Hugo Zemp

Visualizing music structure through animation: The making of the film head voice, chest voice 1

While many ethnographic filmmakers, as well as ethnomusicologists interested in audio‐visual means, are concerned about refining methods for the decoding and interpretation of visual texts, this article proposes a different perspective: that of visually reproducing in a film on musical features the results of research obtained with other visual means. An unexpected outcome was the discovery, thanks to the filmmaking process, of an important musical feature which has not been noticed and analyzed so far.

Ethical issues in ethnomusicological filmmaking

This paper investigates ethical issues which the author had to face in making a series of four ethnomusicological films in central Switzerland. Specifically related as well to an experience in filming music, the subjects considered raise questions of general concern in ethnographic filmmaking. Three main matters are discussed: revealing editing devices, which is rarely done in the film itself; the risk of the musicians becoming the laughing stock of the village if they appear to have weaknesses in their performance; and the return of research to those being studied, for their own benefit.