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It's like abstract painters who throw paint onto canvas and call it "art". It's only "art" because THEY say it is. It's the same with filmmaking my book. You can say "experimental" movies have their place. However, a filmmaker who is focused on experimental filmmaking is someone who is basically "telling" you what they're making is "art". This is the problem with anything experimental, I don't want to be shown a pile of metal welded together or a painting that looks like someone opened up a can of paint and it splattered onto the canvas. To me, what makes "art" so special is the fact that true "artists" can do something the average person can't do. When I walk into an art gallery, I want to see works from people who are very special and experts at what they do. When I see something that looks thrown together and the filmmaker says it's "art", they may fool some people, but not me.

 

Well, it's also like figurative painters throwing paint on a canvas and calling it "art". One could argue that it too, is only "art", because THEY say it is.

 

The fact is, that abstract art, as much as figurative art, (or any other art for that matter) has an audience. In other words, it's not just the artist calling it art, but the audience for such as well.

 

One can interpret any art as "fooling the audience" but that ugly idea applies to all types of art - not just abstract art. Indeed many filmmakers of the non-experimental vein, are convinced they are doing precisely that: fooling their audience. They think of their audience as "average people" and make their films accordingly - the result being average films. Fair enough. Each to their own.

 

There are experts at all kinds of art - including abstract art. The ability to throw paint on a canvas, in a way that works (be it figuratively or abstractly), requires expertise which only practice can develop. Whether that guarantees some idiot in the audience will appreciate it doesn't really matter. You are looking for your audience, not anyone elses.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Yes... MOST music videos have some story they're telling because it's in the music. In my eyes, the best, most brilliant musicians can tell stories without any lyrics, just via mood. Take those same musical instruments and have them yelp out crazy sounds that have no bearing on anything, it's just noise. To some it's "music" but what defines music is the organization of those sounds.

 

Indeed. That's the point I was making. The story isn't necessarily in some script written prior to the work. It can emerge in the arrangement of sounds and images. It is the film which becomes one's paper, and the camera which becomes one's pen. The work can create a "mood" as you say. These don't have to begin in a story - for they can end up as a story - such as a story talking about "mood" or "organisation of those sounds". And that's what many experimental films explore. They operate on that level. They precede the story they otherwise tell. They create the story they are telling, rather than being created according to some story that precedes it.

 

Scriptwriters are overrated. And filmmakers are underrated.

 

C

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Very interesting! Thanks for sharing. Recently re-watched the classic John Ford Western "The Searchers" (VistaVision - that's roughly the image size of 70mm camera 65 (?). Very static camera, just some pan and tilt (didn't see the entire movie this time but what I saw had no tracking shot of any kind) and the composition/framing is just great. The indoor scenes are meticulously done (definitely all with marks). Takes a lot of discipline indeed.

 

Christian

Vistavision is actually the same size as full frame stills 35mm, 24x36mm or thereabouts. There are actually quite a few iconic tracking shots in the film, not the least of which is the opening shot through the silhouetted doorway.

 

Yep, Ford was an iconoclast in his own time. Like Hitchcock, he refused to let the editor make the film in the editing room. He only did a few takes of every shot and rarely shot coverage, preferring to cut in-camera. Consequently, his films often had absurdly low shooting ratios even by the standards of the time. Unfortunately this also meant that continuity errors like an actor's movement across the frame changing direction shot to-shot were not uncommon in his films.

 

Once while shooting 'How Green Was My Valley' cinematographer Arthur Miller asked Ford after finishing a complex one-take shot if they should move in for a close up of Walter Pidgeon. It was an emotional scene where the woman he loves has just married another man and driven away - you just see Pidgeon as a silhouette in an extreme wide shot under a tree. Ford's response was, 'God no! If I shoot it, they'll just use it.'

 

I think he had been burned in the past by executives like Darryl Zanuck at Fox who would re-cut and even re-shoot material while Ford was gone on vacation after wrapping the location shoot. 'My Darling Clementine' in particular suffers from this, check out Zanuck's release version versus Ford's pre-release version on the DVD. Zanuck hated Ford's penchant for lyricism, languid pacing, and expressionist images and preferred quick pacing and clarity of story. Of course, the lyricism is what most of us love about Ford's work.

