Making and Unmaking of The Pitch

live film performance, 20 min., 2008, with Thelma Bonavita and Isabell Spengler, Museum of Sound and Image, Sao Paulo



The performance simultaneously shows the live version and making-of of the film The Pitch on a theater stage.

On the left side of the stage, the film set has been built up. It consists of interchangeable backgrounds, a chair for the producer (embodied by Thelma Bonavita), an aquarium set up at the producer’s eye level, a few spotlights, colored gels, and other materials to create film effects. A video camera is set up on a tripod and wired to a beamer, projecting the video image live onto a screen stage right. Both performers wear headset microphones.

Isabell Spengler appears on stage and introduces herself as "the filmmaker." She invites the producer to have a seat on the chair and to listen to her film idea. While the filmmaker summarizes the plot of the film she is planning, she operates the video camera, the spotlights, changes the backgrounds, and makes miniature icebergs pass by directly in front of the producer’s eyes.



During the performance, the audience can follow in real time how these manipulations influence the video image being projected, how they alter it, and how they illustrate the film plot being described in parallel.
By revealing what is going on outside the frame during the shooting of "The Pitch", the mystery and magic of the effect of film is simultaneously produced and destroyed.



Concept, text, and production: Isabell Spengler


Performance: Thelma Bonavita, Isabell Spengler

With support from
MIX Brazil Festival and Goethe Institut, São Paulo