INTRODUCING.... GEORGE PLATTS

George Platts kicks off SFF 2018 with his Synchronous Sound Multi-Screen Experience on Sunday 4 March. We caught up with George for a taster of the night ahead and an insight into the man himself

What in a nutshell is the Synchronous Sound Multi-Screen Experience?

The synchronous bit is in your brain. There will be 3 screens showing different, but related, moving images. The three loudspeakers, one next to each screen will occasionally separately project related (to the images) brief sounds BUT the composition of the 6 elements (3 visual + 3 audio) are random so your brain goes to work to synchronise the occasional brief sounds with the moving images in a 3 dimensional space. Coincidences do happen.

How long have you been doing this?

Since 1965, when I ran a music club for fellow teenagers in a smallish Yorkshire town, Bingley.

How did you get into it?

My mother was an artist and writer. My best friend from 1955, Steve, and I liked to listen to the ‘latest’ music. I combined the two at The Turret Club, Bingley, West Yorkshire from 15th January 1965. The club closed in 1972.

I remember last year's launch night featured lots of obscure sci-fi and B-movies. Have you really watched all those films?

I mainly respond to the visual aspect of cinema. Many of the films I repeatedly watch, I watch sections of (sometimes looping them), in no particular order, playing a different sound track each time (usually the latest CD I have bought). Sometimes I become intrigued as to what the original narrative is and re-watch the film ‘properly’. I am always disappointed as the multifarious narratives I had concocted for the film surpass the original B-movie / obscure sci-fi narrative.

What's your favourite film of the last year?

Frantz. I also screened Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at a conference in Germany in July and marveled at the fact that it was a mainstream film of 1969. It was beautiful.

And of all time?