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Well, it's also like figurative painters throwing paint on a canvas and calling it "art". One could argue that it too, is only "art", because THEY say it is.

Not really. If someone paints a house, it's a house. We recognize it as being a painting of a house.

 

If someone paints three black streaks, that's not something we would recognize as anything but perhaps the roman numeral for three. However, the artist maybe trying to show something very pertinent, but it doesn't come through.

 

This in of its essence is the difference between abstract/experimental and a more normal art form. If there is any translation required, there has to be some preset boundaries or people simply won't understand what it is.

 

I guess one could argue that some things don't have any meaning. If that's the case, why bother?

 

One can interpret any art as "fooling the audience" but that ugly idea applies to all types of art - not just abstract art. Indeed many filmmakers of the non-experimental vein, are convinced they are doing precisely that: fooling their audience. They think of their audience as "average people" and make their films accordingly - the result being average films. Fair enough. Each to their own.

Yea, but that's totally different. The house painting analogy I think works better.

 

There are experts at all kinds of art - including abstract art. The ability to throw paint on a canvas, in a way that works (be it figuratively or abstractly), requires expertise which only practice can develop. Whether that guarantees some idiot in the audience will appreciate it doesn't really matter. You are looking for your audience, not anyone elses.

IDK man, I see it totally differently. I just see experimental/abstract stuff being laziness, that's all. I could make an abstract film that would blow your doors off, but I don't because I think it's foolish to waste the time and energy on something only a hand-full of people could ever appreciate. It's like building that plane that will go into space for tourists... it's just a way to make money, nothing more, nothing less. They have zero interest in bettering society, of helping anyone with anything. They want to take money from millionaires and billionaires. Abstract and experimental stuff is no different to me. It's a bunch of people making something that they can probably scam something into buying.

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The last 16mm film I did, which was also a narrative work, the shooting ratio ended up being 4:1. The previous one was 3:1. So if nobody is shooting with this kind of ratio I must be that nobody. The exception which proves the rule perhaps.

 

I was responding to this post by Tyler:

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By contrast, a guaranteed theatrically bound film with a decent budget (50M+) has zero excuse to be shooting on 35mm in today's world. The cost difference between anamorphic 4 perf 35mm and spherical 65mm is about double. So your budget would add an extra million for a 12:1 shooting ratio on a 120 minute movie, including all the photochemical finishing and 15 prints struck. That seems like NOTHING in the grand scheme of things, what's another million to get FAR BETTER quality?

--------------

 

Personally, I also am a proponent of camera rehearsals and low shooting ratios for my personal projects. But that's not the discussion we were having. We were talking about studio projects with $50M+ budgets. Do you really think a project like that in 2016 will be shot with a 12:1 shooting ratio, let alone 4:1?

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Personally, I also am a proponent of camera rehearsals and low shooting ratios for my personal projects. But that's not the discussion we were having. We were talking about studio projects with $50M+ budgets. Do you really think a project like that in 2016 will be shot with a 12:1 shooting ratio, let alone 4:1?

 

Well Tyler was talking about that. But I wasn't. For some reason Tyler thinks that whenever one is talking about film making it must be either big budget studio films, or must be some personal project shot for the next door neighbour and their pet cat.

 

There is whole range of film making practice, in between these two poles, that is being completely ignored.

 

But I otherwise understand your point. Your context was specifically Tyler's tirade.

 

C

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Personally, I also am a proponent of camera rehearsals and low shooting ratios for my personal projects. But that's not the discussion we were having. We were talking about studio projects with $50M+ budgets. Do you really think a project like that in 2016 will be shot with a 12:1 shooting ratio, let alone 4:1?

Ohh no, not anymore. Man, last set I was on, they had 3 cameras running on every single take! They had terabytes of material per hour! Crazy man, it's over-kill today.

 

For big stunt scenes, yea... you wanna run many cameras. For simple dialog scenes, it's far better to single camera.

 

I guess my earlier point is the cost difference between 35mm and 70mm isn't that big, so even if you have a low budget production, another million may sound like a lot, but in the long run if you can get it, you can deliver for an extra mil.

