From: William C. Wees (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Mar 22 2004 - 15:38:43 PST
For various reasons, I'm way behind in picking up this thread, but since no
one has mentioned Brakhage's "A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book," I
thought I should. I used it as a "text" for an "experimental course" on
"experimental filmmaking" (in a department that had no regular film
production courses--i.e., McGill University's English Department) in the
late 1970s. My goal, like Brakhage's, was to think about creating films
outside the conventional assumptions about what makes a "good" film.We even
made a "Ray-O-Gram" film, as suggested by Brakhage. And, of course, the
films we looked at were by Brakhage and other experimental/avant-garde
filmmakers. I don't think any of the students had dreams of making it in
Hollywood (or even at the National Film Board of Canada), and they
responded well to the encouragement to experiment with the medium, without
worrying about standards of "good" filmmaking. Call it utopian, but I think
the course succeeded in getting the students to think more critically about
cinema in general, as well as enjoy an opportunity to explore some of the
visual opportunities offered by the medium. (I should add that Lipton's and
Pincus's books were on reserve for the course.)
--Bill Wees
At 01:54 PM 3/19/04 -0500, you wrote:
>Sorry to trouble Frameworks with yet another research question, but I'm
>stumped
>on this one, and I thought Frameworks veterans (i.e., the unwhippersnappers)
>might have some insight:
>
>I'm trying to find out which (if any) textbooks would have been commonly
>used in
>filmmaking classes prior to 1972, when Lenny Lipton's _Independent Filmmaking_
>comes out.
>
>Brakhage, in the intro to Lipton's book, mentions Raymond Spottiswoode's _Film
>and its Techniques_ (1965), and I suspect that Ed Pincus's _Guide to
>filmmaking_
>(1969) was also used (?). Also, there are a number of books published in the
>1950s and 1960s (even one from 1939, _Movie making for the beginner_ by
>Herbert
>C. McKay):
>
>Ferguson, Robert, _How to make movies; a practical guide to group film-making_
>New York : Viking Press, [1969]
>
>Beal, John David. _How to make films at school_London : Focal P., 1968.
>
>Brodbeck, Emil E._Handbook of basic motion picture techniques_ Philadelphia :
>Chilton Books, [1966]
>
>Does anyone on the list recall reading these books for courses, esp before
>1972?
>
>Thanks again,
>Mike
>--
>Michael Zryd, Assistant Professor
>York University
>Dept. of Film & Video, 225 CFT
>4700 Keele St.
>Toronto, ON, CANADA M3J 1P3
>Tel: 416-736-2100 x22164
>Fax: 416-736-5710
>
>
>__________________________________________________________________
>For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
William C. Wees, Editor
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FILM STUDIES
REVUE CANADIENNE D'ÉTUDES CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUES
Phone 514-398-4935 Fax 514-398-7247
email suppressed
http://www.film.queensu.ca/fsac/cjfs.html
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.