it felt like the landscape was sheet music, sometimes, groves on player piano sheets, and other times, a moving life force of its own. Because we could not move the landscape (or any of its contents), it was our job to position the camera in the absolute best location and pan and tilt the camera in ways that brought the mountains and flora to life.
The human element:
We had access to rigs and motion stabilizers; we just chose not to use them. Tiny shakes, tiny imperfections in the camera operation kept the film from feeling completely robotic or "perfect." The film may be mathematical and mechanical in its structure, but its thesis remains deeply humanist. Like the birds that flew spontaneously through one shot, or the way a spec of dust hit a sun flare, we embraced the subtle human touch of each shot. Yet we strove to make the shots as smooth as possible. And it was in striving for perfection, although we knew it was impossible, that we connected with the countless other filmmakers, storytellers, and artists across the world trying to communicate something. I think that's ultimately what my film is about anyway: how we can feel isolated from those around us and yet simultaneously feel connected to a deeper aspect of existence. The ticking clock of the existential rightwards-panning camera passes each of us by without paying us any heed. We meander the hills and valleys, so often alone and purposeless; and yet, even at the moments we feel most insignificant, if we listen closely, we can hear the music.
In the summer of 2018 I directed In a Landscape, Dreaming, featuring the world-renowned pianist Pedja Muzijevic. Thanks to a grant from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, I was able to take three of my students to the Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana to make an experimental landscape film featuring a John Cage piece called, appropriately enough, In a Landscape. This particular piece seems to me to be one of Cage's most accessible works, almost explicitly referencing Debussy's Reverie (recently infecting brains of fans of HBO's Westworld). Cage's piece, too, seems to be about dreams. As I listened to the track in the months leading up to the shoot, I found myself drifting into daydreams about the sky and the plains. And so the "story" of my film took shape - a pianist gets lost in his work and wanders through the landscape that bore him, inspired him, or maybe was even created by him. I was thinking equally of Owen Land's New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops as I was Peter Hutton's Skagafjordur. In both films I find themes that connect to my fascination of Zen Buddhism - namely regarding the insignificance and ephemerality of humanity in either the sublime nature that preceded us, or the hysterically sublime structures that we have created. And with these influences in mind, I set off with my students, a camera, and a tripod (no special rigs, no automation, no motion stabilizers) to make a film about a man who daydreams himself to float like the speck of dust he is through the infinite landscape.
The full circle:
The original plan was to shoot the entire film in seven 360 degree panning shots, inspired by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's masterpiece, Riddles of the Sphinx - but while Mulvey had the luxury of an entire feature length film to include her shots, it took us the length of nearly the entire Cage piece to make one complete circle around certain landscapes. Although we filmed almost everything as a complete 360, only one of the shots remains in tact in the final film; the rest we truncated. We let go of the geometrical structure that inspired us and embraced a new form, one revolving around rhythm and pace. We recognized that so long as we panned at a constant rate, the shots could be stitched together to create the feel of an infinite landscape, one that transcends the locus of a particular perspective.
Mathematics and algorithms:
There is a subgenre of experimental cinema known as the structural film. Most structural films have a pre-determined mathematical or spatial algorithm that determines the overall form of the film (my favorite example is Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity - although you need to play this clip at .5 speed to get it at the actual rate Gehr intended). In the case of our film, all shots needed to pan to the right, each shot needed to contain landscape elements that articulated the music (more on that below), and, most importantly, each shot needed to appear to be moving at the same speed. That meant we needed to account for focal length and subject-to-camera distance as we determined the speed at which we panned the camera. Sometimes that meant we would spend two minutes panning across a 20 degree angle like the extreme wide shot that opens the above trailer. Other times, like the closer shot of the piano under the rock formation, we could pan more quickly and complete a 360 shot in two minutes. And even other times, we would pan at different speeds within a given shot. For me, the magic of the structural film is how, despite being restricted by a hard mathematical algorithm, nature and spontaneity find a way. The art of the structural film is finding the right input variables into the algorithm. In our case, with the music pre-recorded, and the camera speed and movement being "locked" as the algorithm, it was up to us to choose the variables location and time of day. And here I'll highlight the beautiful intersection of math and art.
Music and dance:
As we chose the locations for each shot, we were guided by the objective of choreographing the movement of trees, rocks, valleys and clouds to the rhythms and tones in the music. We thought of the landscape as a dancer, and we helped it to dance with our panning shots. There are moments where the music lowers in pitch and so we moved the camera to trace along the valleys to do the same. There are moments where piano notes come in, and we found trees or rocks that would move through the frame as well. Sometimes it felt like the landscape was sheet music, sometimes, groves on player piano sheets, and other times, a moving life force of its own. Because we could not move the landscape (or any of its contents), it was our job to position the camera in the absolute best location and pan and tilt the camera in ways that brought the mountains and flora to life.
The human element:
We had access to rigs and motion stabilizers; we just chose not to use them. Tiny shakes, tiny imperfections in the camera operation kept the film from feeling completely robotic or "perfect." The film may be mathematical and mechanical in its structure, but its thesis remains deeply humanist. Like the birds that flew spontaneously through one shot, or the way a spec of dust hit a sun flare, we embraced the subtle human touch of each shot. Yet we strove to make the shots as smooth as possible. And it was in striving for perfection, although we knew it was impossible, that we connected with the countless other filmmakers, storytellers, and artists across the world trying to communicate something. I think that's ultimately what my film is about anyway: how we can feel isolated from those around us and yet simultaneously feel connected to a deeper aspect of existence. The ticking clock of the existential rightwards-panning camera passes each of us by without paying us any heed. We meander the hills and valleys, so often alone and purposeless; and yet, even at the moments we feel most insignificant, if we listen closely, we can hear the music.