Carl Looper

Actually the more I think about anamorphic bokeh it's not the circular cut of the cylinder but the fact that a point source becomes a spherical wave as it expands out from a point. It's circular anyway. C

Thanks Satsuki. I'm not completely familiar with anamorphics but getting my head around it. My understanding of this is that there are effectively two irises in an anamorphic setup. The first iris is the circular cut of the cylindrical lens. The second is the conventional iris behind the lens. The play off in shape, as I understand it, becomes a function of both, and is inter-dependant on the focus distance used for the point source. In a spherical lens setup there is no interposed cyclinder between both irises so there would no such play off in shape. Regardless of the particularities of anamophic bokeh, my understanding of the term "bokeh" is that it comes from the Japanese word for blur: "boke". (Wikipedia being my source here). But my technical understanding of bokeh (ie. what we see) is that its literally just another word for "circle of confusion". That used in DOF calculations is properly called "circle of least confusion", or "least circle of confusion", but in DOF calculators it's often abbreviated to just "circle of confusion" (which can confuse things). Circle of confusion proper will refer to all the sizes of bokeh, from zero size to visible size. . C

Yes, I agree with Mr Boddington. You can't make a living out of short films - or at least not your own short films. Apart from exceptions and examples of course - but they are easy to find when you've got the entire world of counter-examples at your finger tips - for you are bound to find exceptions. but as the saying go: the exceptions prove the rule. Its worth repeating: the exceptions prove the rule. This is statistics. Someone else can make a living out of your short films (amongst others) but you can't make a living out of it. To make a living, and make your short films, you have to play both roles. Making a living and making your short films. And they need not be unrelated. My situation is like this. There is some overlap and inter-dependencies. In this sense one can indirectly make a living out of short films - but it's not just from the films. It's how you might exploit them in the context of more directly funded work. Or not as the case may be. You could also earn a living working on other people's short films. And that's Tyler's quite reasonable point. Perhaps easier to do in a large economy like the US. Here in Australia it's a lot more limited, but would be the same basic equation. C

Yes, just because one person makes a fortune on a poker machine doesn't mean everyone can, otherwise the poker machine business would be out of business. Those who make a fortune in social media, just like those who make a fortune on a poker machine, are the exception - not the rule. And the exception in both cases is a function of statistics. Not the filmmaker or poker machine player. But it's in the interest of poker machine manufacturers, as much as the social media provider, to maintain the myth that you are the one who can make a fortune. And they do that by giving a fortune to one out of x number of people (and parading that as if that could be you), be it based on the statistics built into a poker machine, or the statistics that otherwise emerge in social interactions. How do you beat the casino? Don't play. Or build a casino and perpetrate the same ugly myths. C

I'm not sure what the purpose of an oval shaped iris would be on a spherical lens. It would only make sense if it was for an anamorphic lens. The oval shaped iris would undo the oval shaped bokeh that would otherwise result when using an anamorphic lens (on the scene side of the iris). The alternative is to use a circular iris, but on the scene side of the anamorphic lens. In this way a circular bokeh (from the scene side iris) gets squeezed during capture and unsqueezed during projection, resulting in the reconstruction of a circular bokeh. Unless I'm entirely mistaken of course (having rarely used anamorphics). C

Indeed. Bokeh is that which the so called "circle of confusion" describes, and this circle of confusion (or bokeh) is a function of the iris. In the case of anamorphics suitably placed it can become an oval of confusion :) The circle of confusion (or oval of confusion) used in depth of field calculations is just an arbitrary sized circle/oval of confusion, defined for whatever point spread (or amount of softness) one deems as acceptable. In other words, by defining a particular circle/oval of confusion, your bokeh, within the corresponding depth of field, will be the same size or smaller than the defined circle/oval of confusion. At the precise focus distance a point of light, will produce a bokeh (or circle/oval of confusion) the diameter of zero (or as close to zero as a lens is able to achieve). C

