Vernon Frazer on Animated Film Poetry

"Fared Warning," a piece of animated film poetry recited to musical accompaniment by Vernon Frazer, appeared in AlteredScale.com 2. What follows is a short interview about it.

What is the process you go through when creating animated visual poetry with musical accompaniment?

Each project is different. Usually I write the poem, with or without animation. If I write the poem first, I usually do the animation next, do the recitation, then find the music that fits all of it as best I can. After I've completed the basic animation, I time the recitation and the effects of the animation so that they will synchronize. Sometimes I improvise the music completely, other times I cut and splice one section into another. "Fared Warning" is my first attempt to wriie, animate, recite and compose simultaneously. I'd write and animate some phrases, then improvise bass and reed lines over the passage, write another section, then improvise more music. At a certain point, though, I saw where the music was heading in relation to the text. I ended up jumping ahead and finishing the text and animation, then improvised the instrumental parts for roughly the last half of the poem. I'm pretty sure I redubbed the reed parts. Blending them can get tricky at times. So, the process of doing all three together didn't succeed as planned, but as a process it allowed me to do all three about as simultaneusly as I can.

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Vernon Frazer contributes regularly to this blog.