[Frameworks] new post on Brakhage

[Mark Toscano]

Hi Chris,

Tortured Dust is hot spliced.  Stan rarely used tape.  One notable exception I came across was Blood's Tone, from the trilogy Bluewhite/Blood's Tone/Vein.  I imagine he did that one with that as a sort of experiment at a time when tape wasn't as commonly used (mid-'60s).  Some of the late films with minimal editing occasionally employ tape, as do some of the painted originals.  Lovesong 4 has a few tape splices, but this is also because the original for Lovesong 4 is on polyester stock, which you can't cement splice.

Stan started using the 2 frames (or sometimes 1 frame) of black at every cut sometime in the late '60s, though not for every single film.  I know Deus Ex just has shot to shot splices, but can't remember about the other two Pittsburgh Trilogy films.  But by the early '70s, it became really common for him to do so, and eventually it was something he seems to have done nearly without exception.

I believe that method, though on one hand effectively hiding the splice itself, also created a different kind of edit/cut effect, which was akin to an eyeblink more than a hard cut.  Perhaps Fred or Marilyn can expand on this.  It does feel different, and I imagine with Stan's deep interest in the qualities and properties of human vision, this effect was probably quite important to the overall reception of the films.  

It's really unbelievable to see - in some of the films with absurdly heavy cutting - the black frames inserted at *every single splice* like that.   The photo I put up on the blog showing a bit of Tortured Dust pt 2 is pretty representative of its more heavily cut passages.  Lots of clusters of 1-4 frames surrounded by two frames of black...

Mark


________________________________
 From: Chris Kennedy <chris at signaltoground.com>
To: frameworks at jonasmekasfilms.com 
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 6:48 AM
Subject: [Frameworks]  new post on Brakhage
 
Hi Mark,
Is Tortured Dust spliced with tape or hot splicing?
And is Brakhage's signature method of using two frames of black leader a way
to hide the splice in a single-roll of hot-spliced original or just a way to
pop out the image on screen a bit more (or a little of both)?
Best,
Chris

On 2/25/12 9:14 AM, "frameworks-request at jonasmekasfilms.com"
<frameworks-request at jonasmekasfilms.com> wrote:

From: Mark Toscano

It's 
> fairly dorky, but in case anyone's curious, I posted something about Stan
> Brakhage and a little about his use of color negative stocks at my
> unpredictably updated blog:

http://preservationinsanity.blogspot.com

This
> post was specifically inspired by going through the original for his film Max
> (2002) the other day.

Comments most welcome.

thanks,

Mark T


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