[Frameworks] Quo Vadis Celluloid?

[tina wasserman]

This is my first time posting to Frameworks, but I've been reading it with interest.  One thing that has always struck me as incongruous, or at the very least confusing is the use of the term 'analog' to describe emulsion-based photography and cinema.  I know the term has somewhat stuck in the world of photography.  I think that is unfortunate.

 But wouldn't it be better to distinguish photo-chemical/emulsion based film from the word  'analog?'  How exactly have they become the same thing? They have such different material properties and since this discussion is about the waning of emulsion-based celluloid film, wouldn't it be more historically accurate to distinguish it from both analog and digital technology.   My (limited) understanding of analog technology is that it is constituted by continuous signals.  I think we need to be very careful about terminology here, otherwise we risk conflating emulsion based work with analog video.  


Tina Wasserman (I teach film studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston)

On Aug 24, 2011, at 1:43 PM, Florian Cramer wrote:

> In my humble opinion, analog and digital have each their own
> materiality. Works like Stan Brakhage's are unthinkable without film,
> works like jodi's unthinkable without digital technologies - and
> neither of them uses their medium in a mainstream way. When used in a
> clean, mainstream way, the difference between the two is virtually
> indistinguishable: A Hollywood film shot on an 35mm Arri looks the
> same as a Hollywood film shot on an Arri Alexa for everyone but
> pixel-peeping technical experts. (See, for example,
> http://www.zacuto.com/the-great-camera-shootout-2011/episode-one )
> 
> If the point of experimental moving image making is not to use a
> medium in the slickest, glossiest, artefact-free way but use its
> materiality as a means of expression, then film and digital
> drastically differ. But the times are over where film always had the
> visual edge. I don't think that the old dichotomy of "film" and
> "video" is still helpful because a Canon DSLR camera shooting moving
> images is in a different league, and in almost every aspect a
> different technology, than a 1980s analog video camera.
> 
> There are also many examples where the two technologies cross over:
> 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).
> 
> In any case, it would be unfortunate if experimental filmmaking became
> analog nostalgia. After all, much of 1960s/70s "classical"  structural
> experimental film engaged with the materiality of its medium in order
> to deconstruct it, not necessarily to glorify it.
> 
> Florian
> 
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:11 PM, Kyle Canterbury
> <matthew.canterbury at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Digital's chameleon-like capabilities obscures this very notion. You can
>> make images do anything, but there is no loyalty to the origins of those
>> images and how they were made. There are a few exceptions. The one profound
>> one I can think of is Fred Camper's own work.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> blog: http://en.pleintekst.nl
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