The 2012 Sundance Film Festival which opens today in Park City, Utah will feature a nominated short film scored by Dartmouth's own Larry Polansky, a composer and a professor of music at the College. The animated short, "Night Hunter" (2011), has been entered into the Shorts Competition
The short, directed by well-known filmmaker Stacey Steers, features a technique known as "collage animation" in which every individual frame is a separate, intricately designed collage, according to Polansky. The film's 16 minutes encompass more than 4,000 distinct frames, which Steers created over a period of four years.
"Night Hunter" was influenced by the haunting style of silent-era cinema, telling a story of solitude through the symbolism of fantastical objects birds in flight fill the scenes along with shrunken images of 1920s actress Lilian Gish that can fit into the palm of a hand. The short follows the travels of cut-out images of Gish, a prominent film star who famously starred in the silent-film "Birth of a Nation" (1915) as well as the film noir "Night of the Hunter" (1955). Through its thousands of collages, "Night Hunter," a play on the name "Night of the Hunter," conjures alarming scenes that group together unusual objects in unrealistic scenarios.
"[Steers'] work is very artistic," Polansky said. "There is nothing commercial about it."
Polansky's score aimed to create "simple melodic ideas" with "lots of strange primitive kinds of sounds," he said. He combined traditional instruments such as a guitar and accordion with more eccentric sounds, ranging from bird call recordings to computer-generated noises.
"There is one point where there is a kettle blowing, and that is actually a guitar," said Polansky. "You can't imagine what's actually in there."
Polansky and Steers met and became good friends while they were residents at the MacDowell Colony, a non-profit artist colony. Polansky explained that each night after dinner, the various artists gave informal presentations of their work.
"[Steers] showed her previous film, and it just blew me away," Polansky said. "It was fantastic."
After her presentation, Polansky introduced his own work, and their interest in future collaboraiton became instantly apparent, according to Polansky.
"She just walked up to me after that and said, I've just about finished my new piece, which I've been working on for five years, and I'd like to ask you to do the score,'" Polansky said.
He started work on the score last fall and in four months, it was ready for a commissioned premiere at the Denver Art Museum in February 2011. As a composer, Polansky is not usually involved in projects of this nature.
"It was just purely fun for me," Polansky said. "It was a project of mutual respect."
The film was a united effort with mutual creative trust between filmmaker and composer.
"She said, I want this to be a complete collaboration,'" Polansky said. "[Steers] gave me free reign."
The score was written entirely at the Bregman Electronic Music Studio at Dartmouth, with the support of other Dartmouth music professors and several local musicians.
"Thank god for digital technology and fast bandwidth," Polansky said. "She would send me new versions of the film almost every night."
Polansky described the making of the score as a very rigorous and adaptable process.
"You have some ideas and start work on it," he said. "But it's a moving target, it's always changing by milliseconds or a whole scene disappearing as you're working."
Despite the demanding nature and brutal deadlines set by Steers, Polansky insisted the process is still fun.
"[Steers] is an extraordinary artist, but she has to be because of the kind of art she creates," he said. "It's very intensive and time consuming."
As a part of its Denver premiere, a museum installation was created in conjunction with the film. The installation is a reconstruction of a house in the film and features background music taken from the score. A week after the Denver premiere, the film was selected as one of five short films for the New Directors/New Films Festival in New York City to be screened at the Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art, according to Polansky.
"Night Hunter" was also shown at the Telluride Film Festival in September and will be shown at the White River Film Festival this spring, as well as in the Hood Museum of Art in the nearfuture, according to Assistant Director of the Hood Juliet Bianco '94. "Night Hunter" will screen at Sundance on Jan. 21.
