In 2022, I released a soundtrack for Man with a Movie Camera under my musical persona Oh!Noverdrive!
About the movie: The Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Kaufman also appears as the eponymous Man of the film. It’s one of my favourite films, and its impact on cinema is sort significant, it’s almost difficult to describe.
About the music: Silent films rely a lot on music. It’s funny that we call them silent, because when they were releases the theatre would have been anything but. Music live or recorded was an essential part of the experience. That said, a film like Man with a Movie Camera seems to demand accompaniment. Vertov was very experimental in how it accompanied his film. It’s weird to listen now when you hear examples. But it’s inspiring stuff. Since it was released, many musicians have created a wide ranging variety of soundtracks for the film.
My own 15 tracks for the film (roughly 110 minutes of music) were composed over the winter of 2021-22 and refined for what seemed like forever. I was inspired by a lot of different genres, but ultimately I wanted to captured the film’s frenetic energy and sense of optimism. All tracks were composed in Garageband (iOS) and were a lot of fun to put together.