(I hear that the City of Victoria is dealing with the problem)

I hope.

S>

“Three days of short film, on film. Experience the magic of cinema with short film screenings, performances and parties. Full program now available on the website. This year’s program features special performances and workshops by Amanda Dawn Christie!”

A 16mm film I made a couple years ago called “Alone” will be screening. Fun times. Wish I could be there. Amanda Dawn Christie’s work is fantastic.

Here’s a photogram film doodle, called “fixit,” with a noisy soundtrack.

This weekend, check out CineVic and Puente Theatre’s Scene and Heard Redux at the Metro theatre, where films will be accompanying live storytelling. A film and story collaboration between myself and Rob Hunter will be screening on both Saturday and Sunday evenings, as well as films by Grace Salez, Maureen Bradley, Denver Jackson, Mark Borowski and Rachel Moore to accompany stories by Susu Ma, Jennifer Ferris, Raji Basi, Janice Valdez, and Paulina Grainger.

On an entirely separate note, this is a double-exposed toned film print that I was playing around with in the summer just after Phil Hoffman’s Film Farm. It was shot on High-contrast Kodak 3378E optical print stock and hand-processed.

The sound was made with a circuitbent keyboard, and I believe that David Parfit made the sound, and recorded it (I just mulched it up with the computer) - It was a stray file on my computer called untitled10.wav. I think it was David, but it may’ve been me. We were making noise in the basement one day. It’s all a blur. Apologies for being disorganized.

This is my new Steenbeck (it’s on loan)

I cleaned it up a bit, replaced the bulbs, and rigged up the sockets to work better (only one preview window was working when I got it, now both are) The sound didn’t work anymore, so…..

after nerding out a bit and fixing the optical sound (even had to solder some circuitboards) - got it worked out to make contact prints. Getting to know the Steenbeck has been fun, definitely a lot of film wrecked, but worth every foot.

Very excited about the ability to make prints. Working on putting a film loop gallery together with Peter Sandmark. I haven’t given up on digital yet, but I’m straying.

Collected some footage and skills for my thesis (yup, still working on it, just slowly) and snooped around the Toronto indie film community.

This is one of my experiments, double exposed and printed through the Steenbeck.

I saw the film ”RIP: A Remix Manifesto” by Brett Gaylor at this year’s Victoria Film Festival.  In the spirit of the film , I pirated parts of the film onto 16mm Black and White film with my bolex, then hand-processed, tinted and toned it, then composited it digitally. The soundtrack is an old jazz show, recorded from an old reel-to-reel and mangled on the computer. You can find the origuinal film here: http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/rip-a-remix-manifesto/ - go watch it.

You’re welcome to remix the film yourself at http://www.opensourcecinema.org/

The Dawson City One-Minute Film Challenge went beautifully last weekend. We ended up with 25 films for the screening. A really great show and get-together, all sorts of little gems. Here is a film I made for it, called “boots.” Rozalind MacPhail made the music.

I’m in Dawson City right now, doing a residency at the Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture, and had a screening at the Dawson City Short Film Festival a couple weeks ago. I love it here. Fantastic people.

Performed with Rozalind MacPhail on the Sunday of the Festival, and now we’re getting ready for the Dawson-City-one-minute-film-challenge. We have more than a dozen films so far (a super-8 camera I brought from home did the rounds with a few visiting filmmakers, Deco Dawson, Terry Haines, Elisabeth Belliveau and Lisa Pasold.) Lisa is actually a writer - and was a little intimidated by the camera - but now she’s a filmmaker.

Here is a 16mm film diary of part  the trip from Whitehorse to Dawson in a van full of filmmakers. (Deco, Elisabeth, Lisa, John Overell and Natalie Edelson) I was a little nauseous by the end of the trip (from the bumpy road, not the company) Mmmm, Gravol. 

There’s a little more static in the air here and it’s impossible to keep the dust and hairs out of the projector. after 4 tries to transfer, I am now embracing the glitches, and calling the work  “Dawthentic”

Oh, and in past news, I was voted “Victoria’s Favourite Local Filmmaker” at this years M-Awards - thanks to everyone who voted.   And this years UVic Sunscreen Festival screened “Splash” and “House” and I took home “Best Director,” “Best Auditory Experience” and “Best Screenplay/story.”  I was in Dawson City and missed the screeening…after flubbing my way through the M-Awards, I was half-relieved. Crazy Month.

Stay tuned for the rest of the Dawson Films.

