From: Sam Wells (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2004 - 17:11:12 PST
The production company for those commercials would have been On Film,
in Princeton.
Stan was on staff there, as was Boris Kaufmann.
I have that Artforum issue, but not here. There's reference to "Scott
Toilet Tissue" but I'm not sure about fabric softener - quite possible,
as On Film was pretty much a pioneering company in commercials, and
industrials as well. They seem to have sought after talent from all
over, and people sought them out also -- I know two veteren documentary
Dir/cinematographers who came to Princeton in the late fifties/early
sixties specifically to work for On Film.
Much later I worked for Fred Johnston, who had been one of the partners
in the company. By this time On Film had gone under (happened in the
mid-sixties I think) and Fred had a company called Allscope. But when
I met Fred, the Allscope studio in downtown Princeton had burned down
(in their heyday they had also owned what were later the Camera Mart /
Fox studios in midtown Manhattan).
Unfortunately a lot of material had been lost, from the bankruptcy and
the fire. I think Fred only had a few prints of the 60 or so
industrials he had directed, and none of the 1000+ commercials, so
anything Stan worked on probably lost - although prints of the
industrials may be out there somewhere....
Fred, a character and 1/2 (understatement) told me he "didn't trust"
Stan B on commercials ;-) but admired his work & ideas when it came to
industrials. (I can't really begin to describe Fred in an email
post...)
One partner was Mel London. There are some rather disparaging remarks
about a film editor - along the lines of "what he showed me the next
day was completely incoherent" - in a book he wrote called (I think)
"Getting Into Film" -- a wild guess as to who that editor might be :)
I guess Fred was a little more open minded !
(I'd love to see that book again)
-Sam
> Someone asked me this question a few month before Brakhage died, so I
> asked him. He could not remember the company he did the commercial for.
> "Downey" did not ring a bell when I mentioned it. He has always seemed
> a
> little proud that the technique in the commercial seemed innovative to
> many in the "industry." I trust that someone on this list has access to
> the January 1973 issue of "Artforum," a special Eisenstein./Brakhage
> issue that's worth getting. I can't lay my hands on my copy at the
> moment. Anyway, it has a filmography prepared with his help that
> includes the commercial work, and I'm pretty sure it included a
> reference to that commercial, and I too remember "Scott." So, someone
> please post the info from that issue.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.