Snow (short film)

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Movie
Original title Snow
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1963
length 8 minutes
Rod
Director Geoffrey Jones
production Edgar Anstey
music Johnny Hawksworth ,
Sandy Nelson
camera Ernest Xerris ,
Wolfgang Suschitzky
cut Roy Ayton

Snow is a British documentary - short film by Geoffrey Jones from 1963, with the producer Edgar Anstey 1966 for an Oscar nominee.

content

At the beginning of the film there is a slow, almost military knocking, then the train station and tracks come into view, which seem almost buried under a mountain of snow and ice. Workers are busy getting the tracks free of snow and ice. It takes time. But then the time has come and slowly the train starts moving. The more speed he picks up while gliding through the snow-covered landscape, the faster the music becomes. From their compartment, the passengers watch what is going on in the snowy landscape and enjoy the comforts that the warm interior offers. On its way on the tracks, the train throws up huge white clouds of snow. When you arrive at the next train station, the game starts all over again.

production

Production notes, preliminary work

Example image, train in winter

Produced by British Transport Films and Geoffrey Jones Films and distributed by British Lion Film Corporation, as well as BFI Video (DVD) and Manson Distributing, the film was the first film Geoffrey Jones made for British Transport Films (BTF). It owes its existence to a coincidence. Jones was doing research for another film and was traveling around the country because of that. When he saw the footage that had been shot, black steam locomotives caught his eye against a brilliant white background. So he came up with the idea of ​​creating another film that shows the effort required to offer the passengers on board a train the comfort offered and how difficult it is to keep everything running. At a meeting between Jones and BTF boss Edgar Anstey, he was quickly convinced and filming began the next day. Jones and his crew traveled across the country to capture the wintry conditions. The filming took place in one of the coldest winters ever recorded in the British Isles and was called "The Great Freeze of '63" or "The Long Winter".

The film was formative for Jones' signature style, which he expanded and refined in later films such as Trinidad and Tobago (1964), Rail (1966) and Locomotion (1975).

Film music

Sandy Nelson's Teen Beat was the first choice of music for the film. Jones asked British musician Johnny Hawksworth to re-record the melody and expand it to double its original length by reducing the music recording to half its original speed at the beginning and then gradually reducing the tempo to one over a period of eight minutes Accelerates speed that is about twice as fast as the original. Daphne Oram from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop then added various filters.

publication

Snow premiered in the UK in 1963 and has subsequently been shown worldwide. The DVD is included in the BFI DVD compilation Geoffrey Jones: The Rhythm of Film .

In the Federal Republic of Germany, the film was first seen on January 13, 1967 on television.

reception

criticism

In The Guardian there was talk of a wonderful British classic short film The Big Freeze documented. The contrasts between trains and tracks, people, animals and machines, warmth and cold, and black and white were also praised, as was the music by Johnny Hawksworth and Sandy Nelson's Teen Beat , which was cleverly arranged.

In Obscure Train Movies stated that it was not a bad short film about a train and the filmmakers have delivered a remarkable job by've shown how much work darinstecke to keep a railroad running.

Awards

BAFTA Awards 1964

  • nominated for the BAFTA Film Award in the Best Short Film category

When it was first published, Snow received a number of major awards, the most notable of which was

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The 38th Academy Awards | 1966 see oscars.org (English)
  2. ↑ a b c d Snow (1963) at screenonline.org.uk (English)
  3. ↑ Snow (1963) In: The Guardian , December 6, 2010. Accessed February 1, 2019.
  4. ↑ Snow (1963) at obscuretrainmovies.wordpress.com (English), including scenic representation of the film through pictures, including film