Olga - Here and Now - A Film in The Making
My essay written for this project looked towards it's setting, and then further, to the future implications of aboriginal knowledges inspiring a different approach to dealing with climate crises and globalisation. Today, however, I focus on largely musical challenges and issues that arose along this project's journey. Through ideas, images, origins, music and sonic score I detail, via a 3-pronged timeline, the significant aspects of an ongoing, shared film project.
The Past:
For as long as I can remember I have always been interested in music. A drive to explore and respond to music has long been a big part of how I view the world. By the time I reached my late childhood, imagining music and image together seemed an inevitable, natural way to dream.
As an Undergraduate Composition student linked to an exchange program with the Australian Film & Television School, I teamed up in 1978 with a film director student and created the music score for Olga, a film describing the life of Olga Collis, a young Muruwari woman employed as an Aboriginal Health Worker in Bourke NSW.
Late 1970s technological limitations dictated the need to score music by hand, play as many instruments as possible oneself, and occasionally just ‘wing it’ when things went awry.
I gained a lot from that experience. Money was scant. Studio time restricted. I quickly learned to think on my feet.
Olga - Instrumentation & Orchestration:
Classical Guitar
Flute
Jaws Harp
Banjo Mandolin
String section
Hiring in a string quartet and flautist, I played everything else myself. I tried to reflect on-screen events musically. The banjo mandolin lent an olde worlde feel, and the jaw's harp's rustic resonations suggested the iconic didgeridoo. This somehow connected the music to the earth itself.
The Present:
A second film about Olga was suggested in early 2019. I mulled it over, secured Olga’s details, rang her, and suggested the idea. She was delighted. After over 40 years I felt very ‘open’ to committed Aboriginal activist, advocate and author Olga. A friend and I ultimately travelled out west in August for a four-day photo shoot. This included footage of a Memorial Ceremony for fallen Aboriginal Servicemen from both last century's world wars.
Olga - Here and Now - Instrumentation & Orchestration:
The opening scene features a desert sunrise. With vibrant tones that gyrate and hum against and with each other, the bass clarinet, contrabass, contrabassoon and tuba sustain long deep notes, scored for the lowest end of their ranges, that suggest the reverberations of a didgeridoo droning out over wide arid spaces as the sun begins to peak over distant scrub and floods the sky with orange. It is the 'arrival' of a heavenly body. A celtic harp and a banjo mandolin, representing the origins of colonialism, lighten the tone up a bit as the sun reaches higher into the sky and brightens to yellow. It seemed right to score for full orchestra, with for example the added inclusion of various percussion instruments such as tubular bells, wood blocks, castanets and maracas amongst others. I do not plan to use Aboriginal musical instruments per se, preferring a perhaps more subtle approach by emulating indigenous sonorities orchestrally.
Issues and Challenges:
Interracial etiquette is important - for example, Aboriginal people are traditionally not to be touched unless invited. Hopefully we managed okay from a cultural perspective. We continue to keep communication as open and respectful as possible. We pre-empt 'offence' via frequent references in conversation to the fact that, when it comes to indigenous knowledge, we know nothing.
On the fourth day, as part of filming the commemorative ceremony and concert in Goodooga, quite by accident we also ended up filming a 70s Australian pop star. Footage of that artist singing a song specifically written for the commemoration will be included in our film, and we understand there will be no objection. But thus far we can not be sure, and await email response.
Ours is a ‘not-for-profit’ approach. Had we been in our late teens or twenties we perhaps would have been able to afford neither the 4-day film shoot nor the tools needed for it's pre and post-production creation.
To date a fair amount of editing has already been done for this film, and we will continue to do so for at least another couple of months. Time is the issue - we are both busy - and the process can be laborious. To be honest, our sheer ignorance concerning making film was countered only by 'good cheer' - and by just getting on with it.
Here are 2 excerpts - the first from Olga (1978) and the second from Olga Here and Now (2019).
The Future:
We are in the slightly tricky process of having an authentic translation done for the lyrics of a song - written originally in English as a poem for this film - into Muruwari. This song will then likely be installed over the credits at the end of the film. Problematically, this ancient language was up until quite recently made effectively extinct by the long-term destructive processes of colonialism. Resultantly, to hopefully increase the film's overall impact and to go that first, second and third mile, I believe it is even more important to have the song performed in Muruwari
There are opportunities to score for at least 6 scenes, for a mixture of orchestral, popular and traditional forms. Those scored for full orchestra will take a good deal of time to perfect.
We hope to have a rough cut by early 2020.
In Conclusion:
We are exploring Marketing Strategies -
I am communicating with:
The Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC).
The Australian Film & Television & Radio School (AFTRS).
The Tranby National Centre for Indigenous Adult Education & Training
Facebook has a 14-day free marketing trial.
YouTube may also be an appropriate platform for this work.
Olga 2019
Crucially, however, we are not focused on fiscal reward. Rather, we aim this film towards reaching out to educate and inform. This honours the philosophies of Olga herself, who only saw the 1978 film for the first time this year. More than 40 years after it's making, AFTRS recently granted Olga special dispensation to hold screenings of the original film herself.
Lindsay & Peter, November 2019