Every once in a while I listen to a song and perfectly envision a movie scene to go with it. Unfortunately, I never get a story to go with the image and draw a blank when it comes to characters or any plot detail. Most of these are intro title sequences which go on nothing but the feeling I get from that song and have little to do with any lyrics, and for whatever reason all of them involve a car in some manner.
For instance, the following occured to me this morning litening to OK Computer. I got some vague idea about a mayoral race in an impoverished industrial town, and this image to go with it.
1 - EXT MOUNTAIN ROAD - DAY, OVERCAST (RAINING)
Titles fade in and out over the intro to ELECTIONEERING by RADIOHEAD.
Late autumn trees, most without leaves, rush by fast enough as to be
unidentifiable, grey sky flickering between the passing grey trunks.
We're slowly pulling away, enough to distinguish the blur as trees, and
then, as the vocals begin, to see the car we're following. The rusted,
beat-up 88 FORD MUSTANG winds downward along a wet mountain road in one
long tracking shot, trailing spray.
We cross and recross a river on rusting truss bridges, patches of paint
being the signal to the bare metal, rather than the ground. The
dividing yellow line is all but obliterated. Trucks hauling rain-soaked
logs lumber uphill in the opposite direction. At the false ending of
the song, we slow, the car rushing away down the road from the camera.
Panning right reveals a tried-and-true introductory device: a town's
welcoming sign.
Welcome To
HYDE MI LS
PENN YLVAN A
Enjoy Your Stay in Our Frie dly Com unity!
Friendly as the community may be, its sign is weathered, faded and
nearly illegible. Less-faded paint suggests there were originally
decorative trees on either side of the town's scrollwork name, but like
several of the letters, these are missing.
After the drumroll, we cut to:
2 - EXT TOWN SQUARE, HYDE MILLS, PA
The familiar car makes its way through the nearly nonexistent downtown
of Hyde Mills, stopping at the town's one traffic light, hanging above
the intersection. Our view is opposite the car so we can see the
corresponding signal. We can see a row of storefronts on the main
street; one or two people are crossing between the few remaining
businesses, huddled under umbrellas that do little to ward off the now-
driving rain. The buildings are as run-down as the bridges and the sign
we've already seen; they have that seedy look peculiar to industrial
towns long after the industry has gone.
When the light changes (no traffic has passed on the cross street), we
follow the car to the row of parking spaces in front of the civic
building. As the song ends, we cut to:
...and that's all I have. We cut to the inside of the building and introduce our character as he approaches some desk or other, but the narrative disappears with the music.
cp |
