_________________DIRECTORS VIEW of the Music for "I Knew Him"

The project in which Matt Gibson assisted me was the creation of a video for a film competition as part of the Viewfinder’s International Film Festival for Youth in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The video was a five minute short that was meant to draw social awareness to the personal connections at home we have to Canadian peacekeepers involved in the current Iraqi Conflict. The plot of the film focuses on one situation in particular, where a Canadian Christian peacekeeper Jim Loney, who along with three other hostages from the United Kingdom and the USA was held for three months by captors demanding a ransom. Sarah Higgins, a fellow student at my university wrote a poem about Jim, as she knew him- he was as a member of her church congregation back at her home in Ontario, Canada. The documentation of her thoughts in relation to how she knew Jim Loney was what gave the film its’ title: “I Knew Him.”

Matt Gibson assisted in this project by providing an audio track. After scanning basic footage that I used in my first draft of editing of the video, Matt was able to produce a 1 ½ minute customized audio file. Only being given a few keywords and two minutes of footage that gave a loose interpretation of what the final project would be, he created music for the last minute and half of the film which added depth and effect to the emotionality of the film.

I arranged permission with a Christian band ‘Chris and Kate’ (www.chrisandkate.com) to use their song “Resist War” for the first 3 1/2 minutes of the video, but the last 1 ½  (the climax) is when the emotions run most high. The film shows Sarah being immersed in the grotesque media portrayals of the Jim’s position as a war hostage, causing Sarah to decide write a poem which she deeply roots in her emotions- her confused feelings about her personal connection to the Iraqi conflict, but also the ultimate hope that Jim would return home safe. The climax of the film is the moment when she prints the poem and recites the poem in real time- and that’s when Matt’s music commences. The quality of Matt’s work was extremely high- I could feel agony, upset, relentlessness, forgiveness, a big mixture of feelings with the music supporting this poem and this video. These mixed emotions may better get across to you if you take the time to read some excerpts from the poem itself:

“Why is it only real when you know the person it’s happening to, when you know they’re real…

I can’t be mad at the captors, not really

Though I feel not much of anything for them, I at least can’t feel hate…

And there it is, confusing, I am confused, about a lot of things, and yet, somehow, this is what I am sure of: I am worried and I know that others are too, and I will, in these words, confusing though they may be, I will pray for you.”

The music correlated with the video because in my opinion, it held the precise audio interpretation of the message of the film. As a musician having played piano for ten years and baritone for six, I am well aware of the different emotions and dynamic variation that creates a good song with good feeling. It was important that in this video the music emphasized not itself, but the emotion from Sarah that was being conveyed to the audience. In my professional opinion, when music is tagged to a video, it does not remain distinct- the audio and video work together in sync to convey a message, and the audio should never distract the viewer from the image that is visually being portrayed to them. This is exactly what Matt Gibson’s music did- it was a synchronized audio rendition of the visual image that Sarah and I had created.

In Matt’s audio, there was a mixture of synthesized organ, strings, electric guitar, and a few other instruments that really worked to convey the emotion of the movie. Electric guitar may not always seem like the stereotypical type of instrument to convey a sensitive topic such as this, but in Matt’s case, it worked. Matt’s instrumentation encapsulated pain, agony, confusion, as well as the hope and faith that stand on top of all these other emotions that Jim Loney, a peaceful man, would once again come home to Canada. In my opinion as a filmmaker, the instruments all individually represented a certain feeling that Sarah felt in her poem, and in my mind, the overpowering ones (such as the organ and the electric guitar) were those that represented her faith in God and struggle to hope for guidance and a peaceful outcome. 

The video was chosen out of a batch of submissions as one of the Top Ten entries for ‘Viewfinders Movie Challenge,” and was shown along with nine other short films in front of an audience of about 500 people, including film critics from all around Nova Scotia and the Maritime provinces of Canada. More info on Viewfinder’s International Film Festival for Youth can be found at www.atlanticfilm.com