 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Arthur
Date: 2004-09-10 15:28
In a scene in the new movie, Vaniety Fair, I thought the clarinet palyer was using a Bohem system clarinet (Complete with wig and the rest of 1812 clothing). Would someone else watch for this? Why can't they get it right? Millions of dollars to get everything period appropiate and then have the wrong clarinet spoiled the whole scene for me. Would Price Valient or King Arthur use an M-16? Maybe there is a place in Hollywood for music instument expert at $1000 a day? Arthur
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-09-10 17:50
It's still not as bad as some of the "Roman" soldiers in the movie Spartacus who were filmed still wearing their wrist watches.
Or maybe they were just wearing the new "sundial" version from Rolex ...GBK
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Author: Terry Stibal
Date: 2004-09-10 19:46
By the way, my wife still has a sundial wristwatch that the Fossil company sold back in the 1990's. A cute piece of jewelry, and it actually works if you take the time to line it up to north (and figure the daylight savings fudge and all; the latitude factor was "user adjusted" at time of purchase).
As for making stuff in a movie period appropriate, there are a number of ways to go after that goal. Vanity Fair may have been taking the easy route with a single clarinet player in a scene or two, but to be absolutely fair how many of us even would be able to accurately place an 1800-1812 period boxwood horn in the guy's hands. (It had to be a guy, right? Only one early woman clarinet player that I ever heard of...)
Most current clarinet players don't know that our horns used to be brown, bumpy and "different". Even most clarinet majors are a little weak in this area. Yet, the clarinet playing still goes along just fine, lack of knowledge or not.
(For that matter, I wonder how many players know that the Lazarus method was developed (as far as exercises go) to work through fingering issues on the "Albert" horn? They're great fingering exercises, to be sure, but they weren't really written with the "Klose/Boehm" horn in mind at all.)
Movies go in all directions on this:
Take the comedy "war movie" Kelly's Heros. The producer there went so far as to "recreate" one running "Tiger" tank (actually a Tiger tank like superstructure built on top of an old Soviet tank hull; the road wheel spacing gives it away) and three mockups, and tossed in a number of non-moving props that were dimensionally accurate as well. (One of these, a large field piece being towed by an SWS "half track" was only on camera for about five seconds, during the big fire scene at the start.) I know of other knowledgeable tank folks (I'm one myself) who still think that the vehicles in Kelly's Heros are the Real McCoy, and it does take a careful examination of the movie in slow motion to show them the error of their ways. Clever camera work, a lot of smoke and misdirection, and you get a "realistic" movie that is anything but (in reality).
With a movie, the perception is what matters, and in that case they hit the bullseye for all but a tiny percentage of the viewing public. So, whoever did the film spent a huge sum on a detail that most movies would have (literally) glossed over, only to be found out by those of us who had nothing better to do with our time. Was it worth it?
Probably not. But I appreciated the effort, as you would have the right clarinet in Vanity Fair.
By the same token, many other "classic" movie elements just aren't there to have any more. Old sailing ships are rare, and those that are both large and functional are rarer still. CGI works there, and is probably the best solution. Master and Commander did this pretty well, despite the huge number of other flaws with the storyline.
Old cars are getting rarer, particularly non-US vintage cars. (Hollywood maintains a huge fleet of vintage vehicles, available for rent, that cover most of the bases, but finding a functional 1920 era Mack tanker truck may be beyond the pale.) What do you do there? Well, one 1920's era truck looks much like another...fake it with a Model T truck and some tight camera angles and leave it at that?
Old airplanes? Another problem. There's precisely one flying B-29 left, about three A6M Zero fighter planes that can get airborne, and huge number of other, once common aircraft that now exist only in static non flying form. What do you do with a film on the Lady Be Good, a B-24 that got lost and crashed in the desert only to be found twenty years later in the 1960's? There are zero flying B-24 bombers left; here CGI is the only way to go...or just use some other period plane and ignore the protests.
(Tora, Tora, Tora was unique in recreating a sizable fleet of fake Japanese carrier aircraft in three different flavors, just for that film. Most of these survive today and are popular "rides" for well off businessmen who have a license; keeping your golf clubs in the belly tank (on the A6M Zero), the AP bomb (on the ersatz D3Y Val), or the torpedo (on the ersatz B4N Kate) is considered to be quite the hoot, I am told.) Three of them are based at an airport down the road from my house. But, they are an exception as well, as the Japanese are known for attention to detail (they also built full sized mockups of two battleships for the film, along with (literally) dozens of static US aircraft that were destroyed on the ground.))
At any rate, these are all very big things and a clarinet is a small thing, I hear you say. Fine, let's run the numbers:
Playing clarinets, or clarinets capable of being handled without dropping joints, from the period? Probably in the tens of dozens worldwide, with some hobbyists maintaining either real ones or replicas. They're there, I've held a few, and actually tried to play one (a replica) once.
Currently sold clarinets that look like 1800-1820 period clarinets? Other than custom replicas, zero as far as I can tell.
Clarinet players accessible to the film industry (over here, those who appear on screen are AFM members, even though they may not play the audio part) who happen to have a period or replica instrument from the period? Probably pretty low.
Clarinet players who meet the above qualifications, and happen to be available at the right place at the right time to suit the director and production schedule? The Venn diagrams are getting down to zero overlap at this point.
And, the number of viewers who will (at the minimum) notice this anomaly, or (at the worst) be offended by it while it is a mere passing detail in an otherwise very well done costume drama? You are one, I'd be another, but I suspect that we're in the very small minority.
So, throw in a guy with a wig and a "Klose-Boehm" and move on.
For a good look at this done right (albeit without early clarinets), take a look at the one orchestra scene in the film Topsy Turvy, the movie on "the making of The Mikado". Even though there was a lot of Sullivan's music in same, like all theatrical productions the musicians were mostly out of sight and out of mind.
Now, it would have been duck soup to call up a bassoon player in London with a modern German system bassoon for the one orchestra scene, but the director and producer instead chose a French style instrument. Coupled with an old coot playing the thing, it was featured in about fifteen seconds of camera time, but they did get it right.
Was it worth it? Probably not; most of you wouldn't have noticed the substitution. But, their heads and hearts were in the right place...
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