Brave Love: The Problem of Hans

Brave Love is our 96 min Mock Epic movie, adapted from the writing of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). More at: About Brave Love

KM got a popularity boost at the time of World War 1 by mocking Germans in her early “German Pension” stories. "Brave Love", also an early story has a moment of German mocking. Meet Hans the long-suffering German waiter:

"Madame," said the German waiter appearing from nowhere with a thick bandage round his neck.

"What is the matter now?" said Mildred in a disgusted voice. "More boils again, Hans. Ugh! How dreadful you look."

"Ah, Madame, please to excuse," mumbled the German waiter.

"No I won't excuse you Hans. I'm sure it's because you don't wash."

She scolded him in a hard angry voice that Valerie and Mitka heard all the way up the stairs.

We have been seeing the adaptation of classic works to follow contemporary sensibilities. First it was Dr Suess, then Roald Dahl. Do we now do the unthinkable and censor Katherine Mansfield? Fortunately, Mansfield herself gives us some guidance from later in life. This from a 1920 letter to John Middleton Murry

Bogey I cannot have the German Pension republished under any circumstances. It is far too immature & I don’t even acknowledge it today; I mean I don’t ‘hold’ by it. I can’t go foisting that kind of stuff on the public – it’s not good enough  … It’s positively juvenile and besides that it’s not what I mean: it’s a lie.

We think that a reason for republication was to cash in on the post war unpopularity of Germans. We also take for further guidance, evidence of Mansfield’s sympathy for the Germans in their treatment by the victorious allies. 

A letter, Sunday, October 27, 1918 - To the Hon. Dorothy Brett ([edit] added October 24, 2023)

Really, in spite of all England shrieking and imploring everybody not to make Peace until they've had a rare kick at him and a rare nose-in-the-mud rubbing one does feel that Peace is in the Air.

"It is all about, my sister, Yet it is unborn”

A letter, Saturday, May 1, 1922 - to the Hon. Dorothy Brett

Manoukhin's partner here, a very exceptional Frenchman, started the subject yesterday, said, Why did not we English immediately join the French and take all vestige of power from Germany? This so disgusted me I turned to Manhoukhin and felt sure he would agree that it simply could not be done.

We needed to adapt Hans to fit in to a contemporary corporate workplace. We believe we are true to Mansfield’s later attitudes in removing the negative German moment and turning Hans around. Hans the mocked ugly waiter becomes Hans the honest company accountant mocked by his dodgy colleagues.

This article is an excerpt from "Brave Love” – A contemporary adaptation to film" by John Calder and Gerri Kimber, presented by Gerri Kimber at the Katherine Mansfield Society Conference, Pavillon de l’Erable, 70 Rue du Vieux Ru, Avon, Fontainebleau, France. Friday 13 Oct 2023,

"Brave Love", our "Mock Epic" feature. The Synopsis.

Valerie Brandon has a relationship crisis. Her boyfriend Evershed is an oil billionaire who delights in attention-getting showmanship as a climate change denier. But he has a deep dark climate change secret. Valerie is having an awareness awakening triggered by greenie activist Mitka getting into her elite lifestyle bubble. The climate change battle is then fought out in Valerie's relationship with Evershed, complicated further by Valerie's growing attraction to Mitka. 

From director John Calder: ‘My mentor asks "what's the genre?" I say "this is highly original alternative cinema that is beyond genre". The mentor says "don't talk rubbish, what's the genre?". I come up with "classic literature retold as a near-future science-fiction mock epic" or "mock epic" for short.’ 

Satirical comedy takes on climate change sceptics, corporate culture and billionaires. The classic literature comes from Katherine Mansfield: “Brave Love”, “The Garden Party”, other stories as well as letters, poems, book reviews and articles. With support acts from Jonathan Swift and William Shakespeare.

Regarding visions of the future: move over Nostradamus, here comes Katherine Mansfield! 

The big production experiment is to make a no-budget co-op mock epic possible by filming green screen. We report that as a success for filming the actors but we also discover in doing the often animated backgrounds that there is a reason epics have hundreds of background artists in the credits. After many years of epic DIY post-production, it feels surreal and exciting to be submitting to film festivals and meeting our audiences.

