After the opening Thursday night features and after-parties, Good Friday was a get-down-to-business day for the 15th Dawson City International Short Film Festival.
At 1 p.m. two skilled and experienced cinematic music and sound experts held a 3-hour workshop at the Yukon School of the Visual Arts (SOVA) entitled Music Composition and Sound Design for Film and Media Production.
Normand Roger is best known for his soundtracks for animated films (including 6 Oscar winners) and has spent 40 years creating soundtracks for the national Film Board. He played excerpts from films he has scored and explain his views on how music supports films, including when to use less or none at all.
Daniel Janke composes music for dance, theatre, and the concert stage as well as film, and is himself a filmmaker and producer of award-winning short films and TV series. He described how music fits into the overall sound design of a film, and how composers and sound designers work together.
Together, the talented and experienced duo walked workshop attendees through the process of developing a soundscape for a film.
Video Festival Revels in Contemporary Media
At 4 p.m. the opening reception of the Cold Cuts Video Festival was held in the ODD Gallery, where the exhibits will be shown for the next two days. This is the second year of Cold Cuts, which is a curated exhibition of video by contemporary Canadian and international artists that runs concurrently and in association with the DCISFF. The festival is curated by Nicole Rayburn, with help from her SOVA colleague Justine Hobbs.
This year’s installation is entitled Revel In It, and the works are designed to explore the world of pop culture and mass media and “envelop it and wallow in it.” The ODD Gallery’s viewing hours for Cold Cuts are Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
— Dan Dowhal, Writer at Large