◡◶▿ AMAT03 | Apparatus
Hollywood staring jealously at your tools. Super 8 in your heart and - this week only! - your local cinematheque. | Advanced Amateury Week 03
Everyone settled? Think back to last week’s lesson. We learned how:
“The quality imperative” is a cultural force that drives filmmakers towards a generic ‘better.’ For no good reason.
A wealth of truth and artistry exists far below “your best.” If only you’ll hold your breath and dive for it.
Every element of your production has a “resonant crapness.” Which, if exploited, will ring loud and true before bursting into glorious smithereens.
Your editor’s smudgy fingerprints are a valuable resource.
Hi! Do you write on Substack? It would be a tremendous show of support if you were to add this newsletter to your Recommendations. Ta!
In today’s lesson, we will discuss:
😒 Kit jealousy between the amateur and the pro.
🔐 How the amateur and pro alike are restricted in their choice of equipment.
🧙 An example of how exploiting the limits of your gear can transform the universe inside and outside of your movie.
💌 An exercise in auto-dissuasion.
Missed a week? Joined late? Don’t worry about reading these lessons out of order. Each functions independently. They are sent in a sensible sequence but hardly reliant on it.
Okay. Alright.
Technical bandwidth
You can hear me deliver this lesson by scrolling up to the header and clicking Listen and/or the play ▸ button.
The amateur must work with the equipment she can afford. ‘Amateur’ equipment. This is fair, since professionals are also restricted. Restricted to using ‘professional’ equipment.
The amateur and the professional face comparable frustrations with the limits of their technology. The only difference is altitude. The amateur may wish to go “higher end.” The professional would like to dabble “lower end.” (Ever wonder what’s beyond the ends?)
Each may gaze at the other’s technical bandwidth with jealousy. What a shame!
Exploiting the so-called limits
Rather than gaze jealously at the professional’s tools, the amateur filmmaker may exploit the particular characteristics and so-called limits of those that they have. (You might suppose that the professional could do this with the limits of their tools, too.)
Consumption
The amateur’s equipment is often characterised as ‘consumer-end,’ even if the user produces more than she consumes. Apparently, the words are assigned according to the economic balance rather than the material or emotional balance. Who’s counting?
Footage
Super 8 filmmaking involves a peculiar economic trade-off.
Compared to digital filmmaking, Super 8 production is cheap to start and expensive to continue. (In an ideal world, you’ll complete your body of work on a single reel, which is the minimum you need to get started.)
A bold word or phrase indicates that an instruction of the same name and concept will appear later in this module.
This analogue camera can be bought second-hand at a distinctly cheaper price than a digital camcorder or a telephone with video capabilities. But analogue film stock is expensive. Sold, processed, and transferred by the imperial foot. The bill rises at a constant and significant rate whenever the motor is running.
For the Super 8 parent, more precious and fleeting still is her offspring’s childhood. The Super 8 home movie maker feels time dripping through her fingers. And money, too. She turns the lever down from 18 to 12 frames per second (fps) to compress maximum “real time” into a minimum of frames. Recording more action to fewer imperial feet of that expensive analogue film stock.
Levering down↓ to shoot at a lower frame rate changes the quality of the footage. This is not a quality change of betters and worses, but of characteristics and essences. (cf. The Quality Imperative.)
The Super 8 parent may watch or exhibit the film at its original frame rate of 18 or even 12 fps, or at one of the fashionable modern rates such as 25 or 30.
Watching back at the original rate seems to approximate the tempo of the original event.
Watching back at a faster, modern frame rate speeds up the action.
This effect approximates “watching an old slapstick movie” or “nostalgic panic at the slipping of time through one’s fingers” or both, depending on the mood.
Watching at a faster fps rate makes it viable to rewatch the whole childhood and still have time for hygiene breaks.
Due to the peculiar economic trade-off of Super 8 filmmaking, the Super 8 parent may find herself stacking up undeveloped footage in her refrigerator. She exposed more than she can afford to process.
Levering down
By levering down to a rate of 12 frames per second, the Super 8 parent compresses maximum “real time” representation of her child’s activities into a minimum of frames. The same amount of action occupies fewer feet of expensive analogue film stock.
But she is not the only filmmaker-type to benefit from this ‘limitation.’ The gesture of “levering down” to 12 fps has expressive effects which the general filmmaker might acknowledge or exploit. These include:
Accentuating the movement of time. Or of visual or audio matter.
Alienating the movement of time. And laying bare the absurdity of those who operate within it.
Accentuating wobble.
The audience will, Kuleshov-like, attribute the wobble to a metaphysical source of the filmmaker’s choosing by connecting the wobble to its neighbouring elements within the film.
Recalibrating the hierarchy of natural and artificial processes in your movie.
Alternative ‘sample rates’ and rhythms may be more or less sympathetic to different entities and processes (the same way Muybridge’s camera was sympathetic to the beaten race track).
Capturing closer to the minimum number of sections (slices) per moment required to convey the moment’s shape, movement, and narrative (or whatever the filmmaker wants to convey).
Distilling the pure essence of a moment without diluting it with unnecessary frames.
Nostalgia.
Panic.
Skimping.
Hollywood producers rarely ask their directors to lever down to a lower frame rate. The only effect this producer would see is that the audience thinks they skimped on frames. And on digital video, the financial savings are minimal. Even if the Hollywood director worries about the cost burden of all those hard drives, their producer encourages them to shower the audience with 30 or even 60 or more frames per second.
The producer prefers the director to ignore the sense that videoing limitless frames at a fast frame rate results in a costly accumulation of recorded real-time. And that this accumulation of recorded real-time has - if not a physical presence - implications for the physical universe. (In this case, the video editor is expected to pick up the slack.)
Hollywood filmmakers who convince their producers they should work with film (usually 35mm) may operate with greater modesty. Yes, they will be expected to keep to a minimum of 24 frames per second. No levering down! But, they will also be expected to limit the number of takes they shoot. To anchor the physical reality of the film stock to the multiple realities of time unfolding before them while shooting.
They found a way out! Will they take it?
Exercise: Love letter
Please share your thoughts, queries, and exercises from this week’s lesson in the comments.
Small format, big screen
There are lots of opportunities to go and see what amateurs and quasi-amateurs are doing with Super 8 and 16 mm film.
I’ve already raved about the work of Kaori Oda to you. I hope you followed up on your notes. But, all this week (until Thursday), you can go and see her Cenote (2019), filmed on Super 8 and video phone, at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City. And it is playing at a number of other cinemas around Mexico, so check your local listings. (It may also be playing on Mubi in your territory. I don’t know!)
In New York, at Anthology Film Archives, you can see more Spanish 8s and 16s than you ever thought you would, on the 13th and 14th of May. (Here’s some extensive further reading, although I haven’t vetted it.)
And in London, this 16 mm program promises that by “utilizing the materiality of celluloid film, each artist pushes to rupture the mundane to reveal the potential for the mystical within daily life.” God, no!
Next week we’ll learn how the construction of a movie is a lot like the construction of a house. Which is to say, there is a troubling emphasis on right angles, efficiency, and licensed contractors. And how some artists have found another way, treating the factory line as their personal theme park.
Tell a friend!
Class dismissed.
~Graeme Cole.
(Principal)
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