Peter Hutton's "At Sea"

I recently attended a screening of Peter Hutton’s “At Sea,” which is a film that he made documenting the birth, life and death, of a huge sea vessel. The scale of the film is immense. It is mostly made up of these wide shots, covering massive ship and cranes need to construct the ship. There are very few close up shots of people in the film, for the most part they are these little dots moving through out the frame. What is so unique about this film however is that it’s silent. There is absolutely no sound what so ever throughout the entire film. Hutton offers us these amazing images to look at with no sound compliment to it. You have to sit there in complete silence, and it’s a bit distracting. You can hear the people around you breathing and coughing. It gets a bit eerie. However, above all that, you can’t look away from the screen. The images hold your attention extremely well, and you begin to image what these scenes would sound like. This is the only film that I have ever seen that was completely silent. All other silent films I’ve seen have had at least a music track to accompany it. This was up to me to decide what it sounded like. Looking at all the great big machines as they are putting the ship together, I began to imagine how loud it must be in this setting. All the cranes, pumps and people yelling on top of all those sounds to give instructions to other workers. An entire new world began to develop in my head and I was trying to keep up with the changes on the screen, in my head. I was attempting to make, what could be the soundtrack and sound of this film, as realistic as possible in my head. With the changing frames, I wanted to change the sound in my head as quickly as a I could and really try to put myself in the setting. This became very true once the ship was launched and was out at sea. This offered a completely new set of sounds to be imagined. You know have the water crashing up against the ship in the background and all the various sea noises. Birds, other ships, the wind, whistles, these were all sounds that I was trying to place in their proper context of the frame I was seeing in my head. I was just so entranced by the clarity and colors on the screen, that I wanted the soundtrack to put me there. It became almost like music to me when the ship was out at sea and it was a bit surprising to me that it was taking a musically form in my head. Of course, I am musician and often think of things in a musical way, but these were sounds that I was imagining, and now they were taking a musical form. That is a point that Glenn Bach brought up during his lecture to our class as well. He stated that, “If I’ve made you hear music in something that really isn’t music, I’ve done my job.” And I believe that Sutton had a very similar view on sound. He wanted the viewers to have to imagine the sounds, but he knew himself that there was a great rhythm to the images he was showing. The sounds accompanying the film, if there was to be sounds, would have to have rhythm to them as well, otherwise it would be a bit awkward, seeing as how there are so many different sounds represented in the images. It was an event to see this film, each viewer had the opportunity create their own soundtrack to the film. You had to bay attention, you had to be on your toes. And I can’t imagine that I was the only one in that theater you was trying to come up with what it might sound like.