"Sliding Door" - green screen filming of actors with a meccano miniature set.

From "Brave Love", our indie co-op green screen climate change mock epic now entering film festivals.

Water Effects - "Old School" wins again.

About greenscreen scenes with water. At the time of filming I was into watering actors with a spray bottle and we imagined the rain etc. Whatever James Cameron is doing is not "trickling down" to indie land that I can see. So I reach for the garden hose.

From "Brave Love", our indie co-op green screen climate change mock epic now entering film festivals.

"The House of Seville" wins Film Festival Award

"The House of Seville" has won Best Animation Spring 2022 in the "Golden Nugget International Film Festival". Awards page:
https://gniff.com/winners_season_11.html

Golden Nugget had a subtitles requirement. View that version on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/666695009

Golden Nugget nominations page Spring 2022:
https://gniff.com/selection.html

I remastered and entered "..Seville" into "Golden Nugget" after I was impressed by their NZ screening. My review of that:
https://iafilm.blogspot.com/2020/11/indie-screenings-finding-audience.html

"The House of Seville" and Youtube Age Restriction

"The House of Seville" (18 min) is our animated mock horror ghost story based partly on "Carmen".

Watch "The House of Seville" on Youtube

CHANGE USER RATING to "Not made for kids" 29 May 2024
Keeping a watch on Youtube videos, it has become clear that "age restricted" to 18 and over is much too restricted for what this is. The "Deadpool and Wolverine" trailer was the decider!

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BACK IN THE PAST ....

Posting "The House of Seville" on Youtube for public viewing raised the question of audience rating. Our movie has animated violence with a murder scene based on the "Carmen" story. In our discussions we thought it was a low level issue and we should use the Youtube upload option "not made for kids". However when I did the upload and carefully read the Youtube guide notes I made the call to "play it safe" and go "age restricted".

We work with a storytelling trope that ghosts are obsessed with causing the living to reenact their deaths. Here, the ghost of Carmen takes control of Ray and causes him to kill Daria with a sword. The critical items from the Youtube checklist are (1) the audience can see blood and (2) the editing and animated camera point of view highlight the blood beyond incidental detail. This is balanced by a non-realistic animated depiction.

Blood is a major rating element. I went through an exercise of reviewing Youtube scenes of violence and other content that could be challenging for sensitive viewers. These were mostly trailers for horror movies as well as examples like "1917", "Dunkirk" and "Gladiator". Challenging yes, with many life-at-risk tension moments, but mostly contrived to be bloodless. It was very difficult to find any example clip that showed blood. It appears that a convention has developed that bloodless violence is OK. Reflecting on that I agree that blood is an issue and I should restrict a film that depicts it. However, how OK is it to have wide audiences for otherwise realistic violence without blood? Advances in movie tech are making bloodless violence more intense. We are seeing entertainment violence that is missing violence realities like long term pain and suffering: including a lifetime of guilt and remorse for the perpetrators after a moment of impulse. Blood is a truth of violence. And film-makers should tell the truth. To age-restricted audiences rather than using the bloodless excuse to market violence to a wider audience.

Watch the Murder Scene as discussed here

Compare with the Murder Scene in the Opera "Carmen".

"Ulead MediaStudio" project recovery - the raw file is partly readable.

The Challenge

I am re-editing our animated short "The House of Seville" using Adobe Premiere. It needs an extensive audio re-edit.

It was originally edited in Ulead MediaStudio 8 which is no longer available.

I can use the output video as a guide track for re-editing in Premiere. Reconstructing multitrack audio sequences is the biggest challenge.

 

The Solution

Open the MediaStudio Project file in a simple text editor. I use "WordPad".
The "project file" has an extension "dvp" eg "vedScene06_v12_QS.dvp"
A lot of the data appears as non-printing characters, but names of source files appear in uppercase plain text - like this:

And that gives us answers to IMO the most important recovery questions: which was the selected clip for a particular moment? and where do we find it? The old video then guides us as to where to position and how to cut.