Cameraless Filmmaking, Reaction 2

Cameraless filmmaking. If you asked me about it a year ago, I’d say “I’ve watched some Norman McLaren. It’s really cool, but it’s not for me.” Now, I’d say “I’ve made one of those! It took a really long time, and I had no idea what it would look like the entire time. But it was really awesome”. I think that it’s an incredibly rewarding experience. When you manipulate film frame by frame, for 36 feet, you become very close to the film. You might work on one frame for fifteen minutes, with the full knowledge that when it plays in the film, you’ll only see it for 1/24 of a second. It’s kind of a crazy type of project to take on for just that reason, but it also makes it really exciting. It’s art for art’s sake, for sure, and I think that if given the opportunity and materials, I’d definitely do another one.

Now, I can’t answer the question “How was watching your project through the projector” this week, because I was in the group that did not splice our project correctly and we could not watch it last week =[ It’s a shame because Megan and I waited for the splicer for about a half hour in the editing lab, and when we finally got it I had to leave for class, leaving Megan to splice it (we had already put it in order the night before so we just had to trim the ends and replace our masking tape with splicing tape). I’m a projectionist, I splice film on a weekly basis, and it’s a shame that I couldn’t stay to help because I think we would have been able to watch it last week. But that’s okay, now I’ll just be even more excited to see it when we do our long take later =]

I watched the excerpt of St. Louise on the website you sent us. I think it looked really great. Even after doing one, I’m still quite a bit mystified. How did they get the white lines and figures of the man’s face? It looked like it had edges so round that they couldn’t have been scratched with a razor blade or any of the tools that we used. I also think that the rhythm was really great. When we did “Dragon Sneeze” (the name of Megan and my project), we didn’t really consider frame counts in relation to rhythm. Maybe if I make another one, I’ll keep rhythm in mind while putting it together.