Performance in the age of Covid-19
One of the best filmed performances of recent
years, Taylor Swift, live from the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards, shows
us everything that's wrong with the way TV producers and directors have
traditionally recorded live music. Forced by restrictions around the Covid-19
pandemic to rethink the usual conventions, the producers of this year's event
have embraced minimalism as necessity, recording performers on stage for an
audience of no one, holding the gaze of the performer in shots that last for more
than a fraction of a second, and in the process creating something that allows
musicianship, songcraft and personality to rise to the surface. The result
pushes musical performance towards something approaching great theatre;
studied, dramatic and visual.
Since I don't pay much attention to Award Shows and competitions around art, I can't say how consistently the approach and aesthetic was carried over the course of the entire evening. This clip caught my attention primarily because I'm quite fond of Swift and found her recent album, "Folklore" (2020), a brilliant collection of songs and stories. In watching the performance here, you can appreciate Swift as both songwriter and storyteller. It's not just her words and voice that take us on a journey into the lives of these characters, which she sketches across the song in question – "Betty", a narrative that continues across two further songs from the "Folklore" album – but her body language, vocal intonations and facial expressions as well. It's a complete performance.
Taylor Swift, live from the 55th Academy
of Country Music Awards [2020]:
Appearing relaxed and clearly enjoying the opportunity to perform and to bring her song to an audience, even a "virtual" one, Swift is charismatic and charming. As she sings, she's able to capture both the voice of her teen-boy protagonist, as he moons and whines over a girl who (rightly) doesn't want to know, as well as projecting her own withering contempt and amusement for this poor narrator, his chauvinism and entitlement picked apart with a subtle glance or a cold shrug of the shoulders. It's always been apparent that Swift had talent, but with "Folklore" she really shows potential to be one of the great troubadours, a singer/songwriter able to move effortlessly between both narrative and confessional-based songs.
However, what's most remarkable about this is the way it's filmed. As a music fan, the main thing that has always bothered me about live coverage of musicians and performers is the frequent cut away shots to members of the audience. While an establishing shot of the audience to begin and end a performance is good for creating context, TV directors will often cut to a crowd shot simply to enforce a sense of excitement or atmosphere; in the process, denying us the sight of the musicians on stage. Similarly, how often have we seen performances where a director cuts to a wide shot of the band performing during a great solo, excellent bass run, or a rhythmic drum fill, instead of going in close? It's like the people charged with filming live performances have no idea how music works or is created. We don't need to be reminded of the audience every three seconds. For those not fortunate enough to be attending live, the drama is on the stage, not looking up at it.
The approach adopted by the producers of this year's Academy of Country Music Awards is reminiscent of director Jonathan Demme's approach to his landmark concert film with the Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense (1984). There, Demme made the decision to keep audience shots to a minimum, holding the camera on the performers and cutting between shots only when necessary to emphasize a musician, a new song, or a change in staging. This way, the director was able to preserve the integrity of the on-stage performance, which the audience is there to see.
Stop Making Sense [Jonathan Demme, 1984]:
While not as clever as Demme's staging of the Talking Heads concert, the way the performance of Swift has been recorded is nonetheless similar in its attitude and approach: keeping the camera fixed upon the artist and her unseen harmonica player; backlighting the whole thing to give the performance a distinct and entirely visual "look"; highlighting the performer – her words and music – against the blackness of the backdrop, and in doing so, creating a visual implication of the light emerging from the darkness: post tenebras lux. Along with the sight of the empty auditorium that begins the clip and the resounding silence that closes it (no audience means no applause), this aesthetic aspect, born from necessity, provides a powerful reminder of where we are as a culture as we approach the final act of the year 2020.
This is the first example I've seen of one of these new, post-Covid showbiz events, where audiences and excess have been banished in the name of social distancing. I know there have been other Award shows, premieres and festivals conducted in a similar way, however, not having a lot of time for such things, I can't say whether or not these recent examples have resulted in anything as fresh and exciting as this. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how these institutions have been forced to adapt to the challenges of maintaining a thin veneer of normalcy, while at the same time protecting people against a global pandemic, and how this has resulted, at least in this example, in a new and better visual language for recording. As the first films and TV shows produced under conditions of Covid begin to appear over the next six to twelve months, it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, such restrictions and limitations will have on the kind of images and scenarios we see.
