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Fwd: QUERY: puzzle in Laughter in the Dark
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----- Forwarded message from sigrun.frank@wolfson.oxford.ac.uk -----
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 12:30:58 -0000
From: "S. Frank" <sigrun.frank@wolfson.oxford.ac.uk>
Wyllie has recently published a brilliant study of Nabokov's employment of
cinematic techniques: Nabokov at the Movies: Film Perspectives in Fiction
(2003).
Siggy Frank
David,
I'm not absolutely certain VN was doing this at the time that he was writing
KQK, but I believe that during VN's Berlin period, he at least once, and
perhaps several times, supplemented his slender income by performing as an
"extra" in films. One can pick up a decent day's pay (decent if one is in
tight financial circumstances), even now, by applying for such work. VN was
a distinctively good-looking young man, and was an easy candidate for such
scenes as a theatre crowd in evening attire.
In any case, I've seen signs in VN's early novels that he was familiar with
the film director's practice of "story boarding." This artistic process --
practiced in extreme detail by Alfred Hitchcock, for one, throughout his
entire career -- the director and a sketch artist carefully draw the scenes
for each day's work. Through this technique the composition of every shot,
every camera angle, the number of actors, and the position of all the props,
are drawn in what is sometimes called "skinny line" sketches, a term that
comes from the artist's practice of using only a black marker to draw broad
strokes on a large white pad, about fourteen by seventeen or twenty inches.
By doing this in advance, directors can plan each day's work -- ideally,
three minutes of usable film per day, about three story boards -- will keep
the film on time and within budget. Principle shooting of a 90 to a 120
minute film is about 30 or 40 days. If all goes well (a rarity).
In any case, it seems to me that one of VN's techniques for narrative
compression (picnic, lightening) MAY have a filmic influence. Just a theory
of mine.
AB
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