The very fact that short films exist (be they shot on film or video) means money (or equivalent) has exchanged hands somewhere during the means of production. The economy around short films is not the same as the economy around feature films but it is an economy. Its just a completely different one. We hold regular screenings of short films (shot on film and projected on a film projector) with quite a reasonable audience. We can't do this without paying our bills. So the very fact that we can do this, and continue to do this, means we have payed our bills. Some of us even have a house, cars, kids and health insurance. I certainly have the last three. How those bills are paid are not necessarily a direct function of the films themselves, but one thing is for sure - without the way we do fund these films, (and we don't have any government assistance whatsoever), the films we make, and the screenings we hold, would not exist. C

I'm excluded from The Super8 Collective as I'm in a country not listed as eligible. Australia. Politically we're the outgrowth of a British colony established in the late 1700s. We remain, if only on paper, subservient to the British monarch. One day we'll no doubt shake off this vestige and perhaps find some sort of political inspiration in having done so without shedding blood. We were a penal colony for a long time. Our population grew through the massive transportation of convicts from England. There are still, today, fcukwits in US immigration bureaucracy (or at least one) who find it hilarious to scribble "convict" in the margins of immigration application forms from Australia. We're a very large island in the South Pacific - about the same land mass as the US, or the same land mass as Europe, but we were unknown to Europe/US and their map makers until our discovery in the late 1700s. The population indigenous to the island has been here for at least 40,000 years. A Kodak manufacturing plant was built here in Melbourne Australia, following a 1908 merger between Kodak and a photographic firm called Baker and Rouse. 96 years later Kodak closed this manufacturing plant. C

I'd agree with that. You build your audience. C

Not quite the same idea but related - where actual cameras have been modified. I have one of these myself: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=57047&p=373832

Of course, that's easy to say, but what exactly do people want to see? Every Tom, Dick and Harry will have their own opinion on that. A film is never what people want to see. So just make whatever you want to make. For example, make what you want to see. A film finds an appreciative audience in one way of another. Or it doesn't. But when it does that audience can either appreciate what you wanted to see (and see made), or they can otherwise appreciate your concept of what "people want to see". But your film won't ever be what people want to see. C

Short films are the traditional path to making feature films. While you won't necessarily make any money out of it, you'll still want to make them. How else is a filmmaker going to learn film making, let alone demonstrate to anyone else (with funds), that they can in fact make a film? Why not just make a feature film? Well, short films are cheaper to make than feature films. But feature films are also very different from short films, so while short films provide a path, they don't provide the entire path. Film festivals provide a context in which one can get to know various powers that be and cement relationships that might lead to bigger and better deals. C

Before I start I should just say here that the following is not intended as a rebuff to what yourself (or necessarily anyone else) might be saying. Indeed it could very well be in agreement. I wouldn't necessarily know. I'm just elaborating a position So an image is not to be confused with what it represents. But an image is certainly quite capable of participating in the representation or reproduction of an illusion (or of an ideology) or indeed of truths (so called) but it is not, in itself, the same thing. Or not inherently so. To elaborate this further, the category of images is not a category limited to a collection of still frames (so called). A still frame (so to speak) such as a photograph or painting, while it is quite capable of representing movement, or expressing movement, it is not inherently such a movement. We might say it is of movement. And a matrix of such images, constituted in space, will be no different. A Muybridge album will represent movement (an image of movement) but it is not in itself a movement-image. The movement-image proper is a different kind of image. The motion picture. It is not one that is derived from a matrix of Muybridge images. Rather it is a matrix of Muybridge images, (or even a single photograph), that is derived from a movement image. It is no less of movement but it is now identical to the movement that could only be represented in a still frame. If we are able to reconstruct a movement-image from a matrix of Muybridge images it is only because that matrix of images will have been decomposed from a movement-image in the first place. Even in animation this is the case. The next kind of image we'll consider is a time image. Movement is a relationship between space and a time. Without time there is no movement. Time is not created from movement. Time is a condition or a pre-requisite for movement. We can suggest it becomes a condition for space. This can be understood in the non-zero shutter time required to obtain an exposure in a photograph. There is not a still frame without at least a modicum of time. If a still frame can only represent movement, in a related way, movement can only represent time. Movement is not in itself time. We can therefore propose a time-image that would be that which a movement-image can only represent. Now it is within time that narrative takes place. It need not do so. One can have time without any apparent narrative. But in an Ozu 'still' life, or Warhol's skyscraper, if the time here is a kind of 'empty' time, it is not completely empty. For what is made visible here is the time in which such is taking place. But an Ozu vase, sitting on the window sill, illuminated by light from a window, or Warhol's skyscaper, are not photographs. They do not represent time, as a photograph of a clock might do (but need not do so). They occupy time and in doing so reveal something of time. Narrative is simply that which reveals another aspect of time. It need not be a linear narrative. A good example of this might be Last Year at Marienbad. Or a good example of a linear narrative (that such need not be ignored) might be Stranger Than Paradise, and Down By Law. A narrative-image operates at the level of time (and time includes movement as much as vegetative states, insofar as time is their otherwise hidden precondition). But a narrative need not represent anything. A narrative will be no less a narrative in the absence of anything it might otherwise represent. If we agree that a work is not inherently ideological, we will also agree that a work does not require excluding ideology. But what makes it possible to do this, without the work itself becoming ideological, will be narratives that critique ideology (to the extent they can). Indeed narrativity provides the means by which a representation of ideology is also a refusal to be ideology. C

