From: Pip Chodorov (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2008 - 13:48:29 PDT
Bernie,
I don't understand your point. It's a lot cheaper to stay on film,
develop by hand, cut with scissors and tape, and project on a 16mm
projector, etc, than to make transfers and deal with video formats,
video labs, video machines, given that you have access to film
equipment and not video equipment. That was Boris's point, and I
concur with him. I assume the opposite is also true for videomakers
with no film equipment...
The more important aspect of your post is the fundamental existential
question of working with a given art form. Why choose sculpture over
drawing? Watercolor over oil? Film over video? None of these are
simply interchangeable...
-Pip Chodorov
At 13:01 -0700 3/09/08, Bernard Roddy wrote:
>Hi Sam. Here's a shot at an explanation of that excerpt. Suppose
>that digital video is either indiscernible from film or close enough
>as to make such distinctions between cameras incidental. This
>presupposes we're not focused on the effects of traditional
>photographic processes. Suppose also that projection must include
>sound. Then a filmmaker who still shoots in film but expects to
>project or distribute digitally has to ask: why shoot film given its
>costs, and how do I get to projection if shooting film rather than
>video is to pay off? Why not switch to video? I am trying to
>answer this question, but answer it as a "filmmaker" rather than as
>an artist who'll use whatever.
>
>By "practices of former film art production" I meant those involving
>the shooting of film cameras, use of rewinds or flatbed, possibly
>syncing a magnetic sound track, all for the purpose of concluding
>with a sprocketed film and optical soundtrack, computers be damned.
>Working like this feels like walking into a photographic darkroom
>again, charming in a studio arts sort of way, like returning to a
>sketchpad. Next to a room full of drawing students in front of a
>still life or nude, this all makes sense to me. But in the context
>of our present media environment, it comes with a heavy price,
>namely all the worry about transfers, exhibition, and distribution,
>given the various compromises. Can we say that the history of film
>art in this traditional sense belongs along side the history of
>performance, where projection conditions are an integral part of
>what film meant? If so, and if we continue to work this way,
>communicating in the absence of those
> projection conditions becomes a serious challenge. If you don't
>become a video artist or digital filmmaker, then you seem destined
>to mimic a past experience under challenging circumstances.
>
>Bernie
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