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This is a work by Jackson Pollock. Or rather, it isn't because it's a photograph of a work by Jackson Pollock:

 

36334.jpg

 

This is part of a movement for which art historians have coined the term: "Abstract Expressionism". When talking about "abstract art" it is typically the work of this particular art movement one is referencing. Not that the term "abstract" belongs any more to this work as any other. It's just that without further clarification works such as this are not a bad bet as to what is being meant.

 

However there is certainly abstract art that could be just complete drivel. This one isn't.

 

When the Australian government purchased this for $1.3 million dollars there was the typical bogan (redneck) response - that anyone could do this. There was outrage. People got really fcuking angry. I was only a kid at the time but I really liked this painting. One needs to look at it in the flesh of course. As one does all paintings.

 

This painting is now worth a hell of a lot more.

 

Which could very well prove Tyler's point - that it's all about money - which might also mean its all about fooling people.

 

I don't see it that way. Jackson Pollock wasn't doing this work with the idea that he could sell it for millions of dollars. Nobody at the time he was painting it would have thought it could fetch the prices it eventually did. Indeed even today many can not believe it. It is simply because they do not understand art history. But more to point, there's no evidence whatsoever that Jackson Pollock was trying to fool anyone with this work. He, like myself, find a form of "pleasure" in such work.

 

But as always it's not everyone's cup of tea.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Well Tyler was talking about that. But I wasn't. For some reason Tyler thinks that whenever one is talking about film making it must be either big budget studio films, or must be some personal project shot for the next door neighbour and their pet cat.

In today's world, there are only two types of movies... those that get decent distribution deals and those that don't.

 

There isn't anything in between anymore, those are the deciding factors in today's market.

 

So yes, there are two types of movie... the big one's that put money in the right places and get distributed and the small one's that nobody will ever see.

 

You can give your film away for free on youtube, vimeo, itunes, doesn't really matter. If you don't spend money on marketing/promoting, nobody will know it exists. Sure, a small group of people, searching on google, may stumble upon your product by accident, but otherwise it's as if you never made it and for all we know, it's just a film about your cat anyway.

 

There is nothing wrong with messing around and having fun, but unless you make a product thats somehow relatable to the general public, ya know... the people who give you employment and pay your bills, what's the point?

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For big stunt scenes, yea... you wanna run many cameras. For simple dialog scenes, it's far better to single camera.

 

Every scene with first team is like a stunt now. I don't get why they would want it that way, I think it's counterproductive to actually making good product.

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There is nothing wrong with messing around and having fun, but unless you make a product thats somehow relatable to the general public, ya know... the people who give you employment and pay your bills, what's the point?

 

 

I make films or work on films that have an audience (both here where I live, and around the planet), and they directly, or indirectly pay my bills. And the last time I looked I wasn't a big studio spending (and making) millions of dollars. Doesn't mean I'm eating scraps out of rubbish bins, although I've certainly been there and done that in my youth.

 

I'm a film producer. As a film producer it means I invest in films. I'm an investor. That means time (and money) goes out my back pocket and into a film. The investment itself might seem weird but it's the return on investment that pays the bills. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make films.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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Vistavision is actually the same size as full frame stills 35mm, 24x36mm or thereabouts. There are actually quite a few iconic tracking shots in the film, not the least of which is the opening shot through the silhouetted doorway.

 

 

Thanks for the information. Of course I knew that VistaVision is 35mm horizontal (love the fact that VistaVision was used for many of the composite shots in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" to compensate for generation loss), I just didn't know how much of the frame area was actually used. Back in the day I was fortunate enough to have access to very professional books and references. I am always reluctant to online information such as Wikipedia. It is not 100% reliable.

 

Yes: the silhouette in the door frame shot. Also at the end. Sergio Leone made a great homage to that (and tons of classic American westerns) in the opening sequence of "Once Upon A Time I The West".

 

And yep: continuation errors can be distracting. An example of an otherwise great movie riddled with mismatching facial expressions is "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof".