Hi Freya, I'm going to move away from my usual approach of avoiding personal pronouns. To give the illusion that what I'm saying has something to do with me, and the illusion that this has something to do with you. I work (but by no means full time) in the "experimental film" scene, or what might be today called the "art film" scene. I'm not completely familiar with this scene as I should be but I am familiar with the art scene in which art film otherwise inter-operates. And I'm familiar with the theoretical debates around art, and particularly theory that goes under the heading of film theory, and with a particular interest in 70s film theory. I can't say I'm familiar with all the films otherwise referenced in such theory but I'm familiar with films that could be referenced by such theory. Now the thing is that I have no inclination towards working outside of the experimental film scene (in terms of film making). I have done so in the past (decades ago) but it's long since fallen away as of any interest to me. It is from within experimental film making (or art film making) that I work - at least in terms of film making. But this does not mean I'm necessarily in agreement with the theory associated with experimental/art film. There will be parts of such with which I agree and other parts I don't. And I think this is as it should be. This agreement/disagreement is not out of any opposition from within theory, but from within practice - from making films (rather than watching and theorising films). I just can't make a film without a narrative. I've tried but I can't. Or rather, every time I put film in a projector and screen it - no matter what it is, I see a story there. I see stories in all the so called "abstract" films made. Perhaps "story" is not the right word but it's the word I use. It refers to the temporal relations in a film - and goes to the fact that we can see such relations. They are not invisible. The simplest story (so called) is one which emerges through movement. Movement in the cinema, it is said, is an illusion. But I can nevertheless see that movement, whether it's called an "illusion" or otherwise. And I don't think I'm any different from anyone else in this regard. We can see movement. When I try to understand what is meant by this movement being an illusion, all I see is just an idea which treats film held over a light table (for example), as being somehow more real than film in a film projector. And I can't see how film in a film projector is any less real than one over a light table. But what I can see is that they are two very different experiences, and therefore, in my books, one is looking at two different films. One has movement and the other does not. Or if we argue one is the illusion of movement we could counter-argue that the other is the illusion of stasis. Now movement is what I'd call a kind of minimalist narrative. The movements in the film "Wavelength" constitute a minimalist narrative. But a theorist such as Stephen Heath will condemn the film on this basis. He will see what I see - the barest of narratives - but unlike me, he will treat the film as therefore ideologically loaded, or infected, or infiltrated. But in what way? What particular ideology is Wavelength perpetrating? What is it communicating or propagating? And if it does, is it the narrative that communicates this ideology? And if so, what is the particular ideology that the narrative communicates? So in answer to your question about what non-abstract narrative films I might suggest, I'd suggest Wavelength wouldn't be a bad start. Now not only can we see simple movement in a film we can see more complex movements in a film. We can see (or experience) what I'd call narrative. And therefore, like movement, it would not be illusory (not a figment of our imagination). But to the extent that the film might also elaborate an ideological line through narrative, it might also be illusory. It is capable of this. But for me it's not automatically a fait accompli that narrative reproduces ideology. As to how one innoculates a work against ideology, its really up to the creativity of particular filmmakers (if they are so inclined) and how audiences (and theorists) might otherwise understand the results. C

