[Frameworks] Quo Vadis Celluloid?

[Anna Biller]

Fred,

If we are going to engage in an intelligent discussion, you must not continue to take peoples' words out of context and attribute meanings to them that were never there in the first place. Anyone reading your posts would have thought that I had stated that there was objectively such a thing as better or worse. NO, I did not say or imply that. I was trying to answer a question you posed as to why people continue to work with film and what is it for them personally that would be such a loss. Part of my answer was that I prefer the way faces look on film. I said that it was personal for me, I said I was not speaking to a larger issue, and I said that other people might prefer different sorts of images. I do shoot people, and film is intrinsic to getting faces to look the way I want them to look. Therefore, film is essential to my aesthetic. What you can object to in this answer totally mystifies me, unless you think that it's invalid to state one one personally likes or dislikes. Then you went on to pretend that I had said that shooting people is an organic part of filmmaking, when what I what I actually stated was that film was organic to the making of the film Cat's Cradle. And you also pretended I was saying that there is no value to the artificial, when what I had actually said was that reproducing a film on video pixel by pixel would be artificial, meaning that each medium has its intrinsic qualities. Please try to pay more attention to what people have actually stated before responding. I do also think that what Florian meant was obvious - that the image he mentions is more pleasing to most eyes, meaning truer to the originally captured image. Anyone who has tried to project Super 8mm on a big screen will usually feel that the results are disappointing. The colors wash out and the images can really get very indistinct. One can always play the devil's advocate and say "well, the ugly is really beautiful," or "I like blurry washed out images, and anyone who disagrees has not considered all the options, " but I think just in terms of courtesy people should be able to speak in plain language and be understood. 


On Aug 24, 2011, at 1:33 PM, Fred Camper wrote:

> There's still a lot that could be said, and that I'd like to say, but  
> I'd like to reply to one thread of comments for now, such as
> 
> Quoting Florian Cramer <flrncrmr at gmail.com>:
> 
>> Super 8 film, when scanned well, looks better on a big screen when
>> it's projected by a good digital projector than by a Super 8 projector
>> (because of the 250 watt/300 lumen limit for Super 8 projectors).
> 
> And there were the ideas that people look "better" on film, and that  
> digital doesn't look good for a variety of reasons, and then others  
> arguing that digital is getting sharper.
> 
> Kyle Canterbury provided a useful corrective by pointing out that  
> sharper is not always better, and that some might prefer older less  
> film-like modes of video.
> 
> More generally, I don't think there is ever a "better," just  
> differences. Sure, we can still porsonally particularly like or  
> dislike some forms of display. But ultimately I think it always  
> depends on how an artist uses things. Ultra sharp video that shows  
> blemishes may be great for one work, and terrible in another. I  
> greatly prefer dim super-8 film projection for my super-8 film to  
> super-8 on bright video, because I wasn't trying get the bright look  
> of 16mm or 35mm, but to use super-8 for its own, small, fragile,  
> sketch-like qualities. Brakhage's ten super-8 films of 1976 don't  
> necessarily look better dimmer, but "Sketches" and "Airs" look better  
> to my eye on super-8 than on the 16mm blowups that are apparently the  
> only way to see them now.
> 
> I'm sorry to have troubled people with my use of "fetishization," but  
> that fits in to my point here: no one format or sub-format should be  
> lauded for its own sake, but rather, for how it might be used.
> 
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
> 
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