 

In order to reduce wasted film (say: in dialog scenes) I would employ video cameras for reference and only shoot on film what really ends up in the final cut - doing the editing beforehand. Film will always be a hobby for me, but I spent my life learning how it's done properly including the exact edit points, framing and lensing. I love when the editing is "invisible" and everything just flows naturally, in sync with human perception. One movie I watched dozens of times in one session is "Twelve Angry Men" (the 1957 version). It is an entire course about acting, editing and framing/lensing (for me that is). with only very few obvious continuity errors (which very likely were due to schedules and the lack of video tap for reference at the time).

 

About "experimental". I have my own opinion about that and I never claim it to be correct. I approach music (what pays my bills - kind of) this way: You need to know the rules in order to break them. Otherwise it's just "random" or trial and error at best.

 

I belong to a group of people who "smuggle" quality (or what I believe to be quality) into my work. The greatest obstacle is very often the client (the person who approves my work). They can destroy work where I had my heart bleeding over in a split second just by saying: "No, I don't like it!" or "I decided to drop that tune/song/cue". Professionalism is tested here to the breaking point: one needs to abandon a labor of love and come up with something new of equal quality in a very short time without it being a hack job. Maintaining quality even when answering to an ignorant (or even worse: envious people with huge egos) - that is the key. Why "smuggling" or "sneaking in" quality? Not because of vanity but to get quality through to the audience. I have the feeling that modern audiences (both in music and films) don't have the correct reference pool. Both have become a business model. It's a miracle that many a movie (I have given up on mainstream music long ago and do work for stage musicals, the now rare original music for commercials and similar, besides a 13 piece band playing old school soul/funk/R&B requiring arranging skills for the vocals and horn section).

 

I don't dismiss other approaches, I simply happen to be in awe of great quality (= what I perceive as such). Sure: a lot of movies are clearly outdated in their pacing and acting style for modern audiences used to "loud and fast", but I study the old masters and I'm in awe - even more so when a skilled teacher analyzes the style (not just how it was done but also why).

 

The huge obstacle is (for me and many others): breaking into the right groups of people who have the power. The social side of it all. That means: people with social skills and lucky enough to be born into a certain background have a huge advantage. That filters out many a great talent (and I am not speaking of myself here - I am still a student after decades). It's great seeing young aspiring film makers studying both the old masters and new techniques - so every decision is made out of knowledge as opposed to "trying something out". The old argument: "It's about intuition" (often used in music) is one I do not subscribe to. Intuition is a "must have" for anything in the arts. By studying the old masters and trying to understand why they did what they did (instead of just mimicking them) a great feeling of appreciation sets in. Almost every master borrows heavily from others. That doesn't mean necessarily they are copycats.

 

I wholeheartedly agree: stories can be told without words. Thake the famous opening shot of "Rear Window" - Jimmy Steward's back story is being told in a tracking shot as opposed to boring exposition. Or the wonderful music of, say, Bernard Herrmann and John Williams (two of my all time idols) tell a thousand stories. Certain framing and lighting, as well as certain instruments playing certain types of melody lines and chord voicings or underlying harmonies (rarely spoken about by non-musicians) paint incredible pictures. Take the funeral scene of "Superman"(1978). Just that one trumpet line followed by emotional strings tells everything there is to know together with the great cinematography. Too bad this kind of approach (harkening back to the grand opera and the Max Steiner, Franz Waxman - school of film scoring) is long since considered outdated. I think that is in a great part due to the severe lack of reference pools in the audience. And the audience is not to blame. It's the people who dismiss timeless values in favor of trendy stuff that un-educates audiences.

 

"Fooling" the audience in the correct way is not looking down, but rather trying to bring something of value to the world - make all the hard work worthwhile. I quote (non verbatim, but close)) from the DVD director's comment track of "Matchstick Men" (Ridley Scott of course): "..and if they don't care, I'll do it anyway. That's how it's done". I don't see it as forcing a snobbish attitude - I see it as "respecting the audience and deliver quality". We humans interpret things a certain way, our senses work in a certain way. This has been studied and I greatly enjoy learning from all kinds of sources. It all comes together in cinema. Too bad many of today's mainstream movies are just playing for the cheap seats. Sure: many an innovation is created by a lucky accident, but that doesn't mean we should just do random stuff hoping it will turn out great. For me there is nothing greater than when the hard work of studying pays off. Without studying one only has an idea of the result. It only can be achieved when we know exactly how to get there. Intuition are the bookends of any art: the start (what do I want to achieve?) and the end (evaluating the final result). It's the long way inbetween where the knowledge and hard work is needed.

