VI

Cameraless filmmaking has been a fun experience. It’s a new way to use old footage, by scratching or painting on it, and to use new footage, with rayo- and photograms. It was interesting in that I was making a film without ever seeing what it truly looked like projected. Once we finally got the projector and camera set up to transfer the film to video I got to see my creation unfold. I was surprised by how cool the film looked projected and by the animations that came to life. The barrage of colors and textures was really interesting. I enjoyed the twisted film I had placed over my filmstrip for the photogram. The spiral on the film took up about twenty frames, and this could be clearly seen as the film’s original picture corkscrewed around itself. Another surprise came when the blackleader I used to scratch shapes and my animation into was projected. The 16mm film used two frames per image, instead of one frame to one image. When projected every other frame was either of the man’s head or of his feet. It created a strange flicker effect. The bleached portions were probably the strangest sequences of the film. The bleach was applied to the inked/oiled portions of the film. This application muted the colors and changed some of the colors to strange shades of themselves.

I feel we followed the theme of "earth, wind, fire, and water" well. Sheena created the earth and wind and I did the fire and water. I used a lot of reds and blues of course but I made each wavy and fluid because each of these elements flows. I wanted lots of movement and to create a “flowing” sensation. I liked how the rayo/photograms came out, and overall I enjoyed making and viewing the film.

If I could change anything I would have worked on the magazine transfer more. The magazine strips I used were done hastily and not given enough time to stick to the filmstrip. I think when we tried to project some of the magazine strips slipped and scrunched up, almost jamming the projector. I also would have tried to keep the perforations and the enamel side of the filmstrip consistently on the same side. When we were finished compiling our one minute reel, we realized some of the strips were backwards or flipped so we had to take the time then to correct them. But this was a learning experience and I feel we fixed our mistakes well and have a good film to show for it.