Death is the Road to Awe - Audio Exploration - Abruzere

Film – The Fountain

Song – Clint Mansell – “Death is the Road to Awe”

Project 1 Audio/Film Exploration

This composition is made up of 2 different layers created while listening to an audio recording of Death is the Road to Awe, by Clint Mansell. After watching the movie, The Fountain, we began our discovery of interpretation by listening to this track used in the movie. After being given instructions on what material and drawing techniques to use, we listened to the song the entire way through during a first run and created the 1^st of the two layers. The medium used was charcoal sticks and paper, and we were required to use only rectilinear lines to make our interpretation. 

Literal Interpretation

This first iteration, I took from the music a very literal feeling of the instruments, primarily from the percussion instruments. As seen through the drawing, the song has a flow that is indicative of how the movie progresses through the storyline, starting out low and methodical, raising the volume and complexity, going to a more rhythmic pattern, followed by a slow build up along with the character discovery process, then finally hitting the climax of the film with a somber/relaxing decrescendo at the end.

Figurative Interpretation

The second layer of the composition was a more figurative approach to the music for me. This time, we repeated the song 2 times in order to be able to fully represent our thoughts and to be able to think differently about the song, incorporating the elements of the film in a different manner than the initial pass. In this layer, we used trace paper with a different color and my discovery was represented in two primary manners. The first was this offset grid of horizontal and vertical lines that show more of an open hallway or open space in to the main character’s mind. This represents the primary entry way in to the film and the openness the character must take in order to continue his journey. The second area I discovered was a series of horizontal and vertical lines that graphically look more like a tree, which was the focal point of the film that carried a multiplicity of meaning through the story.