 

And yes: screenwriters are often given way too much credit.

 

Here is a short animation "film" from 2004 where I did the music score - just me on keyboards/computers and a great session guitarist whom I work a lot with. All for free between paid work. The animation was done as a "hobby project" by graphic artists and computer wizards who work in architecture for a living. I know the music is full of "mickey mousing" and clichés - but that's the idea. There is no story to speak of - but it was great fun for everyone involved. This short animation was shown on many festivals BTW. Hope you enjoy:

 

 

 

Thanks a lot for reading my ramblings - just my humble opinion anyway,

 

Christian

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I think he had been burned in the past by executives like Darryl Zanuck at Fox who would re-cut and even re-shoot material while Ford was gone on vacation after wrapping the location shoot. 'My Darling Clementine' in particular suffers from this, check out Zanuck's release version versus Ford's pre-release version on the DVD. Zanuck hated Ford's penchant for lyricism, languid pacing, and expressionist images and preferred quick pacing and clarity of story. Of course, the lyricism is what most of us love about Ford's work.

Absolutely! With the studio system, directors would move on after principal photography. Most of them had no say in the final cut. So if there was no other material to use, then there was no way to muck up what THEY wanted. In my opinion, this is what made those movies so great and what's missing today. Nobody puts that sort of faith in modern directors.

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I make films or work on films that have an audience (both here where I live, and around the planet), and they directly, or indirectly pay my bills. And the last time I looked I wasn't a big studio spending (and making) millions of dollars. Doesn't mean I'm eating scraps out of rubbish bins, although I've certainly been there and done that in my youth.

 

I'm a film producer. As a film producer it means I invest in films. I'm an investor. That means time (and money) goes out my back pocket and into a film. The investment itself might seem weird but it's the return on investment that pays the bills. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to make films.

I don't know how you make a return on investment without any marketing, without wide audience appeal, without even so much as a trailer or website for the product. It's one thing to be a producer for hire, someone under payroll until the film is completed. It's another to make films on super 8 and project them on 16mm to a small audience.

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Thanks for the information. Of course I knew that VistaVision is 35mm horizontal (love the fact that VistaVision was used for many of the composite shots in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" to compensate for generation loss)

VistaVision and 8 perf 65mm, were heavily used as visual effects cameras. Most of the time they were used for plates, but there have been many VFX heavy films that use those cameras for dialog scenes as well, Roger Rabbit being one of them. It's always funny to see BTS stills of some older movies and the un-blimped 8 perf 65mm camera on set. For films like Star Wars, they actually used the elephant ear VistaVision cameras for many of the model shots.

 

Outside of Paramounts VistaVision which was 1.85:1, Technicolor's Technirama was an anamorphic VistaVision format 2.25:1, using a very simple Delrama anamorphic element. This was far superior to that of even MGM Camera 65/Ultra Panavision, there was no anamorphic distortion. This enabled the filmmakers to blow up to 70mm. Technirama was used on films like "Sleeping Beauty", "Spartacus" and "Zulu", it was kind of the final iteration of the format before it went away. The interesting thing is Technicolor wanted it to be projected in 35mm, but it was too costly for theaters to upgrade. So even though they had a wonderful mag striped projection format, it never came to be.

 

In order to reduce wasted film (say: in dialog scenes) I would employ video cameras for reference and only shoot on film what really ends up in the final cut - doing the editing beforehand. Film will always be a hobby for me, but I spent my life learning how it's done properly including the exact edit points, framing and lensing. I love when the editing is "invisible" and everything just flows naturally, in sync with human perception.

