Street Entertainment
"A lone violin player tries to earn a few coins while the whole world erupts around him."
Design Production photos Script Credits
Street Entertainment was my minor project at the Victorian College of the Arts Postgraduate diploma in Film & Television. The running time was just over a minute and it was our first experience of seeing a film through development to production and post production.
Given the short running time I was originally set on making a gag film about a suicidal peeping tom called "Falling Tom". I wasn't very comfortable with this idea which was to be 2D animated but as the deadline for submitting a script approached and I hadn't came up any better ideas I was ready to start making this film.
The Victorian College of the Arts is located in Melbourne a short walk from the main train station in Melbourne , Flinders St Station. The walk to the College takes you through an arts precinct which has several theatres, a concert hall, and a ballet school. As I was going to school the morning of handing in the script, I passed a old man in a old brown suit playing the violin.
I cannot remember if his playing was any good but his brown suit caught my eye. It was in the middle of rush hour as the many people passing made their way to work. I guess the thing that struck me the most about this man is that no one even noticed him. I paused for a moment and looked as most people walked past head down, and no one looked at him.
So the idea of an entertainer giving his music to the world but being ignored or in the case of this film, drowned out by the noise and events around him came to life. The title is play on words to some extent in that who was being entertained? Was it us? or was it the violinist watching us go by? Is the entertainment the musician or the events on the street?
I went to school, scrapped my gag idea and wrote the script for Street Entertainment. If you read the script, the idea was more grand with a greater emphasis on the dialogue that the violinist overheard. In the finished film, the dialogue became more a part of the overall sound design.
I would like to one day revisit this idea with another film of longer duration.
Since that day , I have never seen the violinist again. Apparently he is a well known face around the city. He is Polish I believe, and taught himself the violin after retirement. I also heard that he had been assaulted badly one night. I hope I do see him again one day so I can give him a copy of the film.