PRESERVATION INSANITY

an ephemeral sculpture

2009-05-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Inga (the artist formerly known as Chris Langdon) and I were going through some of her film, and this one roll of faded 7381-color-print-shot-in-camera-as-negative unspooled in this way that we both thought was pretty magnificent.

Incidentally, Chris Langdon and Fred Worden, when they were at Cal Arts ca.1972-73, completed two films that were shot using print stock rather than camera stock (Now, You Can Do Anything and Venusville), as well as shooting (but never finishing) a third film, called The Boat Show.

I'll be showing a restored print of Venusville on 5/29/09 at the Hammer Museum for those who might be interested to see it. And Now, You Can Do Anything is in the works to be restored by this Fall.

Not about film preservation, but...

2009-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

...I was just thinking this might be a fun thing to put up regardless. I find it kind of touching too, so I hope no one thinks it's too frivolous or anecdotal. I feel like this kind of stuff is also really crucial in its way, even if superficially it may seem trivial or indulgent for me to post it here.

In November of 2007 I visited Boulder and Denver to do a whole mess of stuff, although the primary reason for the trip was to spend some time with the Stan Brakhage papers, housed at CU. Aside from finding a lot of documents (particularly lab invoices) that would be extremely helpful to the restoration work on Stan's films, a lot of interesting ephemera related to Stan's life and career. In some cases, I took snapshots of some of this material, even if not relevant to actual preservation work, usually because I found it interesting or helpful to filling in holes in what I knew about Stan's biography during the early-to-mid-'50s in particular, a period of his life I'm very curious about.

A lot of folks who've studied experimental film know that Stan and filmmaker Larry Jordan went to high school together. Here's an article from the school's newspaper following a play they appeared in together. The school is South High, the paper was called (is still called?) The Confederate, and the date of this little article is February 21, 1951. That's Larry on the left, and Stan in the middle.
I just hope you find this sort of curious and sweet, and of historical interest, and I promise I'll get back to focusing on the usual stuff after this.

Hell Spit Flexion.

2009-02-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I went through pretty much all of Stan Brakhage's 35mm painted originals to figure out what was up with them regarding their condition, production process, and what they might need in terms of preservation.

Now, maybe this is something some people have already noticed, but personally I was surprised to discover that Stan created Hell Spit Flexion (1983) by painting over a 35mm print of The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981). The photo here is of the painted original, and you can see this magenta, faded print of Garden... underneath the paint, particularly in the lower center (as it's oriented in this photo) of the middle frame.

The color in the underlying print of Garden... is faded because, as many of you probably know, Eastman Kodak's color print stock (in particular) had major dye stability problems up to 1982-83, when it was reformulated to "low-fade" LPP stock following a major outcry and ultimatum from dozens of filmmaking luminaries (one of whom was Stan Brakhage).

So there is already a 35mm internegative of the film, made in 1983 from this painted original, which could sensibly be considered an "original negative" of sorts. However, if we decided to go back to this painted original to make a new preservation negative, the faded color of the underlying Garden... print would make it very difficult (or perhaps impossible) to match the original appearance of the film at the time of its making.

Here's another picture from the original, this time of the titlecard. Notice how it's actually made up of the original blank copyright notice frames from Garden... (time to get out your Criterion DVD), except with "Hell Spit Flexion" scratched in, and the copyright year changed (also via scratching) from "1981" to "1983". (For that matter, Hell Spit Flexion is on the Criterion DVD too, as part of The Dante Quartet (1987), although it might be hard to compare, as it's the tiniest part of the Quartet.)

That's all for now... as I said in the previous post, let me know if you think the watermarking thing is OK, or annoying, or ineffectual, or whatever. Thanks!

Enter Brakhage.

2009-02-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

This is a test of sorts.

So far, everything I've posted on this blog in terms of photos/information has been done with the permission of the filmmakers (in some cases, like with Robert Nelson, the permission is implicit).

Marilyn Brakhage and I talked several months ago about starting to put Stan Brakhage related material on this blog as well.

For some time, we've periodically talked about the idea of a major website with lots of info about Stan and all of his work, ever expanding, but that's still a little ways off. (By the way, if you'd be interested in volunteering your help on that hypothetical project, contact me through this blog. Can't promise anything right now, but it'd be nice to gauge interest.)

