Filmic Experimentation in the Flying Dutchman

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1 Shot with an American Camera: Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman • The Flying Dutchman • A DVD Release by the DEFA Film Library Shot with an American Camera- Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman_The Flying Dutchman 25.11.13 20:07 Seite 2

Shot with an American Camera: Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman y A reel with pre-exposed and developed film—in our case the film with the travelling mattes—is loaded into r a r b i

the camera and runs in front of the unexposed raw film, which is loaded into the camera’s second magazine. L

m l Anywhere that the former prevents the exposure of the latter, the raw film remains unexposed—which i F

means it will be black after the film is developed. Anywhere that the mask film is not exposed, the raw film F E D

can record the scenes in front of the camera in a normal fashion. e h t

y b

e s a e l e R

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n a m h c t u D

g n i

Fig. 4—This is a Russian 70mm-version y l F

of a bipack camera from the collection e h T

of the Potsdam Film Museum • n a m h c t u D

Fig. 5—A regular 35mm sound film g n i y l

Mitchell camera. F

e h T

n i

Given these technical details, I assume no editing was possible later on. So did the film team have to pre - n o i t a

pare and film these transitions very carefully? t n e

If you watch the transitions from Totalvision to Academy format, or vice versa, you will notice that they are m i r e

shot with a fixed camera and that there is no camera movement. Good examples are the view of the ocean p x E

or the scene in which Senta looks out of the window, waiting for the Dutchman. I assume that they shot i m l i

these transitions several times until they were satisfied with the result. In some cases, the transition in F

: a r

format coincides with a scene change—for example, the sequence in which Daland is standing on his ship e m and it cuts to Senta looking at Daland’s picture. Here, the two scenes were aligned during the editing pro - a C

n a

cess, and the mask film had to be harmonized with the running scene even more precicely, to prevent the c i r matte from jumping during editing. e m A

n a

h t

Did other films in international film history also use traveling mattes? i w

Yes, changing formats were definitely used in other films, as were overlaying or split scene techniques that o h yielded a similar effect. For example, there was a type of artistic montage that was used when editing historic S footage shot in 4:3 academic aspect ratio, into CinemaScope film. Michael Wadleigh’s documentary Woodstock (USA, 1970) is a very good example of split-screen montage, especially the performance of The Who. Another example is the use of the KinoVario technique, mentioned earlier, in the GDR tourism-promo film Drei Perlen (Three Pearls , 1966, dir. Gerhard Jentsch). Director Manfred Gußmann also used this techni - que in his GDR image films—the first time was in his piece on the Zeiss company, Im Dienste des Fortschritts (In the Service of Progress , 1964).

Peter Ulbrich, the film’s cinematic advisor, mentioned in his recollections about making the film (see his text on this DVD) that they also thought about using the Virage technique (tinting the film). At the end they dropped this idea and the film was made in black and white...

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Shot with an American Camera: Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman y

In East Germany, the period during which The Flying Dutchman was made marked the transition from the use r a r b i

of Agfa film to ORWO film. It was known that ORWO color film was of inferior quality, but I don’t think this L

m l

was why the film was made in black and white. In one of his interviews, Joachim Herz mentioned that i F

Bertolt Brecht thought that color film had not yet been invented. If you look into DEFA productions of that F E D

period, you notice that films in black and white were still the standard and the use of color film was limited, e h t

in part because it was subject to a quota. Another aspect seems to have been that black-and-white material — y b

e s

maybe coming from Italian neorealism—signified a more artistically ambitious film. I mean, Konrad Wolf a e l

didn’t shoot Der geteilte Himmel (1964, The Divided Heaven ) in color either. In any case, at that time black- e R

and-white films were more the rule than the exception. V D

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In an interview, Joachim Herz mentioned that it was in his film that the relief effect technique—involving n a m

the superimposition and duplication of the positive and negative images, slightly misaligned—was used h c t u D

for the very first time... g n i

Through the use of this technique the outline of a figure or object is accentuated and thrown into relief, y l F

resulting in both the alienation of the figure or object and, at the same time, the soft focus or veiled quality of e h T

an abstraction. A good example of this technique is Erik’s dream sequence, which Senta dreams along with • n him. You can see the outline of the Dutchman’s ship and it looks as if parts of the ship are accented by light; a m h c the same scene also shows the Dutchman’s face accentuated by the relief effect, resulting in mystical and t u D

ghost-like effects. g n i y l F

e h T

n i

n o i t a t n e m i r e p x E

c i m l i F

: a r e m a C

n a c i r Fig. 6—Example of the use of the relief e m A

effect technique in The Flying Dutchman. n a

h t i w

The camerawork is extraordinary... o h Yes, you could almost describe it as musical. The sequence of close-ups, the adagio-like slow pannings, the S camera angles and the changes in light are choreographically attuned to the music, and call forth an emo - tional engagement with the film images on the part of the viewer. This also has a psychological effect upon the viewer, who gets intimately involved in the story.

