The Rape of the Sabine Women

Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation

By Catherine Mahoney, Production Manager

Developed mainly through improvisation, The Rape of the Sabine Women is a re-interpretation of the Roman myth, with the Romans re-envisioned as G-men and the Sabines as butchers’ daughters. While the original story traces the birth of a society; this version, updated and set in the idealistic 1960s, suggests the destruction of a utopia. The single channel, feature length, video and sound installation is conceived as an operatic five-act structure, shot in HD, HDV and S16mm featuring music composed by Jonathan Bepler. The score was recorded live on set, incorporating ambient and “foleyed” sound into an orchestra comprised of butcher’s knives, bouzoukis, soloists, plugged in noise rock and 800 voices.

Living Room, 2005

In September 2004, eleven members of the Rufus Corporation, (a group of artists, dancers and musicians, founded by Eve Sussman, who come together to make works on video) traveled to Athens, hired twelve additional main performers and began the process of creating a modernist version of the Sabine myth. Shooting began in May 2005 as hundreds of extras were joined by the main cast to be captured by Director of Photography and steadicam operator, Sergei Franklin, at the Herodion Theatre in Athens where one of the final scenes (the fight scene) takes place.

Jeff in Pergamon, 2005	Untitled Video Still

The Rape of the Sabine Women was shot on nine locations in Greece and in Germany. Production tools included a Panavision/Sony-HDW-F900 camera and a set of prime lenses, using a 360º Steadicam rig. On every location, 24 channel live sound was recorded in 24 bit, 96kHz directly through a Pro Tools Studio Setup onto G-RAID drives-- a state of the art sound recording system virtually unheard of on location.

Principal photography was High Definition Video, however, the piece was created without a script or storyboard so, after the crew wrapped at night, Eve kept going on HDV with her Sony Z1U while the actors continued to improvise. One hundred forty hours of footage, 100 hours of music and 6000 photographs later, Sussman went home (to Brooklyn), to edit what culminates in the video-musical, The Rape of the Sabine Women.

Women in the S-Bahn, 2005

Post production began by capturing all the footage into Final Cut HD using a Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD Pro PCIe card. The edit was done using Final Cut HD, on an Apple G5 Quad with two 23” Cinema Displays and an Apple X-serve RAID. Monitoring Full HD resolution and true color was done using the Blackmagic Design DeckLink card SDI out to a Blackmagic Design HDLink into a Panasonic Plasma Display. This gave Sussman and her editor, Kevin Messman, a true video signal for an accurate color balance. This was crucial as the piece contains four different formats, HD, HDV, DV and S16mm film. Because of the different formats, real-time, full HD monitoring on a large display was vital to take care to cut between the formats during moments that wouldn’t compromise the quality of the picture and would give an understanding of what the piece would ultimately look like as a large-scale HD projection. The Blackmagic HDLink, in conjunction with the Blackmagic DeckLink card, allowed for the ideal monitoring setup during the editing process and, at the point of exhibition, these same tools smoothly transition from LCD flat screen to HD projection while maintaining the color balance.

Eve Sussman on the set	Eikones, 2005

When presented publicly, The Rape of the Sabine Women uses the unique conditions of high definition projection and 7.1 surround sound for flawless state of the art technical installations. The video is installed using a G5 Tower or MacPro, a Blackmagic DeckLink card with an SDI out to an HD projector. If the projector does not have an SDI in, Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation has learned that the Blackmagic HDLink converts the SDI to DVI without losing color or image quality.

The goal of a successful exhibition is to extend an unprecedented visual and sound experience to audiences, combining the elements of a live theatrical performance within the context of High Definition film. Only a handful of artists are creatively pioneering HD technology and its accompanying audio components. Eve has shifted her approach to recording and cinematography to accomplish enormous creative and technical advances. As HD gains commercial success, it is important to offer the public unique projects that accelerate these highly unusual visual and sound experiences. Technological tools by Blackmagic Design are crucial components to this process.

The Rape of the Sabine Women has recently shown at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany, and screened with a “live musical intervention” at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

For more information, please contact: Catherine Mahoney