The idea that images are illusions is an ancient idea. But being an ancient idea does not invalidate the idea. It is simply to put this idea in a larger context. It is to get away from any misunderstanding that it's just some novel idea advanced by experimental film theorists. There are equally ancient ideas (and equally not invalidated by their age) in which the opposite proposition is advanced: that images are not illusions. It is to this counter-history (or counter-narrative) with which I'm aligned. Now certainly we can read this counter-narrative as no less ideological than the one it counters. But an aspect of this history (or this narrative) is not just a history against the ideology of images as illusions, but also against ideology. Now, it's not an attack on ideas per se, but on the centrality otherwise accorded ideas. Ideas will instead be regarded as secondary in relation to images. They will arise (so to speak) from images, and such ideas will refer us back to images, or otherwise fail to do so. In their failure we might say they become "figments of the imagination", and perhaps ideology proper. If only temporarily. In their success ideas will approach identity with an image. They will give themselves over to the image. They will kneel before it, so to speak. But how to unpack the ideology of images as illusions? Its not that easy, especially when images are understood as so obviously illusory. C

Hi Freya, if you follow my thread you'll see that, although you might not be arguing with the idea that images are illusions, I am. I'm literally arguing that images are not illusions. Illusions operate at the level of representation. Or in the case of illusions: at the level of misrepresentation. By way of explanation, a shimmer on the horizon (an image) can be understood in terms of ideas such as reflection of light due to water, or refraction of light due to heat. But if we understand the image in terms of water, and there is no water to be found, the image itself is not in any way responsible for this. The illusion is in the idea that the image (a shimmer on the horizon) represents water. But images don't operate at the level of representation. They don't inherently represent or misrepresent anything. Although they can certainly be understood and used in that way. Ideas, on the other hand, do operate at the level of representation (which includes misrepresentation). Meditation is one way to defeat ideas, but why just meditation? Why not also action? For example it is action in the form of experimentation that can allow us to determine that water is not a good explanation (or good idea) for a shimmer on the horizon - or equally, that water is the explanation. C

His work is not automatically in the grip of ideology simply by virtue of being a narrative. The narrative can be understood as working against the ideology that is otherwise represented in the work. Of course, it may not be that successful. An audience may very well be convinced that the narrative is to be found in what a film represents. C

I've been getting into Vikings and Outlander. Tried Narcos for a bit but got a bit bored.

I don't speak french but it's interesting to try google translator on a developing composition ... this ce is est this is c'est not ne pas this is not ce n'est pas a une this is not a Ceci n'est pas un pipe tuyau this is not a pipe Ceci n'est pas une pipe C

The conventional interpretation is that Magritte is suggesting the pipe is not a pipe, because it is a picture of a pipe, ie. rather than a so called "real" pipe. As if Magritte is saying something about the illusory nature of images. The problem is that a so called "real" pipe is no less an image of a pipe than Magritte's image of a pipe. To put it another way they would both be images (of a pipe). Or to put it yet another way, has anyone ever seen a pipe that is not also an image of a pipe? Or felt a pipe that is not also also a tactile sensation of a pipe? Or smelt a pipe that is not also an olfactory sensation of a pipe? But we can also interpret Magritte's image of a pipe as that which is not the same thing as the word "pipe". And in that sense the image is not a pipe, because it's not a word, and in particular it is not the word "pipe". This may not be that which Magritte intended but it is nevertheless one way of interpreting the work against how it might be otherwise interpreted. That the distinction being made in this work (regardless of intent) is not between an image and "reality", but between an image and text. Or we could elaborate this further and suggest it is the phrase "this is" which is not a pipe. It is instead the phase "this is". In other words the pipe is not to be found in the words "this is" but in the picture. C

