{"id":28752,"date":"2024-05-20T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=28752"},"modified":"2024-05-20T12:34:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-20T19:34:09","slug":"to-film-with-your-ears-reinventing-cinematic-language-with-the-tuba-thieves","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/to-film-with-your-ears-reinventing-cinematic-language-with-the-tuba-thieves\/","title":{"rendered":"“To Film with Your Ears”: Reinventing Cinematic Language with The Tuba Thieves"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Rachel Kolb<\/b><\/h5>\n
\n

Alison O\u2019Daniel<\/strong> is a visual artist and filmmaker who works with sound, moving images, sculpture, and large-scale installations. She is the director of <\/span>The Tuba Thieves<\/i><\/a><\/strong>, an experimental film that considers how listening can become a form of storytelling.<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Daniel identifies as d\/Deaf. She grew up wearing hearing aids in a hearing family and she started learning American Sign Language (ASL) as an adult. O\u2019Daniel\u2019s experiences of living on the d\/Deaf spectrum inform her unique approach to filmmaking in <\/span>The Tuba Thieves, <\/span><\/i>which emphasizes a wider range of visual and sonic experiences than typically-hearing audiences often imagine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a fellow storyteller who has lived along this d\/Deaf spectrum my entire life, swinging from ASL to spoken English to captions to various forms of sound and sight, I first watched <\/span>The Tuba Thieves <\/span><\/i>with delight. I immediately recognized the subversive playfulness at the heart of the film: its deep politics and humor, and the ways it centers a distinctive visual and aural sensibility, which can invite us to consider the sensory and communicative worlds we live in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, O\u2019Daniel talks about the cinematic sensibility she brings to this film, and some of the deeper ideas and viewpoints it reveals.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Creating the Visual and Sonic Elements in <\/span>The Tuba Thieves<\/span><\/i><\/h3>\n

When you were making <\/b>The Tuba Thieves<\/i><\/b>, what elements informed your approach to visual storytelling? How did you decide to tailor your captions, film cuts and transitions, sound design, etc., to create the unique visual and sonic grammar in this film?<\/b><\/p>\n

I started out telling the first cinematographer I worked with, Meena Singh, to film with her ears. The other visual elements that became important were filming with objects, poles, architecture, etc., \u201cin the way.\u201d I wanted the viewer to frequently want to lean around something to see better, or to physically push something out of view. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Nyke

From Tuba Thieves [Credit: Judy Phu]<\/p><\/div>The goal was to make the viewer <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> the film physically, and be very active. And also to recreate a visual version of the feeling I have with my hearing: a lack of clarity or ownership over the image.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted to simultaneously destabilize the viewer while they also got to look at a visual vocabulary that had massive and dynamic presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the captions, I used different colors to distinguish between four forms of communication, which are spelled out like a key in the first high school marquee:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blue – Sound, Pink – Spoken, White – Signed, Yellow – Considered.\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The yellow captions refer to a fourth narrative voice that is more akin to ideas being communicated. The yellow and white\u00a0captions do\u00a0not have a sound corresponding to it.<\/p>\n

The sound design was often intended to be very physical and felt. I frequently asked the sound design team if we could make the audience <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> the sound in their bodies, and wanted to push the audio to certain extremes, such as utilizing bass sounds that were so intense that they might make the audience feel a bit sick.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, in scenes where sounds are loud, like the punk bands playing at the Deaf Club, or the scenes right under flight paths, I wanted to let the sound shift toward almost painful. My goal wasn\u2019t to hurt the audience, but to acknowledge something that always baffles and interests me: as someone who is not hurt by sounds like feedback or ambulance sirens, but has witnessed hearing people flinch with those sounds, I wanted to include pain in the sonic vocabulary [with] a wide range of volumes, pitches, timbres, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I never wanted to shy away from difficult experiences that could accumulate into something generative and maybe beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n\"close\n

Is d\/Deaf Storytelling a Thing?<\/span><\/h3>\n

In your view, is there such a thing as “d\/Deaf storytelling”? Or \u201cd\/Deaf cinematography\u201d?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

I am not sure. I think there is, in that those of us on the Deaf spectrum are constantly grappling with sound and hearing, so we bring a depth of study to the subject. It\u2019s a viewpoint that wrestles with the contradiction of our sensitivity to sound with the lack of cultural value that we\u2019ve been granted in telling stories about that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So there is a somewhat omnipresent irritation and anger in our storytelling\u2014a sense of not being understood, of having to explain and educate, of always having to devote so much of our time to advocating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>The Tuba Thieves<\/span><\/i>, I gave myself permission to not explain anything to anyone, and that felt great.<\/span><\/p>\n

This might be controversial to say, but I feel I\u2019ve not really witnessed d\/Deaf storytelling or cinematography, but rather a determination to fit into the able-bodied conception of what filmmaking already exists out there. Perhaps this is the cinephile in me colliding with\/collaborating with the disabled part of me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I want a reinvention of cinematic language, and for all of us to be free of “proving ourselves.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\"Scene\n

Somehow there is attention given and value ascribed if we are accepted by the mainstream\u2014if a Deaf actor performs in a blockbuster for example\u2014or if a hearing director tells a Deaf story and therefore “validates us.” The craving of that validation feels extremely toxic and abusive and unimaginative to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am, on one level, appreciative that Deaf actors are playing deaf roles more and more because that has been a long time coming, but this is so bottom-of-the-barrel basic to me that I can barely even engage in that conversation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remain deeply skeptical of representations of Deaf people by hearing directors and film teams, and I know that in the Deaf community there is a growing sense that nondisabled film teams hire consultants to check a box that makes it okay for them to direct the story. This is cynical and they must hire consultants, but it should not stop there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I pine for more d\/Deaf\/disabled creators, yes, but the real issue is there are not enough diverse (in identity and artistic taste and approach) disabled gatekeepers in the rooms that make decisions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope the syntax and spatiality of ASL, and the social codes and values of Deafness, will inform more films made in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a whole universe of Deafness: the ways we pay attention and communicate that feel like a beautiful and profound language (beyond ASL even), that could make its way into filmmaking\u2014and I hope to see more of that.<\/span><\/p>\n