The soundtrack in The Flying Dutchman is also unique. The reality scenes were recorded in mono, while the fantasy scenes were recorded in newly-developed 4-track magnetic audio.What was the status of 4-track magnetic sound at the DEFA Studio in the early 1960s? In 1953, the American production The Robe (dir. Henry Koster) was released. This film was the first film released in CinemaScope format and had 4-track sound laid magnetically on the film. The distributor adver - tised the film with the slogan: „The Modern Miracle You See Without Glasses.” DEFA did not want to fall behind and in the same year started tests to develop and produce a similar technology, which they called Totalvision. April 1, 1956 was the official start for implementing Totalvision with 4-track magnetic sound into

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Shot with an American Camera: Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman y r

DEFA film production. Beside the necessary recording technology, the studio also had to set up a new sound a r b i L

mixing studio (at the so-called Schützenhaus in Babelsberg) and develop new equipment for presenting the m l i

films at movie theaters (e.g., magnetic sound pick-up heads for projectors in the D series, produced by F

A F

Pentacon Dresden). E D

e h t

The sound mixing, in particular, turned out to be an adventure and required a larger crew of sound experts. b

e s

Each track had to be controlled by a sound engineer; at the same time, additional sound engineers had to a e l e

oversee the panoramic potentiometers, which acoustically simulated the positions of the actors. Engineer R

Kurt Schilbach developed the concept for the new studio and Hans Kadenbach and his team installed the V D

new equipment. DEFA’s first 4-track magnetic sound film was Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star , 1959, •

dir. Kurt Maetzig), a GDR coproduction with Poland. Herz’s Wagner film adaptation was filmed in the early a m h

stages of 4-track magnetic sound development in the GDR. c t u D

g n i y

Nevertheless, the development of 4-track magnetic sound was only a step on the way to creating 70mm l F

films with 6-track magnetic sound. Here, too, the DEFA Studio tried to keep pace with developments in the h T

USA and Soviet Union and invested a lot of money into the new technology. For those interested in the history • n a

of DEFA film technology, I would highly recommend the essay “Wir machen hier alles anders...” (“We Do m h c

2 t

Everything Differently Here...”) by Ulrich Illing, the former technical director of DEFA’s sound department. u D

g n i y l F

Joachim Herz used 4-track magnetic sound as an artistic element and this techology lent itself especially e h T

well to this film opera, making it possible to lay certain instruments or voices on different tracks in order to n i

create a concrete sense of space. In terms of producing this film, it meant that the orchestra or the parts of n o i t a the chorus had to be recorded on multiple channels from the start, so that during the sound mixing single t n e m

parts could be emphasized or distributed in keeping with placement in space. i r e p x E

The tracks were set up so that three channels were in front on the screen (left, center, right) and the fourth i m l i F

one—in this case, the sound effects channel—came from the back. You can be sure that the sound mixing : a r

for a film that included music as well as vocal parts was not at all easy. The location in the image from e m a

which the sound should come had to be measured very precisely ... and all in keeping with the action and C

n a

the atmosphere to be conveyed. c i r e m A

I am very fortunate to have seen the only existing 35mm print of the film with 4-track magnetic sound at a a

3 t theatrical screening at the Zeughaus cinema, at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. It was fascinating i w

to experience the use four channels and how masterfully and thoughtfully they were used. And it was espe - o h cially impressive to see the transitions from Academy ratio and mono sound, to Totalvision and 4-track sound S on a big screen.

In 2013, the DEFA Foundation restored the film for a DVD release. Harald Brandes, who participated in the restoration process on behalf of the Foundation, confirmed that they used the original film negative and the original 4-channel mix—both in good shape. The sound was digitally adjusted only to a very mimimal extent, as they wanted to preserve the good quality of the original sound... The DVD offers two audio versions, including Dolby Digital 5.0. If you own the appropriate equipment, you can enjoy the film in its near-original audio quality.

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Shot with an American Camera: Filmic Experimentation in The Flying Dutchman y r a r b i L

m l

Ralf Forster is the head of the Film Technology Collection at the Potsdam Film Museum. He has been involved in setting up a i F

collection of East German private, amateur and home movies, and has lectured at various universities. His research focuses on F E D image, animation and documentary films. He is the co-author of Im Schatten der DEFA (2010) and author of Ufa und Nordmark . e h t

Zwei Firmengeschichten und der deutsche Werbefilm 1919-1945 (2005), and has published articles on Mezhrabpom animation films y b

and the Film Museum’s Technology Collection. Forster is a board member of DIAF (German Institute for Animation Film). s a e l

[email protected] e R

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n o i t a t n ______e m i r e p

1. Totalvision was the East German version of CinemaScope, as Forster explains later. The original version of the film was produced in Totalvision with x E

4-channel magnetic sound and 2;55:1 image size. i m l 2. This article appears in apropos: Film 2002, Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung . Berlin: Bertz Verlag. 2002. i F

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3. It was thought that no original 35mm print of The Flying Dutchman with 4-track magnetic sound was still in existence; in moving prints from one r e

facility to another, the DEFA Foundation found a surviving copy in late 2012, however. m a C

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