Silent City (2003)

For nearly a decade this project sat in a box full of my old film school reels, and to be honest, no one was missing much.  It was perhaps the very first thing my friend Dave and I ever shot on film, outside of a few tests maybe.  At the very least it was the first assignment in the film program that required us to shoot and edit on 16mm.

What makes Silent City worth sharing is more than just the few seconds of grainy footage that we managed to capture.  It isn't that there was some profound message behind our shots or that we had any intent of creating something epic to document how brilliant we were (although I wouldn't doubt that such things were said in jest at the time).  The film was simply a start.  It was a beginning to our film school careers, and in an unexpected and far more symbolic sense, it played a role as one of the ways that I said goodbye to Dave when he passed away last year.  

The project was shot on an afternoon in Regina that consisted of us driving around downtown, Wascana park, and the university campus and randomly pointing the Bolex camera at things.  As technical as I'm sure that sounds, I don't remember either of us being too concerned with what we shot, just as long as something actually developed when we got our film back.

The one scene that we actually put some thought into took place in Wascana park.  It consisted of me shooting Dave as he walked across to the left side of the frame and then overexposing the shot as he walked back again.  The idea, and how it ended up in the finished reel, is that we would cut the two shots together to contrast the exposures and motion between the takes.  The result was like a ghostly apparition of Dave crossing paths with himself.   

I really hadn't given the project much thought until Dave's passing in September 2011. Dave's girlfriend, Wendy asked me if I'd like to place anything in his casket and I suddenly felt there was a reason to dig out the reel again.  I still had the envelope of raw 16mm clips that we'd spliced from this project when we had edited it on the giant Steenbeck late one night.  After careful consideration I thought that nothing would be more fitting than to leave him with one of the first creative ventures we had shared in film school together.  He'd have a piece of it, and I'd have the finished reel to remember what we made.

Up until February 2012, when I purchased myself a vintage 16mm projector, I still hadn't seen this project since we shot it back in 2003.  I honestly didn't know what to expect, but the reality behind what had happened in just the last few months made each frame a bit more memorable, and even a bit haunting.  It wasn't like watching a home video, the cold shots of the city and of Dave walking just seemed to echo a lot of the sadness behind losing a friend whom I'd shared so many memories like this with.

The reel of Silent City is simplistic, direct, and little more than a 16mm film test.  And yet, it's become a project that I'll never forget or view the same way ever again.  

Urban Photography 2

As a long overdue follow-up to my first urban photography post, I found a few more of the original images that I shot on film during the summer of 2003.  This is a brief sampling of shots taken between Medicine Hat and Calgary, Alberta.

Cutout - Animation Test #3

One of the final animation tests we did in Film 203 was with jointed construction paper cutouts that we each made.  This form of animation has been most notably popularized by the South Park series, and although my test isn't much to go on, it was a lot of fun to make.  I animated a cowboy who shoots his gun and the bullet bounces around the frame until it hits him.

With each test we learned a little bit about the patience and subtly required to create movement in inanimate objects.  What resulted from all of these was one final project that we could create in any medium we wanted.  I opted for a claymation/stop motion project titled, Over at Grandpa's.  More on that soon.

Sand - Animation Test #2

The second animation test we did in Film 203 consisted of using sand on a light box. Once again the Bolex camera was used to capture the experiment one frame at a time. My clip was really just me playing around to get a feel for the medium, but most of our exercises were inspired by the classic NFB animations we previewed.  The Erlking by Ben Zelkowicz is the impressive sand animation short I remember.

Flipbook - Animation Test #1

In a continuation of the old film school projects I've been rediscovering since purchasing my Revere projector, this is the first of three animation tests I created in 2004 in Film 203.  What we did was create small hand drawn flipbooks, and then captured the books one page at a time with a Bolex camera to share them with the class.

This film strip was a bit rough and unfortunately the flicker on from the projector was particularly heavy on this test.  Still, it was an interesting experiment.  I drew a washing machine exploding in suds.  Each of these shorts were stand alone exercises, but the tricks we learned along the way did play a large role in the final projects each of us had to make for the class.

Line Art - Drawing on Film (2004)

Of all of the experiments we did in our film school animation class in 2004, drawing on film was by far the most tedious to me.  If you keep in mind that 24 frames equal one second of screen time, it meant having to replicate an image over and over again to create the project - or at least it should have.  

I chose instead to go the completely experimental (and in many ways easier) route, and opted to create a colourful film strip inspired by frequency lines.  I divided my film strip evenly between frames of green, red, and blue.  This was done with a clear strip of 16mm film and pack of sharpie markers. On top of that I drew various lines that would fluxuate in contrast to one another.  The result was as busy as you might expect, but it created a cool effect.  See what resulted below.