In the meantime, Marilyn was OK with the idea of posting some stuff here, and I have tons of pictures and info I could share here, not that I want it to become an exclusively Brakhage blog or anything, but it's still quite a lot of fascinating stuff. One particular thing we agreed on would be to watermark the photos somehow, just to keep them from being circulated without some kind of notice of copyright and provenance attached. Fair enough?

So I'll give it a shot here today. I've put a lame, homemade watermark on the photo which will appear in the following post. Hopefully it's not too annoying or intrusive. Please let me know if you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears. What do you think?

Also, when I step back a bit, and take a gander at this blog, I realize that it isn't terribly specifically about film preservation, is it? It's more about unique, weird, amazing, or anomalous findings in the course of my working on the preservation of (primarily) experimental films, frequently having to do with unique production practices.

So should I include more preservation information? Is anybody curious about that kind of stuff and would like more of it? I'm extremely open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading!

Suggestions? Comments? Questions?

2009-02-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

I have no idea how many people look at this blog, especially considering it's so sporadically updated. But sometimes people will mention to me that they check it periodically, so I guess somebody's looking at it.

Anyway, I thought I'd specifically solicit suggestions, request, comments, etc. at this point. Do you have questions about something general or something in particular that I might be able to answer through this blog? Requests for coverage of specific films/filmmakers/questions about film preservation? Random thoughts? General feedback? Students of film archiving are particularly welcome and encouraged.

I'd love to hear from people, both to get a sense of who's actually reading this thing, and with the idea that if people have specific questions or feedback, it'll probably prompt me to update more regularly.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!

-Mark T

P.S. For those of you in the Bay Area, hope you can make it to the SF Cinematheque screening I'll be doing on April 1 at Yerba Buena. It'll be a nice, hefty show of restored experimental works from L.A. in the '60s-'70s. Lots of beautiful and crazy stuff, including films by Thom Andersen, Morgan Fisher, Gary Beydler, Roberta Friedman & Grahame Weinbren, David Wilson, Diana Wilson, Fred Worden, Chris Langdon, and Pat O'Neill.
http://www.sfcinematheque.org/calendar.php

p.p.s. The "cut here" image is from a preservation project I've been working on for Picasso (1973) by Chris Langdon.

Time Squared

2009-02-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

In the meantime, here's the original titlecard for Ed Emshwiller's Thanatopsis (1962), before it was called Thanatopsis:

2009-02-13T14:21:00.000-08:00

OK, I promise a post on Print Generation is still coming, but I'm waiting to get a print from J.J. to fully figure everything out. Ultimately, I'm intending it to be a sort of technical breakdown of the film's production. J.J. said that would be cool - I was worried he would think it would demystify the movie somehow, but he wasn't worried about that.

Also, in an ideal world, I'd make a scan of the same frame from every single generation, which I think would be a pretty amazing demonstration from a technical point of view. If anyone wants to volunteer to do this, drop me a line. Ideally, you're in LA and have time on your hands.

2008-12-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

Coming soon... a post on J.J. Murphy's Print Generation (1973-74)...

Scratch n Sniff?

2008-12-09T23:31:00.000-08:00

Lewis Klahr originally assembled his 1987 film Her Fragrant Emulsion in Super 8 by taking lots of chopped up strips of film and collaging them together with splicing tape. This roll (about 30 or 40 feet in length) was then copied to Super 8 Ektachrome. Lew then constructed his edit for the film from this Ektachrome material.

Lew made quite a few Super 8 films, and had some of them blown up to 16mm, but felt they didn't translate well to the larger medium. He told me that Her Fragrant Emulsion is pretty much the only one that he thought benefited from the blowup, and this is the primary form in which the film has been shown.

Here are some photos I took today of the collaged Super 8 original:

More Insomnia.

2008-11-23T01:15:00.000-08:00

Two more pictures of the original for Fred Worden's 16mm film Insomnia (1981) ...

Insomnia.

2008-11-23T01:10:00.000-08:00

Thought this photo came out pretty well, so I figured I'd share it here. This is a shot of a section of the 16mm original for Fred Worden's film Insomnia (1981). Fred made this film entirely by punching holes into black leader. I can only assume that the title perhaps refers to the sleepless nights during which I imagine Fred made this sucker. Talk about an economical film - after punching the holes (2 different sizes, I think), he struck a 7361 reversal print, and there it was: a movie.

