Monday, February 13, 2012

Week Three: My Cameraless Filmmaking Experience, So Far

Going into our 6X1 class, I had no previous experience with cameraless filmmaking, but over the last few weeks I have gained an understanding and appreciation for the aesthetics of cameraless filmmaking and how cameraless films are made.  My first experience with cameraless filmmaking started with the need-to-know basics:  splicing film and making film loops.  After all, most of the filmmaking we have learned to do so far in other classes has been digital filmmaking, so it has been very educational to work with actual strips of film, and in such a hands-on manner.

I would recommend that film studies students take this class as early as they possibly can in their academic career, because of the filmmaking comprehension you obtain by physically touching and manipulating the film itself.  With this class, it was the first time I had ever spliced film together, and it was a really exciting experience that was just too cool.  And then the next step was making a film loop, which went hand in hand with splicing the film (to my understanding, it is essentially the same thing).  But again, this was my first time making a film loop, and then I learned how to run the film through the projector.  All of this was a great experience and it made me want to work as a film projectionist like a few of the other students in the class.  Working with the different film stocks and the film projector made me realize all of their complexities in their construction, and this has been a fascinating experience as a result.

Some of the manipulation techniques I have worked with so far have been scratching and puncturing to mark the film, as well as, the application of oil and various colored inks to the film stocks.  Some of the film stocks I have worked with in class have been the 16mm clear leader and the print stocks.  It’s interesting to be able to see the sound recording alongside the images, outside of the perforations on the print stock.  I have not seen the film that I had applied the oils and inks to projected on screen yet, so I don’t know how it has turned out.  I have seen the film that I manipulated by scratching with pushpins and different types of sandpaper, and the results were very dynamic.  I found that when you create a repeated pattern in the scratching that the images could leave a real impression on you as opposed to a series of more random scratches.

The magazine transfer ended up being a really fun tool in our increasing arsenal of film manipulation techniques.  The range and variety of looks with magazine transfers is endless; from making vivid color patterns, to the difference in the hard edge look of cut images versus the frayed look of ripped images, to adding inks to the magazine images, etc.  The smaller the images the better with the magazine transfers.  I found a series of tiny “yes's and no's” in vertical columns, and they showed up quite when blown up on the projection screen, due to their patterned formation.  I also learned that the longer you soak your taped magazine images in hot water, the more vivid the colors will turn out once you make the transfer onto the film stock.  Now, I am looking forward to the next class in which I will learn how to photogram/rayogram and contact print on film. 

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