Haydn Green used to just go to the movies like the rest of us.
But then he took cinema studies at uni, and started analysing films
more closely, “learning to see each one as a unique window into
a time and place and culture”. For the past three years, he’s been
unpacking films sonically via his project, Hear My Eyes, staging
movie screenings where the original soundtracks are replaced
with new scores, played live.
It all started in Berlin, where Haydn caught a spooky, silent German
sci-fi film, Metropolis, with a live score – “a blend of industrial
techno, mainstream pop and modern classical music”. He’d seen
the movie a fair few times before, but found it bizarre and slightly
uncomfortable to watch it in this new light. Haydn had always felt
a strong pull to get involved in the film scene, but wanted to do it
in a fresh, new way – this idea, he reckoned, fit the bill, and he
couldn’t wait to get home to Melbourne and give it a go.
As well as watching and reviewing movies for various film festivals
around his city, it helped that he was already pretty plugged into
the local music scene. In the beginning, Haydn – whose day job is
running CULT Cinema & Bar in Brunswick with his partner Niama
Wessely – was democratic in his approach. He’d pick the musicians
he wanted involved and allow them to choose the movie they worked
on, but that turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. “They’d reel off
heaps of films, but some of the band wouldn’t have seen them. Then
when they’d all watch them, the ones who’d made the suggestionsin the first place would realise they didn’t like them anymore.”
It was easier, he decided, to choose the films himself – varying
between documentary, narrative and animation – then approach
a band and say, “Here’s the project, the venue and the festival.
Would you like to do it – yes or no?”So far, virtually everyone has said yes, including Mick Turner
from Dirty Three, who played live over the Chilean documentary
The Pearl Button, and electronic band Black Cat, who were paired
with Japanese sci-fi filmAkira. Pairing the musicians and films
is the fun part, Haydn says. “My goal isn’t to make something
subversive. I don’t want to match a melodrama with a death metal
band – that’s not the angle I’m coming from.” Instead, he tries to
choose a band that has a similar style to the film’s original score,
“so their interpretation is an evolution of the original”.
Once the musicians are on board, he works closely with them,
coaching them through the score writing. “Obviously, they know
how to write,” he says. “It’s more about choosing when and how
much to play. If you play too much, it gets exhausting.”
To allow for the new soundtrack, the film’s original score has to
be removed, which is not always an easy task. For the French film
Fantastic Planet, for instance (which was featured at the Melbourne
International Film Festival), stripping the score for the prog-rock-jazz
fusion act Krakatau meant wiping out the dialogue altogether. Anyone
else would have picked another film, but “we really wanted to make it
work, so we hired two French voice actors to act it out,” Haydn says.
“It was one of those hurdles we just had to jump.”
While Haydn can’t see himself doing more than four projects a
year – “I think they’d lose their freshness” – he has loads of films
he’d love to screen. “There are some obscure arthouse ones like
Bergman’sHour of the Wolf, and it would be really quirky and
interesting to do a Wes Anderson film.” As for dream musos, King
Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are high on his wish list. “If we’re being
less realistic, though, definitely Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood.
But that’s a pretty wild dream.”hear my eyes
HAYDN GREEN PAIRS LIVE MUSIC
WITH FILM SCREENINGS FOR THIS
MELBOURNE-BASED PROJECT.
Wor d s Leta KeensPhotoBri Hammondmy project