WEEK 4
FILM PROJECTION WORKSHOP
This was such a fun workshop! We learned a lot about how 16mm film works as well as how to create camera-less 'video'. We created our own projections, either by subtractively processing a roll of over-exposed film by scratching away at the black leader, or by adding information to a strip of clear leader. Creating a loop by physically joining cellulose triacetate film was really interesting, and reminded me that I had never done the audio equivalent (using magnetic tape).
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I made a sort of, Jackson Pollock inspired loop, where I flicked ink and superglue down the length of the film (which was around 2m long, or just shy). I had superglue in my bag leftover from another project and some fluorescent highlighters. When you spin a highlighter, or a sharpie, around, the coloured liquid inside gets expelled as droplets. My intention was for the liquids within the highlighter to colour the droplets of glue so that it would create a three-dimensional effect when projected. For the most part, this worked, except that for the purposes of the workshop, I didn't have enough time to allow it to dry, so I smeared it horizontally. This made the droplets of glue and ink to thin out a bit, which made it dry a lot faster. Interestingly, this created an effect comparable to a colourful ocean (had the projector been on its side). This is something I can imagine doing again, possibly by using smaller films such as 8mm and layering them on top of a 16mm film to see what happens when they are projected.
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NEON ROAD
The second 16mm loop I made. In opposition to the first, where I applied additive processing to cameraless film, here I decided to try the inverse, subtractive processing. It basically means scratching away at a layer of overexposed film, in order to see through the dark overlay. I used sharp tools to do this, like a scalpel head and a pin.
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I started by trying to make an animation of a stick figure growing limbs. I didn't research or check how to do this so, inevitably, my failure caught up with me upon projecting the loop.
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I found that although it wasn't what I initially intended, the scratches and lines remind me of something I was reading the night before in Keping Wang's 'Art as Sedimentation'. It wasn't a phrase, saying, or sentenced that triggered my memory but a symbol. In 'Art as Sedimentation', or at least the version that I found, Keping Wang has the Mandarin translations for different sayings.
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I named this piece Neon Road because once it was projected, that is what I saw. A combination of neon lights and a wet road.
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In this case, displaying the film completely changed the meaning of the piece. What I thought was going to be a crudely drawn stick figure, prancing about in front of a dark backdrop, ended up as a melancholic and introspective drive through the rain. A pathetic fallacy.
I tried not to overthink the music. I wanted something that sped up, to trick the listener that the image could also be speeding up. I also wanted to emulate the 24fps seen hen projecting film, so I didn't use standard musical timings. Instead, I used a feet and frame ruler. This just allowed me to input sounds onto each frame instead of beats, bars, etc. I used a guitar sample I had and granulated it with Portal. This plugin really simplifies the workflow of this type of heavy processing, as it incorporates pitch, time, and granulation.
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I think it came out pretty well and I might make some music/sounds/sounds/music for the colourful loop we projected onto the library.
MECHANICAL MOON
While I was documenting Neon Road, I swung the camera around and filmed the projector itself. It must have been an accident, part of a thought, or a desire of wanting to fully document the moment. Regardless, I enjoyed the result. Again, it feels almost introspective, hypnotically.
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It is what it is. An unexpected result from an untimed moment.
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ORBIT
Orbit is a moment captured through play. I can't think of another way to describe it. My partner has a collection of vintage cameras that I hadn't paid any attention to - at all. All of a sudden, I felt the urge to touch, and investigate these cameras. I found myself drawn to one, in particular, the Kodak Duaflex II.
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Just by looking at these pictures, you can see how the film was made. Just stick a DSLR up close to it and find a way to change the frequency of light entering the camera. I did this by having multiple colours on my computer screen. Also by having a gradient that I could go through to make it look like a spinning gas giant. I think that this is one of the things that called me to make the film. Sometimes it looks like an enormous planet revolving in space, while sometimes it can look like the multiplication of cellular life. There is no defined scale to the object, allowing the viewer to decide what it is that they are looking at.