Week Two: Stan Brakhage

I found the story about Pathé and Mèliés to be very entertaining. Just thinking back on the history of the motion picture and imagining two of the big names in film history sitting around and experiencing as innovative as moving pictures for the first time is really entertaining to me, and endearing in a way. To think that those “masters,” as they are sometimes referred to now, were just as new to the medium as film students who might be taking this course and other courses is also really encouraging. Though a lot of the techniques and a lot of the terminology might not make complete sense to us as of right now, we still have to experience all of this in order to have the chance to one day be referred to as a master of film.

In the early portion of the article we had to read on Stan Brakhage and his techniques, it felt a little terminology heavy. There were definitions given left and right, and though some of them were necessary, at times, it felt as though most of them were self-explanatory. However, it was interesting to have Brakhage’s take on things as simple as loading a projector and splicing film, both things that we had done in class prior to reading the article. Many of the techniques he discussed for “roughing up” film or creating certain effects were things that I would like to try at one point.

For instance, he discussed the fact that glue or splicing tape would create unique and sometimes bizarre crystallization patterns when heated with an iron. I had never really thought about the idea of heating things up to get a crystallization effect, but I also hadn’t thought of using Nu-Skin, either. That had always been strictly for medical use in my mind. It was nice to see encouragement to do, or at least try, anything once to see how it works with film. If it fails, then it might look terrible, but if you don’t try it at all, then you could be missing out on something that could create an awesome effect when projected onto a screen.

One line in particular that really stuck out to me and made me laugh was, “If I make a collage film which can’t be printed or projected at all, then it is, after all, more of a necklace or wall decoration than a film.” Sure, the humor itself is funny, but at the same time, it is incredibly true. If you can’t project a film, then nobody will be able to see it, so really, it isn’t a film at all, other than the fact that it is on film stock of some sort. It really just made me keep in mind the idea that “gunking up” the sprocket holes or something like that with the films we’re working on now could prevent them from ever being shown at all, inevitably making them nothing more than “a necklace or wall decoration.”

Overall, I found the article to be very insightful, especially with the project that we're currently working on for class. The techniques Brakhage discusses will also come in handy with future projects as well, if a need for experimental techniques ever arises. He seemed to be very generous with his knowledge in the area, which was extensive, and he had good ideas for cheap ways of experimenting (such as buying an old 8mm camera and using any film you could find that would fit the camera to play around with different lighting techniques).

Though the magazine transfers that we did in class last Monday seemed simple enough and were fairly fun to do, by combining the process with other techniques that Brakhage discussed and other techniques that we will learn in class, I think a lot of interesting things could be done with the films we create in class.