My Super 8 camera model

I finally registered for a Super 8 filmmaking workshop. Yes, you read correctly. In the digital age we live in, Super 8 may not be as convenient and is often thought of as something an old or long deceased relatives used, but it sure is pretty and in certain emerging, growing subcultures it’s also alive and well. Just considering the fact that I found three separate places in my area offering workshops is a testament to the resurgence of small gauge filmmaking and even non-linear editing.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t illusions of feature length silent Super 8 films set to music or narration at my local Loews. I don’t believe Super 8 will ever even be what it was to the 1960′s and 70′s family home moviemaker, but small gauge filmmaking does have a place in the art world and amateur filmmaker community. Hopefully manufacturers and developers of Super 8 film will remain because there is a modest but stable market for the products and services around Super 8.

My personal interest, like many I’m sure, came from inheriting my Grandpa Al’s 8mm and Super 8 camera, equipment and the footage he shot over the years. I have been gradually transferring it to a digital format. A lot of it is family, or travelogue like footage of vacations depicting an Americana now virtually gone. Projecting the footage or sending it directly to a transfer house was like opening a time capsule. I found it all very fascinating. I realized things I never knew about my family and found new mysteries.  This discovery transitioned itself into a growing collection of Super 8, 8mm and 16mm found footage through garage sales, ebay and community center sales over the years.

My mom & I on Super 8

I have wondered why I’m so interested in social history documentation in general and why I’m so captivated in particular by documentation in the small gauge film format. I realize it’s partly because digital video, high def or standard, will never look like film. It can’t because it’s not.  And although film is too time consuming, inconvenient and expensive to use in my daily work life, I can still enjoy it in my off time.

Small gauge has been a popular medium for both amateur and independent filmmakers through the years (and still is), which makes for a rich, sometimes mundane, sometimes fabulously bizarre collection of works stowed away in museums, galleries, basements, churches, schools, libraries and more random locations throughout the world. It can turn into a bit of a treasure hunt. Just ask any film orphanista. But outside of the fun involved in found footage that someone else shot, there is also a joy in filming with small gauge formats. Most hobbyists don’t want to spend the money on 35mm or even 16mm, which require more technical understanding of the medium itself and its equipment, so what’s nice about Super 8 is that it was developed for the home movie enthusiast and therefore comes as a cartridge you just click into the camera. Super 8 cameras are pretty straight forward that way, but why this format has seen resurgences every now and again over the years (particularly in the ’90s and then again now) is perplexing. Super 8 seems to like to be dismissed and then again considered. Take today, in an age where it’s pretty cheap and easy to just purchase and use a little HD camcorder and SDHC card to shoot, the mini Super 8 renaissance is especially peculiar. Modern convenience allows present day filmmakers zero developing costs and (usually) only requires the ingesting of their digital footage into a software program before anyone can easily start creating non-linear cuts.

At the Union Docs Super 8 filmmaking workshop I started last week, our instructor brought up a word often associated with Super 8 films. She suggested we think about “nostalgia” and what it means to us. She also asked us to think about why and how nostalgia fits into our present day digital and virtual society, citing Final Cut Pro film grain filters, Instagram and other apps that create an ‘old timey’ feel. Despite the modern age, we like things to look old sometimes.

It’s an interesting question to ponder. In a period which embraces youth over age, virtual over physical, this phenomenon appears to be an exception. Societal attitudes tend to lean away from what is considered old or dated. Then again, there are circles who covet vintage because of it’s apparent quirkiness, which in turn makes some feel individualized or special by owning the unique.  In fact someone in the workshop said that in so many words and I do agree.  Because vintage is in the past, it’s also easy enough to romanticize objects of yesteryear and look at it through a tinted lens (yes, play on words here). That’s probably part of the reason why Super 8 is thought of to be so beautiful. The film itself is physical and therefore tangible, but the results of developed film are sort of dream like. They often appear as an idealized fantasy of a better yesterday or sometimes a mysterious yesterday. Either way it’s romantic and the grain gives it an otherworldly dreamscape if you ask me.

I’ve checked out youtube videos of different Super 8 enthusiasts adventures in filmmaking and no matter if they’re shooting traffic at an intersection in modern day New York City or someone on top of a mountain skiing in the latest gear, there is a nostalgic look to it, regardless of the contemporary settings. The contrast of the black and white or the vividness of the Ektochrome colors, it’s rich and romantic.