Rental fees.

2008-10-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

I had to share this. For a few years, I had the honor of being the only distribution source for the films of Robert Nelson. As nice as this was, I had wanted him to put the films back into Canyon Cinema (which he co-founded), not just to take some burden off of me, but really to make them a lot more accessible. This was finally done, I think in early 2008. Anyway, sometime in early 2007, Nelson sent me this letter which detailed a plan for rental fees for his films and the various discounts for which interested parties might be eligible. I laughed my ass off when I got this.

About a month later, Bob sent another letter saying the films should instead all be rented for free.

(As it stands now, several of the films are available (not for free) from Canyon Cinema, with additional ones still available through Bob and me via the Academy Film Archive.)

Creative Soundtracking #2

2008-10-19T21:51:00.001-07:00

Another unusual feat of homemade technical wizardry from filmmaker Standish Lawder, whose coffee-can contact printer can be viewed elsewhere on this blog.

When Standish made the film Specific Gravity (ca.1969-70), he only struck one print, and decided to give it a minimal soundtrack by scratching some sound onto the track area of the print (one instance of which is pictured above). This is the only print ever made, and technically the only place the soundtrack exists. When the time comes to preserve this film, I'm happy to say that Standish already gave his permission for me to replicate the scratching on the new prints. I know I could digitally capture the track off of this print and actually make a new soundtrack negative, but that just doesn't seem right.

By the way, as already evidenced here and by his coffee can printer, Standish was one of the more technically self-sufficient experimental filmmakers out there, and sometime around 1970 or 1971, he even obtained a (real) contact printer on which he made his own release prints for his films. All the original release prints for films like Colorfilm, Intolerance (Abridged), and Regeneration were made personally by Standish on his own printer.

Creative Soundtracking #1

2008-10-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

It was pretty much impossible to get a picture that would really show you the extent of this incredible thing. This is a photo of the original edited 1948 35mm positive optical track for the film Muscle Beach, by Joseph Strick and Irving Lerner.

Those of you that know filmmaking and archiving at least a little bit will probably know what a bloop is. Basically, a bloop helps mask the sound of a splice in an optical soundtrack. Usually you cut a "V" shaped notch in the optical track where the splice is, so rather than a "thunk" on the track, you hear (or don't hear) a sort of quick, hopefully graceful absence of sound that would last maybe 1/12th of a second, or even less, depending on what size notch, what film gauge, etc.

This thing, in the photo above, has got to be the longest "bloop" I've ever seen in my life. To be fair, it's not quite a bloop, but a hand-applied tape masking used to create a fade-out/fade-in effect on the soundtrack. What you're seeing above is a small fraction of the actual tape-bloop. It's actually something like 20 feet long from end to end!

Know your enemy.

2008-05-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

I hate hate hate this film.

Ektachrome Commercial, aka ECO. I know a lot of people used it and loved it, and it was especially handy for folks doing optical printing and animation work. It was low contrast, versatile.... But the shit fades like you wouldn't believe. As a preservationist working on experimental film, including MANY filmmakers who used this stuff extensively, the sight of this box makes me a little irritable. You can chalk up the faded color in the film originals for work by Pat O'Neill, Stan Brakhage, Chick Strand, Morgan Fisher, Kathy Rose, Adam Beckett, David Wilson, Peter Rose, Daina Krumins, and many others to the instability of the dyes in this film.

Its precursor - 7255 (pre-1971, I believe) is actually a lot more stable, for which I'm very grateful - the originals for Robert Nelson's 'Oh Dem Watermelons', Morgan Fisher's 'Production Stills', Thom Andersen's 'Melting', and plenty of other films are on 7255, and look pretty close to how they did originally.

But the color fading that occurs with 7252 has compromised the originals of numerous films made from roughly 1971 to the early '80s. This includes films such as Chick Strand's 'Elasticity', 'Guacamole', (and others), Brakhage's 'Unconscious London Strata', most of Pat O'Neill's '70s work including 'Easyout', 'Down Wind', 'Saugus Series', and others, Gary Beydler's 'Pasadena Freeway Stills', David Wilson's 'Stasis', Daina Krumins' 'The Divine Miracle', Will Hindle's 'Pasteur3', and Morgan Fisher's 'Standard Gauge', among many others. Urg.

