III

6x1 has been a fun class. I have enjoyed getting to work with actual film in our first few in class exercises and for the first one minute assignment.

Scratching off the enamel and leaving my own mark on the film’s surface was great. I didn't see it as destroying some else’s work, but as expanding upon what they created and making something my own. I liked making patterns and then being able to watch them emerge and come to life through the projector.

With the magazine transfer, I took an image of Robert Downey Jr. from Tropic Thunder and some other random shapes and carefully placed the images onto the tape. After cutting the tape into strips to fit the 16mm frame and soaking them in hot water, I taped the strip to a section of clear leader. The strip was maybe twenty-five frames. When we played the class’s composited reel in class, for that one split second I found my strip.

I’ve also worked in the Blackbox with Rayograms and Photograms. These were fun because I finally got to do some photography. I laid out my pattern or beads, spaghetti, screws and quarters on the unexposed film. The whole time I wasn’t quite sure how it would come out mostly because I was working under the red safe light and in the shadow of the table. Then in the blink of an eye, the room lights flashed on and then off. Photographic processes were at work in that half a second and I was eager to view my results. With the lights off, the class huddled around the red light. We then watched the chemical process of developing film. Now the only film I’ve ever seen develop is that instant photo stuff where the camera spits out your picture and in a few seconds the image comes through. This process however was much quicker. Dunk the film in the first chemical and bam! an image. Then clean it off in the water and let it sit in the last chemical so the image will stay when the lights come on. It’s fascinating to me how this all works. How the light creates an image, how that image is then made visible, and how that image is kept from dissolving into the light, is all really interesting.

This course so far has helped me think outside the box in terms of creating a work of film art. There are many other ways to make a movie beyond the usual shooting through a camera lens. In fact cameraless filmmaking combines the photographic nature of film stock with the natural human desire to create art by drawing or painting. I’m looking forward to painting my film in class this week.