I haven't seen the entire movie from which these pictures are taken, but I have seen clips of the parts where the actor plays the violin. I'm sure that each respective actor took time out to practice the instrument and look convincing, but it's really hard to fake playing the violin. And I say this as a violinist, clarinetist and one-time percussionist.
With any wind instrument you can more or less put your mouth on the mouthpiece and move your fingers or valves in time with the pre-recorded music. I've saw this technique used a lot when I played in band in middle school. In fact, I feel that the most taxing part about playing the clarinet is controling my mouth and breathing; yes, fingerings can be difficult but a lot of the playing is in regulating the flow of air through the instrument. Which is not an issue if you're faking it.
You can't really fake it when it comes to playing a percussion instrument. People can see and hear it if you don't move your arms and hit the mark at the right time. But also it's not that physically hard to play a percussion instrument. We all know how to clap our hands; hitting a gong is just like swinging a bat; xylophone/marimba is hardest to fake, but it's just like tapping a hammer on twenty-odd chromatically-arranged nails, and how many times have you seen a xylophone or marimba player a main character in a movie?
With violin, though, there's a certain amount of coordination required, a certain way to hold the violin and move the bow across the strings. It's an awkward movement, not one that comes naturally. I can't come up with any everyday equivalent to the motion that the right arm must make; it's a subtle combination of moving at the shoulder, elbow and wrist. The thing about violin-playing in movies is that the main character is usually supposed to be a Concert Violinist, someone who plays the violin as their profession. In real life these people are 1) talented and have some innate ability to play the instrument and 2)have trained for decades to better their technique garner that much acclaim. Woodshedding (intense practice on the violin) for 6 hours a day for 6 months can only help to familiarize the actor with the instrument to the point where they can look passable when playing. Maybe to non-string players they look pretty convincing on screen, but as a violinist I can immediately tell to what degree the actor is faking it and has learned to play the instrument. The way the actor holds the bow, the violin placement on the shoulder, the finger placement, the posture and sway of the body-- all these little things are very revealing.
I don't mean to intimate that haha, I'm better than these people because I've been playing the violin for blah blah number of years #winning ; it's just that I find it alternately annoying and amusing to watch people try to play the violin on film. I laud the effort put in but wish that there was a way to make it look more realistic and make the bow strokes match the music.
<end rant>
No comments:
Post a Comment