Category: Film

The Acceptance @ Maine International Film Festival

Yogesh Khubchandani‘s beautiful and mysterious directorial debut, The Acceptance, is scheduled to be screened as part of the Maine International Film Festival, July 15-24 2011, a festival billed as ten days of the best of American independent and international cinema!

The Acceptance will be shown on Saturday, July 16 2011 at 8:30 pm.  And again on Wednesday, July 20 at 3 pm.

During the festival, audiences will have opportunities to meet and talk with the people behind the movies — directors, producers, writers, musicians — as well as have a chance to experience several panel discussions and informal Q&A sessions.

Director Khubchandani also did the sound design for the film, using the sounds of birds, wind and water in stark constrast to the rattling drones of machines in order underscore his themes. Like the images, the sound slips easily back and forth between the logic of “realism” and the logic of dreams.  Khubchandani credits Kyma for playing a role in the transformation of one of the pivotal sound events of the film: a massive tree falling in the forest.

Burtt & Wood talk about Super 8

Sound designer, Ben Burtt. Photo by Gregory Schwartz (www.editorsguild.com)

There’s a fascinating piece by Mel Lambert on the Editor’s Guild web site, giving details of every aspect of the sound—from dialog to Foley, to mixing, to creative sound design— for JJ Abrams new science fiction film, Super 8.

In it, master sound designer, Ben Burtt details how he used his own voice to control a bank of sounds in Kyma, performing it like a musical instrument to create the voice of the alien.  Burtt says that he wanted to create a character who, although alien, had an expressive soul, purpose, and rationality.  Once Industrial Light & Magic, which handled visual special effects, heard Burtt’s vocalizations, they were so inspired that they added a tongue to the creature’s mouth! One of the few times that they created picture to sound, instead of the other way around.

Full of insider tips and tricks ranging from how Burtt sustained the tension in a long train crash scene to how Matthew Wood compensated for young actors’ voices changing over the course of the shoot, the piece is essential reading for anyone who’s serious about sound design!

(Thanks to Matteo Milani for spotting this article and sharing it with us!)

Supervising Sound Editor, Matthew Wood (www.editorsguild.com)

The Acceptance

Kyma played such a strong role in the sound design for Yogesh Kubchandani’s directorial debut, The Acceptance, he gave it an ending credit. Can you solve the mysteries in this compelling, poetic film? http://www.3stonespictures.com

Following the initial screening of The Acceptance in New York City, director Yogesh Khubchandani, was barraged by questions when he took the stage. He politely declined to speak about the film, suggesting only that if people still had questions, they should watch the film again, adding “there are no symbols in the film; I just had one impression that could not be expressed in words, and so the film came out.” Can you solve its mysteries? (Order your own DVD copy of the film at http://www.3stonespictures.com)

Certain unforeseen events can almost literally befall us, unexpectedly and violently tearing into the web of our interconnections and relationships. In Yogesh Khubchandani’s new film, The Acceptance, one such event has disrupted the existence of Elli (compellingly played by Alicia Lobo) to its very core. Khubchandani’s poetic, spell-binding film uses images and sounds to create an urgent sense of mystery as he traces her inner journey from near despair to a calm acceptance. Khubchandani masterfully recreates a seamless interleaving of the inner imagination and outer events that constitute Elli’s flow of experience. Intense emotion is experienced as sudden silence and a sense of time slowing almost to stop as the character focuses full attention on the anger or fear or frustration and the rest of the world disappears for that stretched-out moment of time. Several threads weave themselves throughout the film: the restorative power of nature, thanking God for what we do NOT have, vegetarianism as identity, the relationships between mothers and daughters (the male characters rarely appear on screen).

Khubchandani also did the sound design for the film, using the sounds of birds, wind and water contrasted with the rattling drones of machines to underscore his themes. Like the images, the sound slips easily back and forth between realism and the logic of dreams. Kyma played such a large role in this transformation, it even gets a credit at the end of the film!

Rahman Scores 127 Hours

Internationally acclaimed film composer, AR Rahman used Kyma (Harm Visser’s physical modeling toolkit) controlled by the Haken Audio Continuum Fingerboard to perform the lead on the dignified and ethereal Acid Darbari, as part of Rahman’s sound track for Danny Boyles’ new film, 127 hours. The full soundtrack is available for download from iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon (http://www.arrahman.com).

Internationally acclaimed film composer, AR Rahman used Kyma (Harm Visser’s physical modeling toolkit) controlled by the Haken Audio Continuum Fingerboard to perform the lead on the dignified and ethereal Acid Darbari.  Rahman’s full soundtrack, composed for Danny Boyles’ film, 127 hours, is available for download from iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon Direct links available here: http://www.arrahman.com.