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Background
Due to the recent unpleasantness, Baton Rouge has eclipsed New Orleans as the largest city in Louisiana. Is the city destined for greatness? Scenic Highway is the name of US Highway 61 as it passes through northern Baton Rouge. It is also this trip to the city – and such landmarks as Huey Long’s art deco State Capitol building and Buckminster Fuller’s hidden geodesic dome. This darkly affectionate memoir is also an exposé of the city’s colorful history – told through the use of animated motion graphics, archival Super 8 footage, and re-created & faux-created elements.
Production
Scenic Highway was lovingly created on a Macintosh Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 running Mac OS 10.4.7 and Final Cut Pro 5.1.1. Additonal software was used including Soundtrack Pro and Adobe After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. The font is DIN Schrift 1451 Mittelschrift.
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| "About the Score" |
| by Juuso Auvinen |
| I wanted to make the music of Scenic Highway simple and absolute, slightly melancholic but not overdramatic and underscoring. I wanted to handle music as pure material, texture, mass of sound, thick and thin, dense and sparse, without any actual melodies. |
| My work usually starts with deciding the harmonic structure and cycle of the piece. I often end up with a normal pop-song structure as the listener is familiar with it and it is not too complicated. This was the case with Scenic Highway as well. By experimenting with the piano I settled on a 16 bar cycle that loops throughout the whole film. The actual piano line was created at the same time. With the rest of the instrumentation I finally decided to use string orchestra because it creates totally different kind of mood than any chamber ensemble. Orchestra makes the film sound bigger. |
| For the score of Scenic Highway I used an ordinary (a bit old) Windows PC and Igor Engraver (for notation and midi), Propellerhead Reason (for recording) and the excellent Audacity (for audio processing). |
| "Scenic Highway Theme" (6:33) 6.0MB MP3 |
| "Theme with Full Orchestra" (7:38) 7.0MB MP3 |
| Composer Juuso Auvinen lives in Finland and has composed the scores for "Vert", "Icarus of Pittsburgh" and "Bodybags". |
Credits
| By: Evan Mather |
| Principal Cast: Matthew Clayfield, Kirk Hostetter, David Maney, Evan Mather, Jennifer Mather, Raja Murugan, Elizabeth Pulsinelli, Nanda Raghunathan. |
Super-8 Archival Footage: Gregory East, John Emeigh, Vaughn Harmon, Rudy Karg, Parke Moore, Shawn Mulkey, Jennifer Thomas. |
| Music: Juuso Auvinen |
| "American Portraits" Theme: Troy Sterling Nies |
| Image: John DeFraites, Evan Mather, Nanda Raghunathan, Richard Salazar, Robert Thomas. |
| Cartography, Editorial, Recomposition, Sound: Evan Mather |
| Special Thanks: Jacob McNally of Western Pennsylvania Public Television |
Film Info
| U.S.A. |
| January 2007 |
| 18 minutes 15 seconds |
| Color/Black & White |
| Super 8 & Digital Video |
Buzz
"Part diary, part travelogue, part mystery, part filmmaker retrospective, Scenic Highway is a love letter to the hometown of he who must surely be Baton Rouge's most prodigal son. Evan Mather's homage to the capital of Louisiana is a pastiche of styles and formats that rewrites the geography of this landscape through a collection of video footage, animated maps and diagrams, written testimonials and guided tours. Bracketing some of the City's more salient (if bizarre) history factoids within the context of the State and the world at large, Mather manages to write himself right into this urban text with excerpts of his earlier films shot in the region and other Super8 and video snapshots of him and his friends against the same backdrop. The results are hilarious, deeply touching and often breathtakingly creepy. FIVE STARS!"
Liz Dunnebacke, New Orleans Video Access Center.
"...***1/2...Mather uses a combination
of archival Super 8 footage, iconic still photographs, animation, and
loopy recreations of famous events in Baton Rouge’s history to create
his sardonic and irreverent ode. Relevant selected readings from such
authors as Mark Twain and Jack Kerouac set to Juuso Auvinen’s moody,
dreamy score provide an aural complement to Mather’s oddly engaging
visual history. If Scenic Highway were just some sort
of bland Chamber of Commerce puff piece about Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
it certainly wouldn’t even bear a mention here. Fortunately for
Mather and his viewers, Scenic Highway is to the common
travelogue what the triple latte is to coffee..."
Film
Threat.
Other
| Download PDF Cut Sheet |
Screenings and Awards
| Winner: Best Documentary | Blue Wire Film Festival | Los Angeles, USA | June 2008 |
| New Orleans 5th Annual International Human Rights Film Festival | New Orleans, USA | April 2008 |
| Alvar Branch (New Orleans Public Library) | New Orleans, USA | January 2008 |
| "The Hand-Made Films of Evan Mather" | Melbourne Underground Film Festival 8 | Melbourne, Australia | September 2007 |
| 2007 Dallas Video Festival | Dallas, TX, USA | August 2007 |
| SXSW | Austin, Texas, USA | March 2007 |
| Winner: Best Documentary Short | MicroCineFest 2006 | Baltimore, USA | November 2006 |
| Winner: Gold Award | 16th Annual Louisiana Shorts Festival | New Orleans, USA | October 2006 |
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