This started as an experiment with 16mm Black and white film. one frame of black, and one frame of white, alternating at 24 frames per second. When it’s switched to 30 frames per second to play in NTSC format, some interesting (and nauseating) things happen. Then I pushed it a little further and started to use red, blue, green, black and white frames. I guess this falls into the Structural Materialist category of experimental film. I find it fascinatingly abrasive.

THIS WILL MOST LIKELY GIVE YOU A HEADACHE. you were warned.

And I just started a twitter account. You can find it here: http://twitter.com/oilyfilms

Another clip of Primordial Soup. The original runs somewhere around 20 minutes, so I’ve just been pulling out a minutes here and there for podcasts. Sitting through the 20 minute version would take some work (or a serious buzz) . A good soundtrack would help too.

Daniel Lombardi, the Art Director, filmed some “behind the scenes” footage…of how we choreographed and made it all happen and the 20+ people involved in the actual shooting. I’ll try to post it soon.

CBC Radio 3  did an interview with the band (hilarious!), and premiered the video this week on the R3TV podcast.

You can find the original post here (with links to subscribe in iTunes)

http://radio3.cbc.ca/blogs/2008/10/R3TV-Episode-69-Meat-Draw

or you can watch the YouTube version here:

Or just the Old World video in Quicktime format here:

Unfortunately, like most  broadcasters, they chopped the credits off the end, so here they are in text format. This video would not have happened without the help of all these people. Thanks to all of you.
S.

Starring:

Chai Ross
Apple Matthews

and
MeatDraw:
- Marco Bozenich
- Stefan Bozenich
- Lily Fawn
- Marek Tyler
- Megan Boddy

Director: Scott Amos
Art Director: Daniel Lombardi
DOP: Daniel Hogg
Cinematography Consultant: Cyrus Block
Gaffer: D.W. Wilson
Stage Managers:
Gillian Reiss
Sarah-Jane Pelzer

Make-up: Erin Froese

Grips:

Colin Hender
Mike Wolske
Talitha Cummins
Jeremy Lutter
Jamie Tanner
Darryl Tamney
Glen O’Neill
Kelsey Oetting

Photos:
Kelly Duncan
Kristen Kilistoff
Darryl Tamney

Props/Sets Construction:
Daniel Lombardi
Scott Amos
Jim Vanderhorst
Adrienne Traviss
Jesse Ladret
Brendan Piper
Colin Hender
Minako Hender
Kristen Kilistoff
Paulina Ortlieb

Craft Services:
Connie Rock

Thanks to:
Open Space - Helen Marzoff, Dallas Duobaitis, Alan Kollins, Ross Angus Macaulay
Cook Street Do-it Center. MediaNet, CineVic, Michael Lee Macdonald, Steve Hender. Empress Painting, Marci Ross, Amber Matthews and Gumper.

And in other news, we finished shooting a new MeatDraw video for their song “Old World” last weekend. I still need to do some tweaking, but it should be finished soon, and posted online. In the next couple weeks - Upcoming Screenings - “Grass” is Playing in Australia at the FLEXIFF Festival, and  “Turbulence” and “Glimpse” are playing in Seattle at the NorthWest Film Forum. “Birds” is playing at the Portobello in England. Unfortunately I can’t go to see any of them, but maybe you can.

My friend Gerald Saul, who has been making a film-a-week this year as well (and, unlike me, is keeping up with it) did a series of films called “How to be an Experimental Filmmaker”

I like the idea, so I made a list that accompanies this week’s film

• How to be an Experimental Filmmaker
• Step #1 - Use old, antiquated equipment
• Step #2  - Get professionals to be your on-screen talent. Make sure they have flown in from another country
• Step #3 - Forget to close the gate on the camera. Blame the old equipment. (see Step #1)
• Step #4  Have the camera completely break down half-way through the shoot (see Step #1)
• Step #5 - Tint and tone the blurry footage and release it on the internet
• Step #6 - Pretend that the film ended up exactly as you had planned.

The ghostly image is Carly Berrett, an incredible modern dancer from Utah. We met during MediaNet’s Dance for the Camera Workshop a couple weeks ago. Lots of fun. Embarrassing that half of the footage didn’t work out.  

Fortunately, most of the other footage worked out and will be made into a different film, the film I had initially intended to do (without some of the parts.) Still a lot of post production to do on that, so in the meantime, here is the final film that ran through my Bolex. I find it mesmerizing.

Mike Wolske made the soundtrack, but I played around with it a bit.

The soundtrack was made by Clifford Dunn in Seattle, who makes some crazy experimental soundscape stuff with a flute and processor (among other things, I’m sure)…Check out his website: http://www.clifforddunnmusic.com

The Deceleration Chamber is concerned with two entangled ideas: the elasticity of time—especially slow time—and how time is specifically experienced when one is away from familiar surroundings: on tour, traveling or on vacation. Encountering the unfamiliar, being lost or disorientated affects how time is perceived, how data is recorded and recollected, and how all of us choose the mode by which we measure, mark or experience the passage of time.

