Cinema Canada (Feb 1978)

Kevin Gillis ottawa soundtracks Kevin Gillis lives and works composing music in an old stone convent in a small town — population, about 1300 — some 40 miles from Ottawa. It used to be a convent, that is. Now it’s a recording studio, an audiovisual set-up complete with gingerbread trim on the outside and a Yamaha grand piano on the inside. Kevin Gillie likes to do things that way. It’s what’s known as down-to-earth panache. He is twenty-seven now and the oldest of a family of seven kids. He grew up in Ottawa and a few places in Europe, including Luxembourg. He has travelled and performed with Kris Kristofferson, Mary Travers and Tom Rush, and at one time trekked across Canada with a Canada Council grant to interview harmonica players, a project which was _ subsequently heard on CBC radio and may possibly become a book. Kevin Gillis is no ordinary fellow. “Tm very persnickety about what I do,” he says. His reputation can back him up. He loves to tell the story about the time a client gave him a 30-minute slash print on a Friday and they recorded the final tracks for part of the film on the following Monday. Gillis works best when the heat’s on. What does he think about the film industry in Canada? “One of the saddest things about Canadian filmmaking is that so many people take the easy way out and go with stock music. It happens all the time.” What about writing theme music? “It’s got to capture the feeling of the film and get you interested.” A score? “It has to be tied in to what the director is trying to achieve. It can’t overpower the visuals. Its job is to underline what the director is doing. Music has its own way of drawing emotions out of people.” Gillis should know. His work includes the music for CJOH-TV’s “Joys of Collecting,” CTV’s “The Diefenbaker Years,” CBC’s ‘Celebrity Cooks’ and CBC Radio’s ‘This Country in the Morning.”” He has also recently completed two 30-minute travel programmes in the upcoming ‘‘The World of Vincent Price” series. Gillis’ next stop? “Td like to do a feature. An original soundtrack.” Brian Jeffrey Street Arthur Lipsett a close encounter of the fifth kind photo by Lois Siegel It is not easy to interview Arthur Lipsett, because after a brief encounter with him it becomes obvious that he has rejected the standard, ready-made, machine-oriented, artificial way of life upon which most people pattern and pride themselves. Arthur has come a long way and has seen and experienced some situations and ideas’rather obscure to the masses. His particular investigation seems to be What is Life. Whether one is mainly concerned with his films or with the man, Ar thur’s ideas are inseparable from the way he experiences the world. The films he made while working at The National Film Board of Canada include the following: Very Nice, Very Nice, which received an Oscar nomination; Fluxes; Free Fall; N-Zone; Trip Down Memory Lane and 21-87. As if impersonating Rip Van Winkle himself, Arthur has emerged from a seven-year repose to once again examine people and what they are trying to be and who they might be. His films consist of different bits of stock footage and photographs he took February /9