OILYFILMS

Along the same lines as “Flypaper”, the last podcast. This time, I collected bits and pieces from around the garden, dried them out, broke them up, and taped them to a strip of 16mm film. The results aren’t as unique as flypaper, but I had to give it a try. The colours of a lot of the flower petals were lost in the drying process because I dried them under lights (I’m so impatient.)
Next time, I’ll collect a better variety of coloured flower petals, and make sure they’re thin enough to let light through.

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.

As the days get longer and the end of June approaches, I realize that I’m more-than-a-little-behind in the film-a-week project. Spent the last week doing JumpCuts for the Victoria Film Festival, and other projects have come up, burying my pet project. For now. I’m still working on it, and a whole bunch of other things: a new video for Hank and Lily that we’ll finish shooting next week and we’re in the planning stages of a new MeatDraw video as well. Getting prepared to shoot an NFB sponsored experimental short film on D’Arcy Island, and a video installation at Open Space in July. And then there’s the feature. We’ll talk about the feature later.

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.