The Sightless Movie: An Experiment
By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 24, 2011 5:20PM
When we were a kid, our uncle had a blind friend for whom he would occasionally run errands. One frequent errand was stopping off at the video store to rent movies, because even though he was blind he still loved watching them. One of his favorites was All the President's Men. Which, if you stop to think about it, is a highly visual movie. We're all grown up now, but we've never stopped asking ourselves: would watching a movie without the picture be as engaging as watching it the standard way? Could it possibly be even more rewarding?
While having drinks one evening with FOUND Magazine's Jason Bitner we found ourselves having this very conversation. He got really excited about the idea and immediately referred us to Julie Shapiro. As artistic director of the Third Coast Festival, and its Third Coast Filmless Festival, she knows a thing or two about the concept of seeing something with your ears.
She told us, "I'm personally interested in the intersection between sightlessness/evocative radio/image-filled audio narratives," and we eagerly shared our idea with her. She got jazzed up too, and said she'd already tested a similar idea using the famous clip of Zenyatta winning the 2009 Breeders' Cup. Go ahead and try it--play the clip in another window without watching it. It's amazing how the mind's imagination can fill in the visuals perfectly. Just listening to the announcer's voice you can easily follow the action. If anything, it's even more exciting.
So, we're finally going to try out our experiment. Believe it or not we have never, ever seen the classic Chicago-themed comedy Risky Business. In fact, aside from a certain iconic scene, we know next to nothing about what it might look like onscreen. It'll be our guinea pig. Next week we'll post a review of our sightless movie experience. In other words, we'll only be listening to the soundtrack of the movie when we watch it. The week after that we'll see it again it, this time the standard way, and detail our reactions thereof. Think of it as an elaborate version of The A.V. Club's Better Late than Never. We're hoping that the end result will be a heightened appreciation for everything that makes up the watching of a movie.