David Tetzlaff wrote:
> I don't want to go all Pangloss here, but if we take the 'the glass isn't
> half-empty, it's half-full' perspective, we could think of all the incredible
> 'experimental films' that are not so dependent on the physical medium: Deren,
> Anger Kuchar, Maclaine, Warhol, Conner... all the wonderful inspirations we
> can take forward to new generations of artists and evolving sets of tools.
I take your view to a degree. However, the artists you name are deeply
connected to their medium. I feel you've been arguing to a degree on what
the "content" is, as if that could be separated. And I think the material
support forms an aspect of the content of the work.
Kuchar's videos are much different than his regular 8 films. His Hi-8 camera
introduced a whole new visual and formal structure, where he could talk over
the image and aim the camera at his face and do it all in one take. His
later videos are edited with some kind of video synthesizer that creates
effects that he couldn't even do in Final Cut Pro (one could do it, probably
with After Effects, but probably not someone as intuitive as George).
If we could imagine a world where Andy Warhol was born fifty years later and
was only now making HD videos, the work would be very different (for one, I
think the world would be very different if Warhol didn't exist in the 60s).
Two of the resonant features of his first films (however you end up seeing
them), is that they were black and white and 16 frames a second are things
he would have to do in post-production now. Again, I don't see him as the
type of artist who would fiddle around in post-production. And he would
never be next to a projector that had a silent speed, knob, so how would he
have discovered it?
And why would you make Empire in the age of the web-cam?
My argument is along the lines of Pip's. Film is the technology I have and
although I do edit on computer, I do that with a sense of imagination
towards what the final film looks like (similar to how I imagine what will
come back from the lab). My computer is too slow to play HD files.
I have been starting to think about what the next step is for me if film
becomes impossible and part of me wonders if it might just be another medium
entirely. Why is the obvious transition from film to video? Fred, for
example, became a digital photographer.
Why would I want to stay in the cinema or in time-based media? Is that the
appropriate place for my artistic interests? What is is about filmmaking
that I want to carry with me? Maybe the web is a better place? After all,
another thing that filmmaking gave me is a taste for social media: through
frameworks.
Best,
Chris
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Received on Tue Aug 23 2011 - 07:34:45 CDT
