Vertical Features Remake (1978) Movie Script

The Institution
of Reclamation and Restoration
are steadily examining and reappraising
the papers of Tulse Luper.
It is hoped, eventually, to make
a complete and definitive
reconstruction of his research.
The papers we have discovered so far
run into hundreds of thousands,
and almost daily
more papers are being added.
Whilst working on Visual Concepts
of Time and Space for Session Three,
Tulse Luper spent some time
in the Black Mountains.
As a primary contributor to the
Session Three Landscape Programme,
Tulse Luper
was invited to stay at Buryglaze,
formerly Glasbury-on-Wye, where
he was given research facilities
at the session study centre
for a winter and a summer.
In the second or third week
of his stay at Buryglaze,
in the margin of a set
of papers devoted to windmills,
Tulse Luper drew up some plans
for a project to which he later gave
the working title Vertical Lists,
or, alternately, Vertical Features.
Basically, like many
other projects of this time,
Vertical Lists was a project
of structure and organisation.
In this case, the organisation of a
number of images of vertical features
that Tulse Luper
found interesting enough to record,
in the beginning, at any rate,
with pen on paper.
There is good reason to suppose
that Tulse Luper filmed these images
and images like them, and put them
together in a short film.
He apparently restricted his area
of search to the square kilometre
bounded by the grid lines
170 to 180 and 390 to 400
on sheet 161 on the first series
of the 150,000th issue of
the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain.
About a week
after the completion of the film,
it was shown to Gang Lion
and Cissie Colpitts,
both of whom later participated
in Tulse Luper's
Project for a New Physical World.
After Gang Lion had seen the film,
it disappeared.
The majority of the papers,
drawings and photographs
referring to Tulse
Luper's Vertical Features
were found some years ago
in a farmhouse at Bridzor.
But it was only very recently that short,
damaged black-and-white sections
of a film, supposedly
duped from the original negative,
were found
in a house at Hammersmith
where Tulse Luper
was known to have lived
until the completion of his work
on Visual Concepts for Session Three.
The IRR also have in their possession
a short section of 16mm colour-film
consisting of eleven shots,
which has been regarded by some
as being a section
of Luper's lost Vertical Lists.
It was found wound
into a grading copy
of Tulse Luper's film Dear Phone
that had been stored in a
converted water tower film vault
at Goole on North Humberside.
Before he filmed the images
for Vertical Features,
Tulse Luper drew up several
schemes for arranging the material.
Many of the schemes were
organised on grids of varying dimension.
He wanted an overall shape, a square,
that could be divided up
symmetrically.
That would have
a single central image
and self-contained rows
running both down and across.
A multiple of any odd number
would've given these characteristics,
but Tulse Luper, in the end,
appears to have decided
on a format of 121 images
divided into 11 rows of 11.
Tulse Luper gave four reasons
for having chosen 11
instead of any other number.
First, the number 11, two verticals,
echoes the subject matter
of the film.
Second, if the format 11 x11
is rearranged,
it can be made to form a square
complete with diagonals,
thus echoing the total shape
of the project
and marking, by the intersection
of the diagonals,
the central image of the project.
The third reason was that
if the square of 11, 121,
is written in this way, the strokes
could be arranged to make a square.
And the fourth reason
was that 121 is the same
backwards as well as forwards,
suggesting that
the total project was reversible.
With the information gained from the notes,
and with the drawings
and sections of film as a guide,
the Institute of Reclamation
and Restoration
have decided to make
Tulse Luper's film again,
called this time
Vertical Features Remake.
There is a note
on drawing and instruction 3,007D
which appears to organise
the 121 basic images
in a scheme of
progressive image-length.
The institute has adapted this device
into a structure
where each successive image
of the 121 images
is one frame longer
than its predecessor.
It seemed that Tulse Luper
had also made elaborate plans
to underline and contrast
with natural sound
the organisation of the
images in his original film.
But having no clear idea
of the total sound conception,
we have conceived our own, trying to
follow the spirit of his experiment.
We make no claim that this film
reproduces the film Tulse Luper made
or would make now
if given the opportunity again,
though we believe it is made
in the direction of his enquiry.
As a further contact
with Tulse Luper,
we went to Buryglaze
and the Black Mountains
to find in the same area as Luper did
the vertical images for the film.
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
- (rook caws)
- One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight,
nine, ten, eleven.
- (birdsong)
- One, two, three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (sheep bleat)
- One, two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (birdsong)
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (low wind)
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (distant hammering)
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (rooks caw)
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
- (skylark sings, sheep bleat)
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten,
eleven.
(approaching vehicle)
Since the making
of Vertical Features Remake,
270 pages of Tulse Luper's papers
written in Provendor for Session
Three have been rediscovered.
The papers were found
in a book depository at Nevers.
They were pinned in batches
of 11 to every 11th page
of a copy of Tulse Luper's
publication on bird migration.
Lephrenic claims to have found
amongst these drawings new evidence,
which has also been
substantiated by some film fragments
discovered in the vaults of
the Secession building in Vienna,
that the IRR film,
Vertical Features Remake,
has some important inaccuracies.
It seems that not all the material
for Tulse Luper's original film
was shot in Buryglaze.
Gang Lion, after seeing
the original rough cut in London,
apparently suggested to Tulse Luper
that contrasting material,
filmed in Bridzor and in Hammersmith,
might be incorporated into the film.
Lephrenic also states
that current research
points to a far freer
structural handling of the material.
Fallast, on the other hand, writes that
the material in the Institute's film
was not structured rigorously enough
and suggests that the decision to start
with a section length of 11 frames
instead of the strict
section length of one frame
was an unnecessary compromise.