Yep, I've done the same thing when I've had video tap's available. It's easy to mount a recorder onto the monitor and record a take or two for everyone to watch before you actually roll film. I'm absolutely guilty of wasting film though. I've lost lead actors mid way through production. I've lost critical locations, mid way through production. I've had people get sick and their scenes re-done by someone else. Heck, I made an entire film and the actor wouldn't sign off on it, threatened to sue, so it's never been seen! I mean, this is the kind of crap that happens. When you finally get into the edit room, things can be quite messy, even if you plan it perfectly. The trick is to make it work and flow seamlessly as you said. Sometimes the final product however, is nowhere near what you want. Of course, on bigger shows where money is involved, it's a different story.

 

About "experimental". I have my own opinion about that and I never claim it to be correct. I approach music (what pays my bills - kind of) this way: You need to know the rules in order to break them. Otherwise it's just "random" or trial and error at best.

Yea, which is kind of my beef because most of the experimental stuff I've seen has been random mess that people somehow watch.

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I don't know how you make a return on investment without any marketing, without wide audience appeal, without even so much as a trailer or website for the product. It's one thing to be a producer for hire, someone under payroll until the film is completed. It's another to make films on super 8 and project them on 16mm to a small audience.

 

Audiences come in all shapes and sizes. Not just the tiny and the large. They do exist. Indeed more importantly they can be created. Through the social network, be it word of mouth, websites, mailing lists, facebook, etc. Who is arguing against marketing? Not me.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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VistaVision and 8 perf 65mm, were heavily used as visual effects cameras. Most of the time they were used for plates, but there have been many VFX heavy films that use those cameras for dialog scenes as well, Roger Rabbit being one of them. It's always funny to see BTS stills of some older movies and the un-blimped 8 perf 65mm camera on set. For films like Star Wars, they actually used the elephant ear VistaVision cameras for many of the model shots.

 

Outside of Paramounts VistaVision which was 1.85:1, Technicolor's Technirama was an anamorphic VistaVision format 2.25:1, using a very simple Delrama anamorphic element. This was far superior to that of even MGM Camera 65/Ultra Panavision, there was no anamorphic distortion. This enabled the filmmakers to blow up to 70mm.

 

Thanks a lot for all the great information and insight! Yep, I knew VistaVision (35mm 8 perf horizontal) didn't use all the frame (as in 35mm stills photography), but almost.

 

Yes: I agree with the lens artifacts of 35mm 2x anamorphic systems (CinemaScope and later Panavision). I remember many a blockbuster movie that heavily suffers from too narrow a depth of field and vertially and horzontally moving distortion/blur when rack focus/follow focus is used: "Star Wars" (1977), "Close Encounters..."(1977) - except for the great composite shots (Douglas Trumbull, the man!), "Alien" (1979) and "Die Hard (1988)" come immediately to mind.... to say nothing of these horizontal streaks when a light source is in or near the frame - now known as the JJ Abrams lens flare.

I wonder how the negs were edited (A and B rolls with black film stock in between to hide the splices, alternating between even and odd numbered shots, as used for 16mm for a while?) - since 35mm 2x anamorphic uses the full frame height. No place to hide. I can see the narrow splices on some 1960s European movies made in that format. Distracting. I really would like to know how the neg cutter went about it.

 

Christian

 

P.S. gotta love "Close Encounters" for all those great film cameras shown running. In one sequence (Mother ship communication) I can clearly see a Fries Mitchell - painted white (probably for slow motion). Great attention to detail. I'm always a 7 year old in front of a candy store when I see this.....

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The thing is that all film making, whether for fun, or for profit, or both, or neither, is something that happens. And great work can be found across all of these contexts, in both the experimental and narrative veins. From small studios to big studios.

 

All films arguably begin in experimental films. And reboot themselves there. The term "experiment" comes from science and refers to doing things in practice, as distinct from in theory. So one will have, for example, experimental physicists that work with instruments doing experiments which test out a theory or otherwise provoke the creation of a new theory. And one will have theoretical physicists that propose a theory and are otherwise provoked into writing new ones.

 

In this sense, one could say all films are experimental films in the sense that they constitute film making in practice - as distinct from: in theory. On this forum, of course, it is more film making in theory, since one can't practice film making here.