Artists Scott Amos, Frédérick Belzile, Scott Conarroe, Nathalie Daoust, and Daniel Tom explore differential time scales and refer to time not only as interval or measurement, but also as an active element in the construction of art. The Deceleration Chamber offers compelling time studies that directly and indirectly play off the habits, schedules and the erratic timetables of permanent and transitory populations.

It’s up until August 16th at 510 Fort St. in Victoria, from 10 to 5 Tuesday through Saturday.

With the help of Brian Macdonald and the the staff and volunteers at Open Space, I installed a 9 channel video installation for the show titled “Our Victoria.” This is a clip from the ninth channel. Colin Hander and Mike Wolske did the sound.

Here’s the little Blurb I wrote up about the piece.

Victoria is a city of postcard images, but the most impressive things never seem to make it to the printer. The Inner Harbour and the Parliament Buildings provide the background for millions of snapshots a year; They are the basis of visitors’ memories of our city. Although they are a part of our city, they are not the places that we frequent, the Victoria that we know and love. They are the parts that we show to others. The magical parts of the city we keep to ourselves.

When visiting other places, time passes differently, more slowly, you take notice of little details: the weathered bricks on a building, the intricacies of power lines, the reflections in windows. Everyday objects and places are rendered extraordinary by simply taking the time to observe them.

Our hometowns have similar delicate features, but we seldom notice. They are simply distractions that we pass by.

Our Victoria is a nine channel video installation, made to emulate old home movies. Although filmed in 2006, it looks as though it’s from past decades. The nine televisions are nine individual rolls of film, raw and unedited to emulate the frenetic nature of home movies and the raw memories they capture. It is an intimate look into the places that only the most adventurous visitors will see, the places that you won’t see in brochures, the places that have not yet been reduced to postcards.

They’re doing some touring this summer through Ontario and Alberta, and you can find the schedule on their MySpace page here. I could gush about how great Hank and Lily are, but instead I’ll just say - If you only see one show this summer, go see Hank and Lily. Seriously. Ask anyone who has ever seen the show; I wish I could describe it in words.

Here it is in action, the mechanical set that I built in the basement…too bad it’s only for a little bit of screen time, I’ll have to use it again for another film.

And, on that note, here is podcast #21. It is called Primordial Soup - Part 2. Part 1 is currently in another town, having music composed for it. It’s called Primordial Soup because I threw a bunch of clear acrylic, ink, pencil crayon shavings, ashes, hairs, rust, and anything else I could find into a bucket with some chemically treated film…to see if any life would emerge from it. It had a rough time getting through the projector…and is now ruined. But there is some life.

Now I’m wondering what else I can tape to film. Unfortunately, if it’s not thin enough, it bulges when going through the gate, and the focus gets lost. Thinking I might do some frame-by frame transfer to 16mm to have a little more control. Might not have enough patience for that. We’ll see.

This film was inspired by Stan Brakhage.

This new film is for the “Seek Cover” show tonight at The Project. The idea behind Seek Cover is to create a new artwork (performance, painting, anything goes) based on an existing artwork. I made a film, inspired by Stan Brakhage’s “Mothlight.” I collected all of the dead bugs out of the windowsills in the house, and our neighbour’s house, dissected them, and taped them to strips of 16mm film. flys, bees, a spider, a moth, and a few giant mosquito-lookin’ things. I felt a little weird doing it, but the results are pretty cool. I think part of the charm of it is the texture created by the tape, and the air bubbles and fingerprints it trapped. I’m calling the piece “Flypaper.” In the spirit of Brakhage, I didn’t put a musical soundtrack to it, instead I just recorded the sound of the 16mm projector as I was digitizing it.

For now, here is the next installment of the film-a-week project.

Last year, I found a dinosaur on my doorstep. It turns out that a friend of mine found it and left it for me. I doesn’t use tapes, it just has a composite video out. I tested it, with no luck, so I left it in my closet. Recently, I fished it out to disassemble it for parts to use for the Hank and Lily video set, but before I could bring myself to take it apart, I decided to test it one more time. It works.
I’m shocked.
I’m fascinated by the way it reacts with light. different than film, different than DV. Interesting. So here’s a little test I did with it, intentionally out of focus, and blown out, with the video signal piped into my miniDV camera to record it.

And, this week, we’re being featured on Miro, you can check it out here. It’s an Internet TV aggregator. There are more than 4000 different channels. Pretty cool stuff. And we’re listed at Canadapodcasts.ca now too.