Fallast has also called
the attention of the Institute
to drawing an instruction 4,890F
where the growing progression
is in section lengths
and not in individual image lengths.
In such a structure,
the 11 images of the first section
would be 11 frames long.
The 11 images of the second section
would be 22 frames long.
The 11 images of the third section
would be 33 frames long, and so on.
Whilst the Institute
of Reclamation and Restoration
acknowledge that there is no
conclusively demonstrative evidence
to suggest our organisation
of the material is above argument,
we feel it was in the spirit
of Tulse Luper's research.
Nonetheless, we have closely re-examined
a great many of the available papers,
and we have considered the suggestions
of both Lephrenic and Fallast.
The Institute has also listened
to advice from Galibeau,
that some form of musical
punctuation was used.
Taking all these opinions
into consideration,
we have made the film
for a second time.
(piano chord)
Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
(piano chord)
14, 15, 16, 17,
18, 19, 20,
21, 22.
(piano chord, skylark sings)
25, 26,
27, 28,
29, 30,
31, 32,
(piano chord)
36,
37,
38,
39,
40,
41,
42,
43,
44,
(piano chord)
47,
48,
49,
50,
51,
52,
53,
54,
(piano chord, jackdaws caw)
58,
59,
60,
61,
62,
63,
64,
65,
(piano chord, loud songbird)
69,
70,
71,
72,
73,
74,
75,
76,
(piano chord, bird chirps)
80,
81,
82,
83,
84,
85,
86,
87,
(piano chord, songbird)
91,
92,
93,
94,
95,
96,
97,
98,
(cockerel crows)
(piano chord)
102,
103,
104,
105,
106,
(dog barks)
107,
108,
109,
(piano chord)
(birdsong)
114,
115,
116,
117,
118,
119,
120,
Some six days after the completion
of Vertical Features Remake Two,
the IRR were accused of fraud.
The Society
for the Restitution of Film
questioned
the source of our funds
and Appenhost
demanded to see a list
of all the researchers
and technicians
that are employed at the Institute.
Castaneye declared
that the photographs
that were supposed to be
of Tulse Luper
were in fact photographs
of the film editor's father-in-law.
Rastelin doubted
the very existence of Tulse Luper,
and made a film
called The Ubiquitous Wolf
which suggested that Tulse Luper
was a figment
of the Institute's imagination,
invented so that the IRR
could undertake a project
which was no more than
an academic film-editing exercise.
The most useful and germane
criticisms came as usual
from those who have
closely researched Session Three
and its pernicious effects
on the European Landscape.
Oisinger, editing a catalogue of
the newly discovered Luper papers,
suggests that the organisation
of material for Vertical Features
was much more complex than the IRR
have up to now appreciated.
He suggests
that the sense of development
from shorter to longer shots
gives a false impression
of Luper's intention.
Luper, he argues, was after
a much more homogeneous scheme
where, if there was to be
any especial emphasis,
it was to come
in the centre of the project.
Akinadoer argues that Lephrenic
was wrong in his assumption
that the verticals that Tulse Luper
filmed outside the Buryglaze area
were intended for Vertical Features.
Indeed, according to Tulse Luper's
other projects of the period,
there is a strict
and deliberate insistence
in keeping the geographical unity.
Akinadoer suggests
that the extra material
was in fact filmed
by Gang Lion himself
to intercut into Tulse
Luper's original film
to make it less
elegiac and dangerous,
and to make it more satisfactory
to the aims of Session Three.
There is good evidence
to support the fact
that Gang Lion made a completely
substituted film of his own material
to show in Vienna
and subsequently destroyed the original
of Tulse Luper's Vertical Features.
The black-and-white film sections
found at Hammersmith,
according to Akinadoer,
are probably the remains
not of the film made by Tulse Luper,
but of the film
substituted by Gang Lion.
In reparation therefore
for the apparent destruction
of Tulse Luper's original film,
and with regard
to the new sources of information,
the Institute of Reclamation
and Restoration
have reconstructed for the third time
Tulse Luper's Vertical Features.
(piano chords, no natural sounds)
Akinadoer's first criticism
of Vertical Features Remake Three
was that its complicated structure
was too ingenious,
and the effect of intercutting
short lengths of 11 frames
with long lengths of 121 frames
was unsympathetic to the elegiac
intentions of Tulse Luper.
A month after the
first production copy
of Vertical Features
Remake Two had been seen,
Castinager published
an account of the events
leading up to the
Session Three programme
and the subsequent collapse of the
Policy for a Dynamic Landscape,
the policy that Tulse Luper called
the Skipping Landscape Programme.
Two weeks after a show-copy
of Vertical Features Remake Three
was first seen publicly,
Castinager rewrote his account
and sent a copy to the Institute.
First, he urged us to look again
and again at the colour film clip
that had been found
at the Goole water tower.
Castinager suggests that Tulse
Luper's film project Vertical Features
was far more important than an
incidental examination of structure,
and suggests that Tulse Luper
foresaw to some extent
the unsuitability of the
Session Three plans for the future.
Three letters written
by Cissie Colpitts to Gang Lion
strongly support Castinager's contention
that Tulse Luper
returned to Buryglaze
at various times of the year
to film the landscape,
to demonstrate, among
other things, that it changed
and would continue to change without
assistance from synthetic sources.
According to the new evidence,
Tulse Luper was making the film
as a record of domestic landscape
to serve as a reminder
of what had been achieved.
Castinager suggests that the 11 x11
structure was intended as a warning.
He suggests that it was a simile for
the 11th hour of the 11th month.
(rhythmic piano score and birdsong)
(church bells)
(church bells)
(hammering)
(hammering)
(whirring motor)