 

Of course the term "experimental film" will tend to classify a subset of films made in practice. In other words: not all films are experimental films.

 

Experimental films can be regarded as those films which explore what might be the fundamentals of film making. Every filmmaker worth their salt begins in experimental film making.

 

Experiments, by their very nature, are not always "successful" (in the conventional sense). But they don't need to be. No matter what occurs, there is always something to be discovered in the process because it's a physical result - rather than just a theoretical one. For example when we teach students to bracket exposures we're teaching them experimental film making. We're saying: in theory the exposure should be this, but in order to test that out we vary the exposure to see if there is not a better one, in practice, that might be used.

 

That's what experimental films are all about - testing ideas out in practice, instead of just being a slave to such ideas. It is out of this work that both the rules are created in the first place, as much as that which escapes the rules and become more powerful than the rules.

 

C

Edited by Carl Looper
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I wonder how the negs were edited (A and B rolls with black film stock in between to hide the splices, alternating between even and odd numbered shots, as used for 16mm for a while?) - since 35mm 2x anamorphic uses the full frame height. No place to hide. I can see the narrow splices on some 1960s European movies made in that format. Distracting. I really would like to know how the neg cutter went about it.

 

Christian

 

P.S. gotta love "Close Encounters" for all those great film cameras shown running. In one sequence (Mother ship communication) I can clearly see a Fries Mitchell - painted white (probably for slow motion). Great attention to detail. I'm always a 7 year old in front of a candy store when I see this.....

The Cinemascope narrow splice was used for A/B rolling. The loss of expertise in film came to a head a couple of years ago when Tacita Dean made an installation at the Tate Modern- standard splices were made and were visible. She had to go to Steve Farman for a recut.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/oct/10/tacita-dean-film-turbine-hall

 

Techniscope, however, didn't have room for a neg splice so the shots were cut a frame or two over length on a single roll and the 'Scope intermediates made shot-by-shot on a printer with the OCN run back at each cut.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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Mark: thanks again for the information and insight. For years I was unable to find any book about the tech aspects of film making. Then in 1991 I visited (again) London (recording studio).

The first traditional book store I found already had just about anything I ever needed. Bought as many books as I could. Together with the rare information from professionals - this is where most of my my modest knowledge comes from. Any information of that kind is very highly appreciated. I love both the art and the craftsmanship about film.

 

Sad that this is considered a dying art - but so many arts and crafts are dying or are dead already - until someone brings it up again.

 

Christian

 

P.S. (not beating a dead horse here): film is 125 years old, but it always evolved and improvements only were slowed down by the slow and painful video/digital take over. Digital isn't "recent" at all. It is clearly a form of video, which is directly linked to live television. So we can safely say: video is at least 60 years old (I am counting from the first video tapes in use, live television was around for public viewing in the 1930s). It took "video" much longer to mature than film.

Edited by Christian Schonberger
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.... to say nothing of these horizontal streaks when a light source is in or near the frame - now known as the JJ Abrams lens flare.

 

saw Abrams on Colbert show, he said his wife told him: Enough with the lens flares already.

 

 

I wonder how the negs were edited (A and B rolls with black film stock in between to hide the splices, alternating between even and odd numbered shots, as used for 16mm for a while?) - since 35mm 2x anamorphic uses the full frame height. No place to hide. I can see the narrow splices on some 1960s European movies made in that format. Distracting. I really would like to know how the neg cutter went about it.

 

Orig negs were conformed on a B&H pedestal splicer: www.flickr.com/photos/cinemagear/17825338113

 

The 'Scope model made a splice that is 0.03" wide. About the distance between the projection area on adjacent frames.

 

While evaluating a 16mm print of an Ultraman episode, observed that the 16mm OCN was was spliced The humongous B&H.

 

 

 

 

P.S. gotta love "Close Encounters" for all those great film cameras shown running. In one sequence (Mother ship communication) I can clearly see a Fries Mitchell - painted white (probably for slow motion). Great attention to detail. I'm always a 7 year old in front of a candy store when I see this.....

 

Mitchell GCs for industrial & instrumentation were painted white. Models for entertainment were black wrincle finish,

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