songwriting production filmmaking
Wonder-Working Power
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. – Graham Greene

“Hey ladies.”
ed. Silverberg, Robert
Every Song a Painting
I’ve talked about self-imposed (or external) artistic restrictions as process before, and see it as one of the best things you can do for your creative process. We creators have a difficult time with freedom, especially with the amount of flexibility given in digital audio workstations and the irony of Fredkin’s Paradox.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution. — Stravinsky
To the point of style and stricture, I’ve been really turned on to Tony Zhou’s “Every Frame a Painting” video essays. My favorite one so far is the one on David Fincher’s shots. Last night we devoted a date night to a Japanese-fusion burger bar and Fincher’s latest effort, Gone Girl, and it was too hard to not be delighted in his framing.
“They know you can do anything, so the question is—‘What don’t you do?’” — Fincher
Restrictions As Style
In the age of AutoTune, “magical” digital audio editing, the “Photoshopping” of audio, what don’t you do in your songwriting and production?
Zhou lists four distinctive limitations Fincher self-imposes:
- He doesn’t do handheld (he does but extremely limited 1-3 shots per film). And further, he uses it for contrast. He’ll have another shot on a tripod for contrast, showing a character in a power position.
- For application in songwriting, is there something you won’t do? It could be play in major keys. It could be not writing in 4/4. I try to never use the word “love”.
- Humans don’t seem to be operating the camera; instead, it looks like the viewer is looking through the eyes of an impersonal omniscience.
- Our difficult job is to make songs sound familiar, yet new. Our songs should have elements of excitement, and pushing forward the art form, yet at the same time feel like they’ve always been in the world.
- Rare camera close-ups. When it happens, they end up having more power because they’re normally withheld.
A. Close-ups are the parallel of dynamic down-shifts in arrangement. When the instrumentation dramatically minimizes, most things cut out but the vocal for dramatic effect. It has to have the contrast of fuller arrangement for it to really work. - Directing in as wide an angle as possible. Fincher tries to let normalcy dominate his scenes. The perfect execution of banal. Sometimes flashiest isn’t the best.
- If you have a strong melody, captivating lyric, and interesting harmonic content, it’s probably a good song, and the production won’t have to make up for it.
Watch the rest of the video for the way Zhou breaks down a simple dialogue scene for the amount of packed drama. In any case, decide that you’re the type of artist to commit to your discipline the way Isaac Asimov records in a recently-unearthed essay on creativity,
- If you have a strong melody, captivating lyric, and interesting harmonic content, it’s probably a good song, and the production won’t have to make up for it.
“A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance. Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us. A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.
Consequently, the person who is most likely to get new ideas is a person of good background in the field of interest and one who is unconventional in his habits. (To be a crackpot is not, however, enough in itself.)”
Reading: “Living Life All the Way Up”: Hemingway’s Moral Apologetic from Absence A friend sent me an essay he wrote; love the deconstruction of the modernist’s malaise-driven narrative.
Playing: Batman Arkham City (replay)
Watching: Gone Girl – she read the book; I didn’t. Stellar performances, enjoyed Fincher, as usual.
Listening: Ariana Grande, My Everything – as a (guilty-pleasured?) fan of Max Martin’s songwriting, I can’t not check out everything he’s doing.