Mondo Jazz

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA

Giovanni Sollima, violoncellista diplomato al Conservatorio di Palermo, è uno dei musicisti più interessanti sulla scena italiana contemporanea. La sua produzione compositiva è definibile come postminimalista, in quanto pur influenzata e strutturata dai compositori tipici del movimento, Glass, Reich e Riley, si diversifica con una accentuata capacità di pescare elementi da diverse altre culture musicali, rock e jazz in particolare. Si tratta insomma di uno dei più interessanti musicisti crossover, in grado di spaziare tra più generi mantenendo uno sguardo personale e rigoroso. Lo propongo in un video diviso in due parti particolarmente intrigante ed esplicativo e con una regia accurata e molto attenta alla qualità dell'immagine.

This is a music video for the italian cellist Giovanni Sollima, on two of his compositions; "Terra Aria" and "Concerto Rotondo".

On the six arms parts, which by the way took most of the time to make, I filmed Sollima playing the different layers of cello after each other. I then edited the video frame by frame in Photoshop (remember, it's 25 frames per second of video), cutting his arms out from the other layers and pasting it on top, matching the movement of the cello. This was done ca 4000 times, by myself.

The clouds were actually filmed in my backyard, sped up 1250 times. The birds we're filmed in my town, Larvik, Norway on clear blue sky, so that I could use blue screen keying to put them on top of the clouds. It's hard to notice, but the birds are moving in half speed slow motion. I also had to stabilize the motion of the birds, since I filmed it with handhelt camcorder. The sequence was cut together using After Effects and Premiere.

The forest, river sequence was photographed in a forest in Arona, Italy. I took a picture ca. every five meters, and morphed the images together using WinMorph, matching the pace of the music.

The zooming sequence is very hard to explain. Basically, the first 8 seconds after it starts zooming and when you see Mr Sollima's face is real photos. The rest inbetween are "painted" in Photoshop by me.

The rest of this part is merely editing in Premiere and After Effects.