From: Mark Toscano (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Oct 20 2005 - 17:44:20 PDT
Hi all -
Just thought I'd mention this stuff in light of Cari's
most recent post re: Stan's painted films...
In most cases, the "originals" for Stan's painted
films of the '80s and later are either reversal
masters or optical negatives. (There's a distinction
here between actual physical 'original' and
functioning 'original'.)
Original painted film survives for a number of the
films, but so many of the painted films were made of
painted rolls that were then looped, superimposed,
flopped, zoomed, defocused, etc. during the optical
rephotographing process, to the point where you
couldn't really preserve or remake the films even if
you had the original painted material. So the
original painted stuff essentially becomes just
"production material" (of course the stuff is precious
and priceless, but in a different way) And in a
number of cases, I believe Stan gave original painted
material away to friends, institutions, etc., so a lot
of it is probably unrecoverable anyway.
So, in terms of preserving the finished films, the
originals we have to worry about are these optical
masters. In some cases, Stan's optical masters are
reversal rolls that he printed to internegative, and
then made his release prints from those INs. Some
I've already inspected, like Persians #9, are
Kodachrome, and totally gorgeous. Mary Beth Reed told
me that the ones she printed for Stan were generally
Kodachrome.
In other cases, the optical masters are negs from
which he made interpositives, then printing negatives
to make release prints.
In both of these above scenarios, this implies that
these particular films are pretty well protected
(though I don't want to assume anything, ultimately)
The films I'm worried about are the ones for which
Stan used his "original" optical negatives also as
printing negatives, without making any intermediates.
This is the case with a group of about 2 dozen or more
films mostly from the mid-'90s. Films like Self
Song/Death Song, Earthsong of the Cricket, Shockingly
Hot, Blue Value, Earthen Aerie, Divertimento, and
others.
So ironically, whereas the originals for Stan's
earliest films, like Interim and Desistfilm, are in
immaculate condition, these films that are sometimes
less than 10 years old are a lot more fragile. But at
least this problem has been identified and so far
everything seems to be OK. The plan right now is to
not print any of these negatives any further unless
it's to create IPs and new internegatives. It's a
group of films we've prioritized and can work on as
soon as the negatives are transferred from MoMA, as
Marilyn mentioned.
Prior to the prolific hand-painting Stan began in the
'80s, a number of his films that incorporate painting
exist as originals that still have all the paint,
tape, scratching, etc. all over them, usually in
remarkably stable condition. (Thigh Line Lyre
Triangular, Dog Star Man, Black Vision, etc.)
here's another specific film example -
The original for Nodes, which is a hand-painted film,
is actually *painted* original material intercut with
black leader. Prints of this film have always looked
really "poor", because in contact printing it, the
painted film (which is pretty thick actually) couldn't
lay even remotely flat, and the resulting negative has
softer, slightly blurred imagery that is VERY lacking
in the color range/accuracy department. My problem
here is whether this should be "replicated", i.e.
should we aim for a poorly exposed, half-colorless,
blurry negative as our goal, since that's what's
always been out there? Or should we try to replicate
that hand-painted original as best as possible, which
would mean much more detailed, vivid, and colorful
prints than Stan ever saw in his lifetime?
The latter seems all the more attractive when I
consider that A.) in general, Stan seems to have
edited his films with the idea of wanting to get, as a
final result, more or less what he was looking at as
he edited, which is to say I don't think he painted
and edited Nodes thinking, 'ok, this'll look just
great as long as Western Cine can sap out half the
color, and severely diminish its sharpness and
detail'; and B.) Stan tended to often accept even
terrible prints from the lab, either because of a
certain fatalism, a certain passivity, a certain sense
of wanting the lab to 'collaborate' in the look of his
films, or all three.
What do you think of an issue like this? I'm curious
to hear peoples' opinions... I can provide more info
if this isn't enough to judge...
mark t
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