From: Bernard Roddy (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2008 - 13:01:06 PDT
Hi Sam. Here's a shot at an explanation of that excerpt. Suppose that digital video is either indiscernible from film or close enough as to make such distinctions between cameras incidental. This presupposes we're not focused on the effects of traditional photographic processes. Suppose also that projection must include sound. Then a filmmaker who still shoots in film but expects to project or distribute digitally has to ask: why shoot film given its costs, and how do I get to projection if shooting film rather than video is to pay off? Why not switch to video? I am trying to answer this question, but answer it as a "filmmaker" rather than as an artist who'll use whatever.
By "practices of former film art production" I meant those involving the shooting of film cameras, use of rewinds or flatbed, possibly syncing a magnetic sound track, all for the purpose of concluding with a sprocketed film and optical soundtrack, computers be damned. Working like this feels like walking into a photographic darkroom again, charming in a studio arts sort of way, like returning to a sketchpad. Next to a room full of drawing students in front of a still life or nude, this all makes sense to me. But in the context of our present media environment, it comes with a heavy price, namely all the worry about transfers, exhibition, and distribution, given the various compromises. Can we say that the history of film art in this traditional sense belongs along side the history of performance, where projection conditions are an integral part of what film meant? If so, and if we continue to work this way, communicating in the absence of those
projection conditions becomes a serious challenge. If you don't become a video artist or digital filmmaker, then you seem destined to mimic a past experience under challenging circumstances.
Bernie
--- On Tue, 9/2/08, Sam Wells <email suppressed> wrote:
> From: Sam Wells <email suppressed>
> Subject: Re: Looking for 16mm sound mix studio
> To: email suppressed
> Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008, 2:17 PM
> Hi Bernard, I started to reply to your post, but it was
> becoming far
> too lengthy - way too many issues & implications to
> discuss.
>
>
>
> > . For better or for worse, I expect to be trying to
> mimic 16 mm
> > projection rather than retain the practices of former
> film art
> > production.
>
>
> I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, can you
> explain ?
>
>
> -Sam
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.