From: Sam Wells (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Mar 04 2006 - 15:17:08 PST
> Things are really changing in terms of distribution, I think. This
> film res stuff is getting closer to home.
> More accessible than Brakhage's 8 mm prints ever were. What do you
> film technophiles think?
A general answer (the details are complex and fluid, a little too fluid
for my taste) is that, to reclaim a phrase from the Bushites, "All
options should be on the table" and that applies as much to
intermediates as it does to distribution.
I watched a few things from the Brakhage DVD on my new 23" Apple Cinema
display this week.
"Commingled Containers" was gorgeous. "Love Song" almost over the top
(the Powerbooks are a bit more subtle aren't they; also I'm finding a
gamma of 2.2 works a little better for the 23" instead of the Mac's
default 1.8 indeed more closely seems to match the Powerbook's 1.8 in
"look" hmm....)
"The Dante Quartet" looks fine (and further proof 35 and 70 tend to
scale up better than 16/S16 *even* when reduced to Standard Def
MPEG2.....) the problem here I'm beginning to think, having now seen
this film many times in: 35 projection, 16 projection, DVD on small
display, DVD on large display, DVD projected is lack of a frame life -
this film needs some subtle flicker, a shutter or equivalent.
Whereas Dog Star Man - I watched Pt 4 on the 23" - looked very framey
no question. I think in this case although hardly matching 16mm yet we
can probably say that the intention (not literally the case with DSM)
of the 8mm songs pretty much can be realized by "digital" - so I think
we're beyond the baby steps and starting to walk.
FWIW I popped in my copies of "L'Eclisse" and "Au Hasard, Balthazar"
and they look fantastic -- well with 23" we've got a way to travel but
this is highly compressed Standard def after all. Of course B&W, no
chroma compression or real colorspace issues. Still I much prefer them
to 16mm reductions. It's "intimate cinema" then at this point but more
than promising I really do think.
More later,
-Sam
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