Art as a subversive film.

2008-01-25T15:35:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've worked with Robert Nelson on the unearthing, preserving, and screening of his films, there has always been an interesting back-and-forth related to his perspective on his own work. He has said that he views his films as "works in progress" in the sense that, at any given time, if he feels he wants to further modify or change or even destroy any of his films, he absolutely reserves the right to do so. In fact, not being hung up on his art (whether film, painting, sculpture, etc.) as being sacred or immutable in some way is part of his pleasure in being an artist.

I totally love and respect this viewpoint, but of course it puts the preservationist side of me at some odds with his efforts. At any rate, just wanted to give some background on this photo.

In the mid-to-late '90s, Nelson started to re-evaluate his entire filmographic output. Many films that he felt were problematic, he attempted to "fix" by re-editing them. A few of these attempts were successful for him, most weren't. Some he didn't even bother with and immediately earmarked them for destruction.

Eventually, everything that he planned to destroy (including also workprints, cut mags, and faded prints, in addition to originals for the aforementioned dismissed works) went into a huge pile. Some of it got shredded in a paper shredder. The rest of it got lacquered and turned into sculptures, several of which are visible in this photo.

May I draw your attention to one stack of film in particular, in the lower left, which has been turned into a stool seat...? When it occurs to him, I'm sure Nelson gets a certain kick out of planting his ass onto what may be the originals for Super Spread (1967) or The Beard (1968) or any number of other destroyed films.

Pasteur3 notes with added value.

2008-01-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

In a can of outtakes from Will Hindle's film Pasteur3 (1976), I found these handwritten notes of his, which basically identify the footage it came with. I was just going to file these away as I usually do with accompanying paper material, when I realized what they were. These notes were written on fragments of the computer cards that fall abundantly from the sky and which Will attempts to organize and sort in his film Chinese Firedrill (1968).

One solution to sound problems.

2007-11-29T02:01:00.002-08:00

(click on image to get a better view)

For some time, Robert Nelson has expressed varying degrees of dissatisfaction about the original soundtrack for his 1967 film The Awful Backlash. Personally, I think it's perfect, and I don't know anyone who really disagrees besides Robert. For now, he's kind of letting it go. Anyway, at one point, he took a rather extreme approach to solving the "sound problem", which was to actually scrape the offending parts of the soundtrack away with a razorblade. In many spots, the picture gets pretty wrecked too. Scott MacDonald once asked Robert for a print to show, and was sent a similarly modified one. Scott, are you reading this? Did you actually end up screening the print?

Casting Shadows

2007-11-29T01:45:00.001-08:00

I think this is a beautiful one. This is the original picture roll for David Wilson's film Casting Shadows. Some of you may know David's work via his Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City (L.A. area). Anyway, he and his wife Diana both made films throughout the '70s (and which I'm working on restoring). This is one of the more obscure ones, which incorporates precisely labeled pieces of white leader as its structuring motif. One result of this approach is a very nice-looking camera original.

A contact printer.

2007-11-28T17:11:00.000-08:00

Homemade contact printer built by Standish Lawder, and used in the making of his films Runaway and Corridor, and possibly part of Roadfilm.

The coffee can contains a regular incandescent light bulb hooked to a dimmer control. The camera is an old 16mm that belonged to Lawder's dad. He made the tension adjustable on its inner workings in order to put several pieces of film multipacked through the film path and the gate.

In the dark, he would bi- or tri-pack raw stock (b/w reversal usually) with existing footage (the running dogs cartoon in the case of Runaway, the corridor footage he shot himself in Corridor). He would then contact print the footage in various ways using different brightness settings on the lightbulb in the coffee can, which would shine its beam through the old flashlight tube into the gate of the camera.

In the case of Corridor, the resulting footage was sometimes further processed, or printed to negative, or hi-con, or whatever. The A/B rolls were then edited from this pile of footage.

Standish also says the coffee can was originally a Chock Full O' Nuts can, but had to be replaced, I think because it got damaged at some point.