Outside of all this romance I’m waxing on about, I find learning about film of any gauge is an important education and really pretty exciting (I guess that makes me an eccentric, depending on who’s reading this entry). Coming strictly from a digital world professionally I often haven’t realized where a lot of editing language came from. There are a lot of cutting (there’s one!) terms from that have somehow survived the transition from film to digital and remain in use.

Super 8 splicer

Cutting and splicing in the literal sense also requires an editor to plan scenes more methodically. You can’t just hit “undo” if you make a bad or unwanted cut.  You have to physically remove the tape and start again. It requires a different way of thinking when constructing a scene or even just one cut. That’s both a nerve racking and attractive thought process from my perspective and one that I’ve never encountered. This workshop will give me a first taste. I doubt I’ll want to edit a feature documentary in this way, but a 3 minute film sounds like a fun exercise and one I might repeat. Of course I say that now. We’ll see when I’m breaking out the guillotine how it all goes down, but I’m looking forward to it.

The workshop is broken up into four classes and the first covered gauges, some Super 8 film viewing and some general information covering differences in negative and reversal film stock. Union Docs offers both Super 8 and 16mm workshops.

Ticket’s available here.

This past week I balanced editorial work for a filmmaker who has an upcoming screening while organizing a shoot for a community garden effort in Bushwick. Luckily I both came together. It usually somehow does.

Doing post for a piece allows an editor to begin to understand what one has to work with, both its potential and limitations. If you’re lucky there are more of the former, which in this case I think there are.  I find it incredibly inspiring to collaborate too and this was definitely a group effort from the filmmaker to the interns, everyone pitched in effectively.

The shoot on Saturday went well but as with a lot of documentary shoots you’re relying on folks and circumstances to come together without a script or a pay day. So, not everyone showed that we expected and we didn’t tackle everything that we thought we would. That being said, we captured some interesting action. I think this will make for a good social issue short piece that can accompany a pdf tool kit, which can be used in other communities. At least that’s the goal and it appears attainable enough.

I would say generally speaking that editorial work is my passion and therefore my priority, but that doesn’t mean I can treat the others as less than. I enjoy each gig and wouldn’t trade any of them… at least so far. Editing is, however, the most creative (and sometimes most frustrating) work I’ve ever had the privilege to be involved in. Time management might be a struggle, but working toward finding balance at least gives me a goal to work toward.  A goal that seems attainable enough.

Center for Social Media

Molly Murphy of Working Films led the morning discussion and used The Vanishing of Bees documentary as a case study to illustrate a successful social issue film campaign. From this example I learned something important right off the bat and that is that campaigns are not set, implemented and stuck to. They are constantly evaluated and adjusted accordingly. The main points of a campaign, however, that we all got to know more personally today are 1). Distribution, 2). Outreach and Strategic Communications and 3). Audience Engagement. These are more challenging to define than one might think. Most of us get what distribution is, but for many the other two get kind of foggy and this language often gets used interchangeably even though they are not the same. Anyone can get further clarification by reading The Fledgling Fund’s From Distribution to Audience Engagement – Social Change Through Film, written by Reel Change workshop instructor and The Fledgling Fund’s Director of Programs, Emily Verellen. In fact all three websites (Working Films, The Fledgling Fund and Center for Social Media) have a ton of helpful information for free.

What is unique and valuable about this workshop is the hands-on attention to each filmmaker’s story and situation as campaign design is really shaped by each individual film’s case. What works for one filmmaker might not work for another. It depends on many variables.  This workshop operates as both a classroom-presentation and lecture type structure but also takes time to break it up into groups of mini think tanks with a mentor sitting in. This setting not only allows for telling your own project’s story and the questions that are still up in the air regarding its campaign, but it also offers and informative exchanges of ideas.

The project I brought to this workshop is one I’m wearing many hats on. I will edit this documentary, which is the role I usually play, but for this effort I am also the media maker and the campaign designer.  Being at the post end requires some campaign consideration in that I think about the campaign goal and how it relates and aligns with the story, but coming at it as a producer and campaign coordinator first is something brand new.  For The Recycler’s Urban Farm and Garden Project I have a whole lot more to think about. One valuable tidbit I’ve already come away with today is that I was under the impression that I was an early bird with thinking about developing campaign strategies and goals around this film, but in fact I’m really getting a late start. It’s time to get cracking’.