First of all, lets dispense with this idea that documentaries and so called "reality" shows have anything whatsoever to do with "reality". Indeed lets dispense with the idea that any film has anything to do with "reality". But by "reality" here is only meant the prevalent idea of something independant of the image otherwise created. In other words, "reality" as used here (and to be opposed here) is the idea of an "out there" which would be there regardless of whether one aimed a camera at it, (or not). Certainly it is a figure of speech to speak of the "reality" in front of the lens, or the "profilmic", as some writers might prefer. But there is no such thing as this "reality" independant of the image created. What is real, however, is the image created. Not just at the level of grain or pixels but at the level of the entire composition in space, and time. The image is real (in space and time) but what is not real (or less real) is that which we might entertain as having created this image, be it "reality" or an ideological structure. We assign "reality" (or ideology) to that which an image depicts, and in this way believe that the image represents (or reproduces) this "reality" or ideology. And indeed images are more than capable of reproducing ideological structures or "reality". But this does not mean the image itself is ideological or "real" in the same way. The image itself is real in an entirely different way. And it is not inherently ideological. It is an apparition, or a ghost, as much as the grains or pixels into which it can be divided are equally an apparition or ghost. An "illusion" as some might call it. But calling it an illusion is to suggest that something else would not be an illusion. But what exactly would that be? That's the problem. Is it grain of the film? Or the pixels? No. The pixels are a function of the image. It is not the image which is a function of the pixels. Even in computer generated images, the pixel values are generated from an image, be it one created by means of a camera, an algorithm, or a brush in some paint program. When we select "File>New" in Photoshop we have to provide Photoshop with a kind of minimal image - or allow it to use a default image. When we close the dialogue we are presented with a minimal image, in which all the pixels are rendered with the same value. While a minimal image it is an image nevertheless. How can one escape an image? The simple answer is that one doesn't. But the more interesting answer is that there's no need to escape it. For the only problem with images is the idea that images are ideological, or represent some ideological structure, or worse: they represent some "reality" independant of the image. While they can do this, they don't have to do this. As artists we don't have to create images that represent an ideological structure, or a "reality" independant of the image. It is simply a complete myth that images (and in particular photographic images) are inherently a representation or reproduction of something. Of what would it be a reproduction? In what way would it be any different from the image? The best answer is that the image is just part of a bigger image. The "bigger picture" as the saying goes. But a picture nevertheless. Magritte will argue in one of his paintings that the pipe depicted there is not a pipe. But of all things we might want to call this pipe, the word "pipe" would hardly be the last word on such a list. More simply put: it is a pipe.

I haven't seen it yet. Have been on a big job the last few weeks. The "mrs" has been watching it and reports it's very good. :) Episode One is here - but I don't know if the entire series will be available online: http://www.sbs.com.au/food/programs/destination-flavour-scandinavia C

But are not ideas the very stuff of thought? Well, this is what certain ideas would have us think: that thought is limited to their creation (the creation of ideas). As if anything (or everything) else is just the communication of ideas. As if the filmmaker has an idea (or the script writer has an idea) and these ideas are merely implemented in film (or whatever other physical material might be used). As if the result were simply a conduit for ideas. Against this we can create counter-narratives to such. Not just anti-narratives. Gidal argues for something similar where the idea (the I) might be rendered anonymous. The film as something independant of it's author/writer (independant of it's ideas). But we can go much further than this. And narrative (or counter-narrative) is just as capable as anti-narrative in elaborating such a thing. It's not narrative which is the problem. Its not thought which is the problem. It is ideas that take hold of thought (and take hold of narrative) and limit such, which are the problem. C

Yeah - Derek Jarman's work is a great example of narrative work that doesn't automatically mean reproduction of given socio-political norms. Love his work. Descartes will say "I think" and conclude from such that he exists, but it is not only Descartes who thinks, or rather it is not only the I that thinks. Indeed the I arguably does very little thinking at all. But even if it did, so too does the larger 'world' in which the I plays it's role. The I exists because thought exists, rather than thought exists because the I exists. But this larger world is also where ideology plays it's role. And so it's within this larger world (more than within the matrix of the I) that the real battle between thought and ideology takes place. C

Those questions were, of course, rhetorical: propositions pretending to be questions - the proposition being that ideology (as indeed a force) has taken ownership of narrative. And that "we" (in the sense of the 'ordinary' person) need to take it back. That narrative belongs to us rather than belonging to this force. To stop thinking? Like narrative, thought is also something that has been co-opted by ideology. Ideology infiltrates thought. If we are to stop ideology by stopping thought it's only to stop a particular kind of thought (thought in general), rather than to stop thought fullstop (thought in particular). C