brakhage, on giving and taking

01.28.08

as an experimental filmmaker, stan brakhage is a genius. as a philosopher, brilliant. as a writer, wordy and a bit confusing. as a philosophical writer, fine perhaps. while reading brakhage's article "a moving picture giving and taking book" i was a bit disconcerted that his proposed audience were colleagues and student filmmakers. had he been writing to theorists and critics, albeit those with a concentration in film, his old-world style would have worked fine. although precise and understandable, i still thought that his style was a bit long winded and drawn out (i.e. in his explanation of the beloved sprocket-wheels, i thought it could have been half as long, twice as explanatory, and just as effective).

yet still, writing style aside, the information brakhage related is both helpful and necessary to a class like this. he reiterated ideas that are important in almost every aspect of filmmaking, especially cameraless. one point he made early on that i appreciated was when he outlined three important aspects of the moving picture process, and says, "...the success of the illusion of movement depends most critically upon the flips: those split-second interruptions between pictures... --were it not for those interruptions between pictures the pics themselves would blur into an unintelligible mass of lines." this served to me a reminder that all filmmaking, with or without a camera, is truly done frame by frame, and that each one matters. and that those small spaces of time while the shutter's "uneaten part of the pie" is over the gate is just as important as the opposite. there was also a nice review of the A.S.A. as related to film, f-stops, as related to light, (and/or the Nature of Light) which was nice, because this still is a concept that remains fairly confusing to me.

there were times when i thought that this article was perhaps a bit too outdated to matter as much as it does, but then i re-reminded myself that from the past can we learn much more about our present and future situations, so being exposed to ideas such as the splicing issues from back then that we don't really have to bother with anymore just builds a better understanding of the craft, from then until now.

all-in-all, though not a bowl of cherries to read, brakhage's "a moving picture giving and taking book" was a worthwhile and information packed article to read.


concerning class last week: i thought the workshop was very fun. i was impressed at the magazine transfer technique, both how easy it is and how limitless it is. it's amazing the things you can do when you don't limit yourself creatively. also, looking forward to this upcoming week, and using any number of other small objects to project onto film (and assuming that we'll be using the technique as outline by brakhage in his article?) so far, the things i have found to bring in: paperclips, thumbtacks, a nail, a spring, buttons, different and various pieces of textile, grain rice, tea from a tea bag, and a crushed up cream soda dum dum.

see you on monday.