Warner in the 1970s

Ascent - A Film about Mountaineering in Yosemite CA 1970

Original Electronic Music by Warner Jepson - Directed by Virginia Duncan

(these mp4 clips recommended to be played with Apple's Quicktime or Realplayer)

Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip1 (1min 10secs)
Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip2 (5min 12secs)
Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip3 (9min 4secs)

Luminous Procuress - Film by Steve Arnold - Electronic Music by Warner Jepson

1971 May "Luminous Procuress", feature film premieres at San Francisco Film Festival,
International Film Festival, Palace of Fine Arts, and later at the Presidio Theater on Chestnut St.

Arnold’s longest film takes viewers on a trip with two young men through strange, erotic places on a voyage towards greater sexual freedom. Like travellers in a dream, they meet a series of people dressed in exotic clothes, including members of the famous San Francisco drag troupe The Cockettes, who filled their beards with glitter and combined male and female ideals of beauty. Salvador Dalí thought it “the work of a genius” and organised a screening at the St Regis Hotel in New York. The film’s visual exuberance is in constant tension with the electronic soundtrack by American composer Warner Jepson.

1971 - Luminous Procuress - IMDB credits - Original Score by Warner Jepson

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing Luminous Procuress with scenes from the film

"The film had been all but edited when the backers decided that it needed much help from someone other than the director, as well as music. Upon hearing the recorded dialog it proved useless, badly recorded, acted, and scripted. I decided to try foreign language in its place as the film was vivid enough and was meant to be somewhat pornographic, but wasn't; simply an exotic woman, sorceress, escorting two young men to visual delights above and below ground. I took about a year at home with the film using a hand viewer to see the feature length 16mm film and to synch music for it that I composed on a small Farfisa organ I'd acquired and from my Buchla sound collection, using a Revox to make a stereo tape. I enlisted a young Israeli, a Japanese woman, a Swiss-German girl, and Italian guy to record the voices for the two sets of lover. For the sorceress I found a Russian matron to speak of anything, taking her words and splicing them or, with the Revox, recording and re-recording little snippets of words or phrases that would be impossible to speak or understand but that took on a fascinating rhythm. For a love theme I got a saxophonist, oboist, and violinist to play the written melody and used the Revox to combine them, both contrapuntally, and as a canon. I found this easier than writing a piece for many musicians that would take time, money, and much more from me than working by myself to achieve the same results. When through I had put sound to every inch of the film. There was no story, only a series of episodes, each having its separate "sound." When seeing it later in theaters I would find the sound exhausting." Warner Jepson

NCET - National Center for Experiments in Television - San Francisco 1973

Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) - U B U W E B -
Video by Stephen Beck and music Warner Jepson

Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) - Music by Warner Jepson MP3 sound file only (mp3 - 5mb 3min 35sec)

Director: Stephen Beck 1973 Time: 28 mins Music: Warner Jepson A classic in audiovisual experimentation, Illuminated Music was a series of live performances by Stephen Beck (visuals) and Warner Jepson (music) in which the artists reworked pre-made compositions directly before an audience. While electronic video adventures were still a novelty, live experiments, both in the visual and musical arenas, were even rarer. Beck used the Direct Video Synthesizer, designed by himself, which - so the narrator claims - allowed him to "control precisely" the visual output in the performance (the myth of control in electronic media) and, still noteworthy at the time, to create pictures without a camera. Jepson used the now famous Buchla audio synthesizer, first explored by Subotnick in his 1963 piece Silver Apples on the Moon. Though I'd that say that Jepson's music is far richer and more engaging than the visuals (perhaps as a result of the greater possibilities of the Buchla synth and the deeper theoretical and practical range of electronic music at the time) Illuminated Music is unsurpassable in its historical significance as an early experiment in live electronics. -- Eye of Sound Clip1 about Jepson and Beck from Film "The New Wave" 20 secs Clip2 about Jepson and Beck from Film "The New Wave" 4 min 6 secs   NCET - National Center for Experiments in Television - San Francisco 1972 'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing his experimental work with NCET Here are some of Warner Jepson's experimental videos with colors and special effects never seen before that time. He usually focused the camera on his face while creating these videos in the early 1970s. Warner Jepson's - Orange Wind Warner Jepson's - Itchy Blue Face Warner Jepson's - Face Behind the Lamp Warner Jepson's - Hot Pink Guys These videos were featured recently at the California Video section in art exhibitions at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in California They are also portrayed in the book California Video: Artists and Histories

Photos1970s

World Trade Center 1975 by Warner Jepson