Re: [Frameworks] Digital -- was Re: 16mm camera repair & parts

From: David Tetzlaff <djtet53_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:04:30 -0400

Sandra Maliga wrote:

> The aesthetics and techniques of
> film and photography can be taught using digital equipment.


And Jeff Kreines replied:

> Well, no.

Well, yes and no... Everything Jeff says about the tendencies of the tools is true. But a tool is just a tool, and in teaching, you can devise assignments that require the students to use the tools in certain ways, to teach different things. For example, I used to give my students an assignment where they had to use a video camera as if it were a 16mm MOS camera... no sync sound, set everything manually using a handheld light meter, shoot no more than (x) minutes of footage (all of which must be handed in along with the finished cut). Etc.

I can't think of a way to mimic a Steenbeck with an NLE, but I wouldn't want to.

> Having to actually pick the right frame to cut on, because you don't want a string of 1-frame splices, teaches them how to think when editing.

That may be true, but's a hard lesson, difficult for beginners to pick-up. Not really the best way to learn.

> Decisions have consequences, and can't always be instantly reversed.

But a good way to learn about those consequences is to have a working space where they can be instantly reversed and compared. Seeing the differences (again, in the proper pedagogical context) promotes that ability to think about the process. In reality, students get away with a lot of slop doing assignments in film because it's harder to work with: they show a piece in class with a crappy edit (aesthetically and technically) and everyone goes 'oh well, they're learning...'. Where consequences really come is where the work meets the audience's eye, and no matter how much you've been able to putz with the choices, what goes up on the screen in a showing is what people react to. If a piece was cut digitally, there's no excuse for a cut that's off rhythm or has a flash frame, even in production 101.

Heck, if making editing harder is a better way to teach it, forget the Steenbacks. Transfer all the film footage to analog video and make the students put it together with a linear editing system w/o timecode --- where once you get to say 3:15 you can't change your mind about at edit at :23 without redoing everything after that. Having cut a number of docos this way, and taught with these tools for a number of years, I have no nostalgia for them and don't think they forced me to learn anything valuable. NLEs were invented, after all, to make cutting video more like working on a Steenbeck.

---
> Digital pushes one into a decision-free zone -- any decision can be postponed -- which leads to bad art.  It leads to laziness.
Again, I'm not really disagreeing, but saying that a thoughtful teacher can push back. Postponed decisions don't lead to bad art if they eventually get made thoughtfully. Postponed decisions can lead to non-decisions or lightly considered decisions etc., which leads to bad work. But laziness is ultimately up to the maker, not the tools. Maybe digital has fostered lazy work in that lazy people who never could have finished anything in film are now able to get something out. There's just so much more STUFF now, and of course most of it's inept. But I have the feeling people who actual care about making good work still do, and are as exacting in the digital realm as in celluloid. (Ken Paul Rosenthal: if you're reading this, what do you think?)
> 
> Shooting reversal stock is a great educational tool -- because you learn about exposure, and do not have much latitude.
> 
> Yes, the cost of film is a terrible thing.  In the olden times, the cost and the technical skills required acted as a filter on what films got made.  It required not only some skill, but it forced one to learn how to hustle.  (When I grew up in Chicago, Tom Palazzolo was the master of making films for no money -- he knew film couriers for TV stations who sold film cheap -- it fell off their motorcycles -- and lab guys who would sneak it through the processing machine.  I learned a lot from Tom.)
> 
> Now anyone can go to WalMart and get all they need to make a film that could be shown theatrically.  Access to equipment is no longer a problem.  The new iPhone (too expensive for me) shoots great 1080p video.  So Coppola's mythic "fat girl in Ohio" (his words, not mine) will have access to her camera-stylo, and might make a great work of art.  At the same time, 999,000 others will suddenly be able to shoot and finish the most horrific pieces of shit, but they end up with "a movie" that they force others to try and watch.  I now feel some degree of pity for festival programmers, who theoretically have to watch this glut of stuff.
> 
> Yes, 30 years ago they also had to wade through tons of crap, but the percentage was lower because of the filter.
> 
> When the typewriter became popular, more people tried writing novels, but it took perseverance to finish even a dreadful one.  Personal computers carried on this trend, but there was a lot of work involved -- though with all the retyping eliminated, some writers learned to edit and rewrite, not a terrible thing.
> 
> It's easy to shoot digitally, easy to throw it into a computer and string it together -- if you don't edit it on your phone.  Making things too easy cheapens it, in my opinion.
> 
> That's not to say digital is the villain. Cell phones are great for documenting police brutality and cute animal antics, and someone will make great art with them.  (What was Pixelvision before Sadie Benning?)  
> 
> But even if students are going to end up in a world where there is no film being shot, a good education will still give them the experience of shooting and editing film, because the lessons learned are greater than one might imagine.
> 
> Jeff "officially an old curmudgeon now" Kreines
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Received on Thu Oct 20 2011 - 07:42:33 CDT