That being said the attendees of this workshop are at all stages in their production and all are enthusiastic and supportive which makes for a well rounded and lively bunch.

The Jungle, a 1967 short made by Harold Haskins and the 12th & Oxford Street gang in the film was outstanding. Secret Cinema’s Jay Schwartz spoke about his discovery of it and the history behind the film which inspired several of its cast to transition out of gang life into filmmaking and forming businesses and community building efforts.The Jungle was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry a few years ago.

For the afternoon’s Popular Science, Michael Aronson and Elizabeth Peterson (U of Oregon) discussed Lester Beck, the Oregon filmmaker psychologist, and screened Human Growth (Sy Wexler, 1948). Human Growth was a film within a film and served as sex education to students but also as a ‘how to’ for teachers on approaching sex ed in the class room.  The best parts of this film are the reaction shots of the classroom kids following the sex education film they’ve just viewed. Check it out at The UO Channel. Another funny tid-bit is that this was an Eddie Albert production.

Sergei Kapterev (Moscow Research Institute of Film Art) showed a delightful film, (Aleksei Yerin, 1963) while offering bits of translation. An interesting factoid Kapterev shared was that in the 1960′s the Soviet Union was still making films on nitrate stock, but for me the highlights of this film were the ’60′s style space suits.

The evening was terrific. Marie Lascu (NYU MIAP) and Karl Holder (Tokyo U) showed  Behavior: Studies of Apparent Behavior (1943 Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel) which received an enthusiastic audience response. The piece used geometrical shapes, animating them in a way in which one shape appeared to be the aggressor to the other shapes. Then the same piece was shown in reverse, which flipped the characterization of the aggressor to be that of the shape being pursued. What followed were variations on the idea in the form of USC digital remakes, my favorite being Can’t Fool Pacman: The Remake by Amy Jumper.

In closing I’ll just mention one or two more, although really every screening was really pretty fascinating, Robert Martens and Walter Forsberg presented a very weird Auroratone: When the Organ Played “O Promise Me” (Cecil Stokes, 194?) with Bing Crobsy. This film looks a little more psychedelic ’60s but apparently it was used at a variety of venues in the ’40s, including mental hospitals and as a backdrop during church sermons. Bing Crosby’s involvement other than the Auroratone’s music is that he was actually an investor for tax purposes. This restoration was done by Film Technology Inc. is available on Youtube and it’s quite beautiful and according to it’s Saturday night presenters, some 1940s mental patients might also admit that it’s calming.

I also want to mention one screening from Thursday that I missed in my Part One blog entry and that is the truly precious 1905 35mm nitrate home movie, Francena Feeding the Chickens, from 1905 by Charles Camp now preserved!). The footage is one of the earliest known home movies and was presented by  Center for Home Movies. The film itself is of a thirteen year old girl, Francena feeding chickens on a farm. Charles Camp filmed roundups and farm life, but what remains a mystery is what kind of camera Camp used, where he got it and where it was processed. After all it was 1905 and Camp was in out in the country. What really added to this screening however was the granddaughter (I believe?) and her husband talking about the discovery of this film in a basement. They each read letters written by filmmaker, Charles Camp, (spoken in character voice over no less) as the film played in a loop.

These are the kinds of stories that make orphan films so utterly fascinating. They are windows to our culture and history and because there are often mysteries associated with their origins, creators or whereabouts they also remain somewhat elusive, which just deepens their allure, if you ask me.

Please feel free to contact me with corrections or comments info@kirstenstudio.com

Friday morning began with Campaign Film and TV Spots. David Schwartz (MMI Chief Curator) presented some interesting Reagan era propaganda ads. You can browse The Living Room Candidate through the Museum of the Moving Images online collection. Schwartz mentioned that campaigns actually use the link as a resource and inspiration for future campaign ads (for better or for worse). Check out The Bear ad.

And an Advocacy Campaign Film screened Children Limited (1951) followed by a talk back with Laura Kissel (U of South Carolina), Larry A. Jones (The Arc of Washington) and  Faye Ginsburg (NYU Council for the Study of Disability).

Children Limited served as an advocacy film and was insightful in the ways society once approached disability as opposed to the way it does now. There have been major strides, but as most of us already are aware, there is a long way to go. For example this film’s segregation message is incredibly dated but societally we still lack appropriate tools for integrating those with intellectual disabilities into our life and communities.