Bolex Camera Diagrams

All of the film I shot in film school was done on a Bolex camera.  It's essentially the old work horse of all film school cameras as pretty much up every introduction to shooting uses this versatile 16mm piece of equipment.  After recently purchasing a vintage 16mm projector to watch some of my old shorts, I was reminded of the Bolex diagrams we had to learn.  The camera had to be threaded in complete darkness as to not expose the film, so knowing your way around what wraps where was kind of a big deal.  In any case, I found those original Bolex diagrams in my notes and thought it would be cool to share them.  Someday in the not too distant future I'd like to buy myself a used Bolex and give shooting on film another go.

16mm Revere Film Projector

This week it finally arrived.  After a month of casually browsing online I finally found a vintage 16mm projector that was both stunning to look at and in perfect working condition.  I purchased this 1952 Revere Model 48 silent film projector for $150.  Almost half of that was shipping costs, but even still, given its condition I have to say it was a steal at that price. 

You might be thinking that that's a lot to pay for a decoration, but that actually wasn't the motivation behind the purchase.  I have a box of 16mm projects that I shot in film school that I haven't seen since they were made.  Among these are a couple of animation shorts and a silent film that I shot with my friend Dave - the first thing either of us ever shot on film.  For the sake of preservation and my own nostalgia, I wanted to buy a projector so that I could record the footage and make digital copies of some of my early work.  I figured if I was going to the trouble anyway, I might as well buy one that would be pretty to look at afterwards.

The Revere projector also shipped with a spare lamp and an original 16mm WWII reel of an American army base and Japanese cities.  The film wasn't in great shape, but I was able to watch it along with a few of my own projects and it was a kick to say the least. The sound of the projector, the process of how to load it properly, and the flicker of my film school history projected across the room was a pretty amazing memory to rediscover. 

I can't wait to share some of these shorts in the near future, but in the meantime have a look at this cool piece of history that I've added to my collection.  

X (2006)

Presented with the challenge of shooting (and manipulating) an experimental short on film, X was the result of a few late nights spent scratching my reel and coloring individual frames with a red sharpie.  I can't say I had much of a plan during the process, but it was fun.  This experimental film class also resulted in some of my other random edits like, The Other Time Machine and from 84.

What made this project stand out was that we each presented our films at the Sask Film Pool in downtown Regina at the aptly titled, Terrible Film Festival - a regular event each semester for those taking the avant-garde class. It was a pretty casual affair where some films played on a loop, others were screened traditionally, some in make shift tents, and some overlapping each other.  The entire exercise was really about playing with film, not just from behind the camera, but actually working with it, splicing it, and in some cases, tearing it apart. I remember my friend Tyler actually tried burning a piece of his film and it sounded like cooking bacon when it played through the projector.

I kicked things off with my film on a loop, and a last minute decision to use a mirror to reflect the projection around the room.  My entire idea really centred around 'X marks the spot' because I figured so many of the films would be just as busy and nonsensical as mine, but at least mine would have a red X throughout to give you some place to look. It kind of worked.

At the very least the evening was something out of the ordinary, and it created a more lasting memory for a project that would have otherwise just stayed packed away.  Our professor, Gerald Saul captured highlights from the evening and gave each of us a DVD of our short films.  

Looking back at it now, this was one of those stereotypically ideal film school situations that I'm glad we were forced to take part in.  And I couldn't forget it if I wanted to, as that mirror I was using ended up broken in the back seat of Tyler's car and stayed there for my remaining few semesters in university.  See my experimental film below.

Urban Photography

In my first year of film school we learned about city symphonies.  These were often silent films that showcased the working class, mechanization, and social energy of the urban landscape.  I loved the textures, patterns, and sense of history that those films inspired, and so in the summer of 2003 I created my own short, Urban Jazz.

It was because of this project that I began playing around with an old film camera and started shooting stills of old buildings.  Between Medicine Hat and Calgary, Alberta I shot about a hundred images of cityscapes in the summer of 2004.  The majority of the images are of old brick buildings, but almost all of my black and white shots were of downtown Calgary. 

What I love about these images is how the film still has such a distinctive look.  The compositions all feel very cinematic to me, and similar to what I did with my old film school slides, I like to brainstorm by thinking about a scene or a story that could fit each image.  After all of the moving around since these were taken, I'm just glad I still have these to share. Follow up with PART 2 here.