A very talented director told me recently how he lost a job to another very talented director.
“I imagined the creative team throwing my treatment in the air, then high-fiving each other in slow mo. This is the music that’d be playing.”
He held up his iPhone and the trippy, hypnotic sound of Love On A Real Train filled the air.
My art director and I laughed out loud, and I started imagining all kinds of other silent, slow-mo scenarios to go with that music.
When you slow things down – I mean really slow – you don’t have to try to be funny.
Just last week I saw an amazing slow motion, silent scene at Comedy Bar.
Standards and Practices were doing the short-form game “One-Minute Movie,” and the audience suggestion was Inception.
When the lights came up, Cameron was spinning alone in the centre of the stage, Isaac just kept saying “Bonnnnnnnnnnng…Bonnnnnnnnnnng…Bonnnnnnnnnng…” into the mic, and the brilliant Mark Andrada added a slow-mo strobing effect on lights.
At the one minute-mark, Cameron swayed ever so slightly, like DiCaprio’s spinning totem, and Mark cut to black.
It was a jewel of a scene in a night of hilarious stuff.
It got me thinking how fun it would be to create a soundtrack just for slow-mo scene work in rehearsals.
The repetitive, acid rock opening of The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again. Scott Walker’s weird and wonderful Montague Terrace in Blue. David Bowie’s Cat People. Radiohead’s Subterranean Homesick Alien. Jay-Z’s 99 Problems.
What would be on your slow-mo playlist?
People and Chairs 
I actually used to do this as part of a literature/classics-themed improv short form group. I worked in a music library and pulled classical tracks (“Jupiter” from Holtz’s The Planets, for example, or perhaps some jazz guitar from Django Reinhardt) and we would do a silent scene game called “Fantastia”. Each night I gave the sound guy a 10 or 12 track disc and he would choose which track to play, and we would improvise a silent scene to that track. The dynamics of the game ended up being somewhat like “Moving Bodies” since we never knew what the music would do next, and it might force our characters to suddenly change direction.
Yes, it was a blatent ripoff from Disney; but they never saw fit to litigate, thank goodness.
I actually used to do this as part of a literature/classics-themed improv short form group. I worked in a music library and pulled classical tracks (“Jupiter” from Holtz’s The Planets, for example, or perhaps some jazz guitar from Django Reinhardt) and we would do a silent scene game called “Fantastia”. Each night I gave the sound guy a 10 or 12 track disc and he would choose which track to play, and we would improvise a silent scene to that track. The dynamics of the game ended up being somewhat like “Moving Bodies” since we never knew what the music would do next, and it might force our characters to suddenly change direction.
Yes, it was a blatent ripoff from Disney; but they never saw fit to litigate, thank goodness.
Sounds like fun! A literature/classics-themed improv short form group, huh? What a great idea.
Well we performed in the back room of a coffee shop, so we developed the show around that location.
Makes perfect sense. My team just started performing in a coffee shop. A challenging location…especially when you’re fighting for focus with the cappuccino machine! ; )
Anything by Prodigy (which is also for any fight scene)
Now we’re imagining a very poignant two-person scene to “Smack My Bitch Up.” Um… ; )