An interesting aspect of the film that was brought up was the idealized depiction of a disability institution filled with one-on-one care, clean clothing and environment, happy children walking across expansive green lawns under the sun and surrounded regal large white buildings. The reality of these institutions have been, of course and unfortunately, notoriously and starkly different. To me that makes this film important because it serves as a study guide on several different levels.

On a less somber note, Catherine Jurca (Cal Tech) brought Friday afternoon’s orphanistas Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938), a hysterical and heavy handed promotional Made to Persuade Americans to go back to the movies. The piece offered a variety of reasons, given by each generation, from ‘entertainment is a serious business, to ‘Hollywood employees many’ to its educational and social values. Jurca said there was a vested interest in making the film to show the ‘real human’ so audiences had people to connect with, but apparently the campaign itself was a flop.

A real oddity of what I saw on Friday was a religious story from the well-known comedy director, Frank Tashlin. Ethan de Seife (Hosfstra U) presented snippets of the partially animated film, The Way of Peace (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1947). The wacky stop motion (although the motion appeared to be fairly minimal) figures illustrated scenes from classic bible stories to the blazoned end of the world. Spooky and goofy, yet kind of mesmerizing, all at the same time. De Seife admitted that even after researching for over a decade, he still wasn’t sure about how Tashlin came to work on The Way of Peace. To me that’s part of why orphan films are so interesting. They’re often a mystery and sometimes unraveling them brings the detective closer to an understanding, but sometimes they seem meant to be somewhat elusive. In this case the how and why remains unanswered.

Made to Persuade was the Orphan Film Symposium’s 2012 theme and it tapped an interesting milieu exemplifying the vast orphaned media created for just that. The Orphan’s program states that “The call for presentations generated more responses than ever before. Dozens of excellent proposals had to be turned away.” This is exciting news in the world of Orphanistas who packed the Museum’s theater last week.

Each day was broken down by sections with various guest speakers providing context for each screened piece and it’s relevant history. Some creative section titles included “Other Orphans: Bastards, Fugitives, and Test-Tube Babies”, “Poetic Persuasion: What happens if you eat watermelon seeds” and “In a Family Way”. All exhibited genres of persuasion whether for scientific, political, religious, education or all of the above and more.

The morning was spent examining the definition of “Orphan”, while some preferred “Bastard Films” or in some cases “Fugitive”. Great inquiry into these definitions by speaker Hadi Gharabhagi (NYU). What followed over the next several days were excellent examples of both Orphans (or whatever you prefer to call them) which were Made to Persuade. Below are some highlights from Thursday’s line-up.

Ad Film for Theaters, Television, and the Web brought Annette Groschke (Deutsche Kinematek) to Orphans to screen Charles Wilp’s outrageous ads for Sexy-mini-super-flower-pop-op-Afri-cola Campaign, 1968-1974. Cooky over-the-top exploitive soft drink ads with the implication that the consumer will receive a high off the tonic.  Pre-pop icons Marianne Faithful, Petula Clark and Diana Ross made appearances.

Leenke Ripmeester (EYE) presented Joop Geesink’s 1940′s Dollywood Advertising Films. The ads are fascinating and yes, bizarre, but what was just as interesting was getting an inkling of what someone like Ripmeester is taking on with a collection like this. She described and showed, via Powerpoint, the database where the Geesink media (much of it 35mm originals) was catalogued and the various obstacles that came about during this conservation effort, such as how to store the films (one reel vs dividing films into small reels), considering criteria in which each piece would be catalogued, to budget cuts. Ripmeester was happy to report that much was preserved and digitized and she hopes these films will be used on the internet, from education, to research and programming. She believes they should be accessible for various uses including re-contextualization.

A definite highlight of the entire symposium was the Skip Elsheimer (A/V Geeks) and Devin Orgeron (NC State U) Sugar Bear Sells Sugar Crisp, 1949 to Present presentation. Elsheimer has been digitizing Duke U’s AdViews collection and in the process learned a lesson in the candy cereal phenomenon which began in 1949 with a lovable bear pitching cereal that’s like candy. A humorous and educational chronology of Sugar Bear’s history from his early cool-cat Dino persona to his “Cut the Jive, Sugar Bear’s Arrived” ’70s hipness. Elsheimer talked about how Sugar Bear was the cereal that really spawned candy cereal and candy cereal ad campaigns that were geared toward children, rather than their parents.  Check out Duke U’s library to see for yourself.

Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs offered Nell Cox in person presenting her Operator (1969), made as a promotional to recruit telephone operators. A delightful behind the scenes piece on operators taking and transferring calls the old fashioned way combined with close-up operator testimonials.

Walter Forsberg offered a screening of some pioneers of early computer animation and followed with a special appearance by Lillian Schwartz along with several of her works. I was happy to hear the mention of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund’s grant to preserve of Schwartz’s Googolplex (1972 )

The evening brought Helen Hill and the Helen Hill Awards. Both well worth hanging out for the evening’s screenings. Dwight Swanson (Center for Home Movies) introduced a Helen Hill camera test from 2005. A sweet short intimate few minutes of Helen Hill filming her family at home. Awards were given to artists Jo Dery and Jeanne Liotta.

Curious Light (2011), Charlotte Pryce

It’s been a little while since the New York Film Festival wrapped (10/16/11 to be exact) but I’m still going to add a little something about the Views from the Avant-Garde. My Part II, even if a bit late in coming.

As I mentioned in Part I, the lineup I attended was Cabinet of Curiosities, which was a program of 12 films. Each inspiring in their own right, but I’ll stick to a handful of my favorites for this entry. Please keep in mind that the following comments are from my perspective only, and experimental or avant-garde films are up for a broad range of experience and interpretation, so with that disclaimer, I’ll proceed.

Jonathan Schwartz’s Between Gold (2011), color, 16mm, 10minutes, 42 seconds, seemed to have some similarities to his Nothing is Over Nothing (2009) in that they both resemble personal, poetic travelogues of sorts. In the film’s description, Mr. Schwartz refers to a quote (or moment) from Mark Twain’s The Innocent Abroad, where a dog is resigned to acceptance of a situation he was not equal to. But The Innocent Abroad, like Between Gold, is a travelogue on the surface, yet Twain’s book is also known for exploring the conflicts between the historical and modern world.

So far I’ve only seen Nothing is Over Nothing and Between Gold at Views from the Avant-Garde but he made many more. From what I gather, Mr. Schwartz uses family imagery and travel footage in his other work as well and I’d be more than interested in seeing it.  Between Gold held my attention like a fascinating, warmly hued dream you kind of try to grasp the possible meanings of, but can’t quite make sense of it all.

Mr. Schwartz does inject an audio track of a barking dog(s) under much of the film, which I found both interesting and aggravating. Nevertheless, Between Gold was a favorite.

Tableaux Vivants (2011), 10minutes, 20 seconds was another stand-out. A color, silent 16:9 film shot in HD and transferred to XDCAM-EX, filmmaker Vincent Grenier conjured up a beautiful meditation on nature and its illusion.  Grenier appears to play with what is actual and what is imagined by using various levels of opacity with time-lapse scenes of nature, which in itself is ever changing in its own reality. For much more about the artist in his own words, visit www.vincentgrenier.com.

Charlotte Pryce’s Curious Light (2011), 4minutes, 12 seconds, color, silent, 16mm is magnificently other-worldly. Its light and shadow against the book of Alice and Wonderland brings a new, gorgeous and haunting context to the story. The extreme close-ups of the illustrations reinvent a unique sense of spooky mystery. It’s not just this way of examining the illustrations that provide a different perspective though. It’s also how we are made aware of the book itself by seeing the texture of the paper and the movement of the pages. Juxtaposing the reality of the physical paper against the fantasy of the illustrations adds another dimension of depth. Exquisite.

3 shorts by Stephanie Barber were terribly clever and in particular I enjoyed Miniatures (2011), 2minute, color, sound, DV, which was created from a selection of sentences read by museum visitors and paired with a number of miniature Elizabethan portraits. Throughout the 2minutes, there is a range of readable emotions both by delivery and content, from humor to fear and some more ambiguous. This was initially part of a Baltimore Museum of Art installation in a central gallery where Barber created a series of short poetic videos entitled Jhana and the rats of James Olds or 31 days/31 videos.

Cabinet of Curiosities was quite fascinating and I was happy to hear a couple sitting behind me mention it was their first experience attending avant-garde films. Film may be dying in some parts of the filmmaking industry, but I’m glad to find it sure seems to be alive and well in the avant-garde.