Made this one for the Victoria Film Festival’s “My Victoria” Film contest. They wanted a one-minute Victoria-centric film. While wandering around the immerweb, trying to figure out what to do for the film, I stumbled into the the raciest historical tidbit about my quaint little town. It’s about an architect named Francis Rattenbury. Adultery. Murder. Juicy stuff. Here is the film I made:

I ended up winning the “Capital History Award” for it, and did a little interview with the Susan McLean from the Provincial Capital Commission. I found it online here: http://www.bcpcc.com/pages/news.htm

Rattenbury scandal provides fodder
for Capital History Award winner
March 2008 - Not only did Francis Rattenbury design Victoria’s signature buildings, including the Parliament Buildings, the Empress Hotel, the Crystal Garden and the CP Steamship terminal, but the renowned architect was a key character in the raciest scandal of the 1920s and 30s.

The steamier side of Rattenbury — from leaving his wife for a younger woman to his murder in England by his chauffer who was having an affair with his second wife, through to her stabbing death — provided a smorgasbord of tantalizing historical tidbits and fascinating imagery for Victoria filmmaker Scott Amos.

Combining archival photographs and new video footage, Amos pieced together Rattenbury’s sordid final years for his short film “Victim of an Evil Seductress” to win the Provincial Capital Commission’s Capital History Award at this year’s Victoria Film Festival.

Thanks to the internet, Scott was able to conduct much of his research on the renowned architect, accessing historical information and archived photographs. Using a 1952 16-mm Bolex camera, he began filming. Working out of his basement, Scott processed the film in buckets of chemicals, deliberately scratching the black and white film to make it look old.

Originally from Ontario, Amos hitchhiked to Victoria 10 years ago, with a guitar on his back and $20 in his pocket. It’s the story films are made of and was the topic of his second film entered in this year’s festival entitled “Waiting.”

Earning some money busking in Bastion Square, he eventually earned a writing degree from the University of Victoria, where one of his professors handed him a video camera for a film project. It was a pivotal moment in Scott’s life. “I got myself into huge debt buying equipment,” he laughed. He also started making short films.

Now a Teacher’s Assistant in UVic’s Fine Arts Department and working at Medianet, a video co-op business, Amos is a five-year veteran of the Victoria Film Festival. The My Victoria category suits his style, he says, providing an avenue to show off his work. “I make a lot of Island-centric movies.”

“The festival is a great way to be exposed to artistic work that you wouldn’t normally see,” he said. “There’s a lot of local and Canadian content and it’s great to see what’s happening in my field.”

The My Victoria competition is an opportunity for local artists to have their work shown on the Big Screen and to expose people to the unique voices of the local independent film community, he added. It also provides an incentive to film a changing world, he noted. Amos is the first to admit the world, as most people see it, isn’t his cup of tea. “The real world doesn’t interest me,” he said. “I live it every day so I don’t need to film it. I’d rather film a world that doesn’t exist or to see the existing world in a way I’ve never seen it before.”

But add an experimental twist and it’s award time for Amos.

GREEN VINYL. Badass.

“I Am Fine” was made by scratching at the old film, with a bit of chemical manipulation, and then some compositing and digital effects on the ol’ computer. I’m hoping the Chicos’ll let me make them a music video over the summer. we’ll see.

and, like I promised, here is the Quicktime version.

This is some 16mm film that I found in my basement, that I had shot, but never processed. Now that I can look at it, although I shot it for no particular reason, it seems to have some meaning to it. It’s a little cliche, so I couldn’t bring myself to say it outright, but it’s there in the footage. It has to do with perception…or something like that. Perhaps the creepiest thing I’ve ever made. You were warned. Film by Scott Amos, Music by Mike Wolske.

And over the next week, I’ve decided to repost all the past episodes in Quicktime format for a video podcast. I just can’t handle how bad YouTube mangles everything.

And a higher quality Quicktime

*edit* - This film has been removed from from the podcast because of some upcoming public screenings. S>

And here is a less-chunky Quicktime version

There’s more footage from Dawson that I haven’t figured out what to do with. I’m sure it’ll sneak its way into a future short. I traveled up there for the Dawson City International Short Film Festival, as a visiting filmmaker and to speak on a panel about distribution. Stayed at Bombay Peggy’s. Awesome. Met a tonne of fantastic people. Braved the cold for an outdoor screening. Mastered the 10-minute-pint-between-screenings. I’m hoping to get back up there next year.

Before my trip, I was told that Dawson was one of those magical places; after being there, I’ll have to agree.

Quicktime: