posted 12-05-2003 06:25 PM                       

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If I ever had that much free time on my hands, I'd consider trying to hand-draw animation onto blank film

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You should watch some of the films of Norman McLaren, especially his SHORT AND SUITE and BEGONE DULL CARE in which he did just that -- hand-painted on the film to the jazz score by Dave Brubeck. He was my hero when I was in college, not only because I thought his stuff was spectacular, but also because he was a god for the programmer of any cinema because he was a incredibly prolific filmmaker of original and very creative shorts. You could play any of his stuff before a feature if you were building a program of cartoons, shorts and main feature. His NEIGHBORS was a live-action short; well, kind of live action -- since he pixilated the film by cutting out frames to create a strange, cartoon-like action. This was always a huge hit with the college crowd no matter how many times I booked it during the anti-war Vietnam era as it made a pretty obvious anti-war statement. And those are just a few....the guy turned out so many shorts that you could almost say he was a one man short subject department unto himself. A lot of his films were award-winners and coproduced by the National Film Board of Canada; The NFBC -- another staple of the film programmer -- they always had tons of great stuff to book. They may still have some of his works in their library, if they still have a rental department.

I loved McLaren's stuff so much that I even tried my hand a few years later at the same thing. My results were not exactly the award-winning work that his was, but it was lots of fun. The difficult thing was getting raw stock. You would think that would be inexpensive....oh contrare. I also found it difficult to find the right paint -- it as to be totally transparent and has to adhere to the celluloid. I "choreographed" my painting to music by the Moody Blues. The music was the best thing. And mine was in CinemaScope! Not because I actually painted it with that in mind, but hey, I was the projectionist as well as the filmmaker so CinemaScope it was.

If you get some free time, by all means try it....it was lots of fun. And just remember, no matter how it turns out, a college audience will sit there and watch it if you pick good music. I must say, it sure is rewarding showing something you've created to an audience, captive as they may be, of 6 or 7 hundred!

posted 12-05-2003 07:40 PM                    

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Performative Cinema

MASSETT’S BEAM + WETGATE + RECODER + LONG +

A cautionary against the dictatorship of the mall platters, Tim Massett champions the projectionist as an active creative agent and endangered species. Included in his doc’s world debut are clips of Chicago’s James Bond, Austin’s Luke Savisky, Havana arc-operators, performance footage from past OC Projectorama shows, AND documentation of WetGate, who also appear live tonight! Peter Conheim, Steven Dye, and Owen O’Toole play 16mm loops on their Graflexes as cinema concrete compositions. ALSO “performing the projector” is the wünderkind from El Sobrante (and NYC), Luis Recoder. PLUS Kent Long’s double-projection, and an Osram bulb ad.

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posted 12-06-2003 11:33 AM                    

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If I ever had that much free time on my hands, I'd consider trying to hand-draw animation onto blank film.

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Done that! I took some black film and scratched stuff into it, then projected it. The result was a 5 second movie that took about an hour of time to "draw" and the result was the first-ever film from CatBastard Entertainment, "Stickman gets punched in face!"

=TMP=