John & James Whitney - "Five Film Exercises" Film 4 (1944)

The brothers John & James Whitney created their remarkable series of Film Exercises between 1943 and 1944. These films are visually based on modernist composition theory, the carefully varied permutations of form are manipulated with cut-out masks so that the image photographed is pure direct light shaped, rather than the light reflected from drawings as in traditional animation. The eerie, sensuous neon glow of these forms is paralleled by pioneer electronic music sound scores composed by the brothers using a pendulum device to write sounds directly on the film's soundtrack area, with precisely controlled calibrations. At that time, before the perfection of recording tape, these sounds - with exotic "pure" tone qualities, mathematically even chromatic glissandos and reverberating pulsations - were truly revolutionary and shocking. The brothers won a Grand Prize at the 1949 Brussels Experimental Film Competition for the Film Exercises.

[@DanSpegel]

Great! Thanks a bunch! It's a shame that it's not possible to see these great works in a decent quality anywhere - these are true classics of experimental animation.

[@PHIntermedia]

It has that "Westdeutscher Rundfunk sound," but it predates Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge by 11 years. Might not sound like much to us now, but this is some pioneering work.

[@PHIntermedia]

I pushed the audio back by just short of 2 seconds and found that to be a pretty plausible synchronization. You can view it on my youtubes.

[@7karlheinz]

Thanks or uploading these films, Dan! Does anyone know why whoever owns the rights to the Five Film Exercises and all of James Whitney's films have never released them on any home video format (VHS, Laserdisc, DVD or BlueRay)???

[@DanSpegel]

I dont´t know who owns the rights. Some of his films are really very hard to get a chance to see, which is a real shame...

[@myyowtoobaccount]

I'm pretty convinced that these are all out of synch...Have you tried shifting the audio around? I think it's late by a few seconds...

[@myyowtoobaccount]

No the soundtrack is early by 4 or 5 seconds...