Experimental Filmmaking: BREAK THE MACHINE

417 Pages·2015·15.261 MB·English

by  Kathryn Ramey

Experimental
Filmmaking
Break the Machine
Become a master in the influential, diverse, and highly innovative field of experi-
mental filmmaking. Harness the little-known techniques and subtle aesthetics
required for this imagination-driven art form.
For the first time in a single volume, Kathryn Ramey has written a thorough,
hands-on guide to the craft and processes of experimental filmmaking, showing
you step-by-step the material methods that will help you begin an experimental
media practice. From these lessons, following the tradition of Stan Brakhage’s
A Moving Picture Giving and Taking Book and Helen Hill’s Recipes for Disaster,
you’ll learn to take materials apart and put them together in new ways, use
products for purposes other than those intended by their manufacturers, and
free yourself from the constraints of conventional media. Experimental Filmmaking
provides:
• Full-color film stills and illustrations demonstrating various experimental
filmmaking techniques
• Step-by-step tutorials on hand-processing motion picture film, direct
animation methods, optical printing, making your own microphones and
other sound experiments, glitch art, and much more
• Explanations of the historical, theoretical, and socio-political backgrounds
of various experimental filmmaking movements and styles
• Advice on how to locate experimental filmmaking communities in your
region, as well as how to show and distribute your work
• Sidebar interviews with filmmakers currently working in the genre that
offer context and direction for your own projects
• A companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/ramey) featuring video
examples from numerous films for inspiration and emulation
Whether you’re an aspiring experimental filmmaker or mainstream practitioner
who wants to incorporate alternative techniques in your films, Experimental
Filmmaking: Break the Machine gives you the tools you need execute your most
daring cinematic endeavors!
Kathryn Rameyis a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work operates at the
intersection of experimental film processes and ethnographic research. Her
award-winning and strongly personal films are characterized by the manipulation
of celluloid, including hand-processing, optical printing, and various direct
animation techniques, and have been screened at film festivals and other venues
around the world. Kathryn is an associate professor of filmmaking at Emerson
College’s Department of Visual and Media Arts in Boston, MA.
“Kathryn Ramey’s Experimental Filmmakingis many things at once: a homespun,
one-on-one personal primer (like Stan Brakhage’s pioneering Moving Picture
Giving and Taking Book); a plainspoken ‘how to’ technical manual (like Lenny
Lipton’s essential books of the 70s); a compendium of interviews with a variety
of experimental filmmakers about their practice and process (like Scott
MacDonald’s invaluable A Critical Cinema series); and a celluloid cookbook,
very much in the spirit and letter of Helen Hill’s Recipes for Disaster.
Both retro (including—at long last—a perfectly realized JK optical printer
manual) and au courant (digital glitching techniques, etc.), Experimental
Filmmaking most of all celebrates and encourages creative adventure with
alternative approaches to filmmaking, and offers us recipes, roadmaps,
directions, and countless helpful hints as to how to create your own alchemy.
This very useful and engaging book of sprocketed (and pixeled) revelations has
arrived on our doorsteps, seems to me, right on time . . .
I Second That Emulsion! Back to the Future!”
—Phil Solomon, Professor of the Film Studies Program at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, “Ye Olde Cine-Alchemist”
Experimental
Filmmaking
Break the Machine
Kathryn Ramey
First published 2016
by Focal Press
70 Blanchard Road, Suite 402, Burlington, MA 01803
and by Focal Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Focal Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Kathryn Ramey to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As
new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in
research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may
become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own
experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information,
methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such
information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety
and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a
professional responsibility.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ramey, Kathryn
Experimental filmmaking: break the machine/Kathryn Ramey.
pages cm
1. Motion pictures—Production and direction—Handbooks,
manuals, etc. 2. Experimental films—Production and direction—
Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.
PN1995.9.P7R34 2014
791.430232—dc23 2014041201
ISBN 978-1-138-89817-2
ISBN 978-0-240-82396-6 (pb)
ISBN 978-0-240-82401-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Giovanni and Franklin Gothic
By Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Additional materials are available on the companion website at:
www.focalpress.com/cw/ramey
Additional materials are available on the companion website at www.focalpress.com/cw/ramey
Contents
v
Acknowledgments vii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 Film-destroy 5
CHAPTER 2 Film-create 33
CHAPTER 3 Optical printing: getting to know the JK
optical printer 69
CHAPTER 4 Sound experiments: making microphones/
hacking toys 113
CHAPTER 5 In the soup 1: hand-processing black and white 141
CHAPTER 6 In the soup 2: hand-processing color 177
CHAPTER 7 In the soup 3: eco hand-processing 197
CHAPTER 8 Doin’ it in the dark: cameraless filmmaking/
darkroom printing 217
CHAPTER 9 Optical printing: DIY 233
CHAPTER 10 Pinhole photography: film/video/digital 283
CHAPTER 11 Gallery work: film as installation 319
vi Contents
CHAPTER 12 Film as performance: gallery/theatrical 337
CHAPTER 13 Glitch: video/digital breaks down 363
CONCLUSION: Imaginary community/virtual communitas 393
Index 399
Acknowledgments
vii
You may want to skip this if you are in a hurry, but please come back to it at
some point, because real acknowledgements, where someone says “Thank You”
to all the people and institutions that helped them get where they are, help to
contextualize where the work came from. They are never complete, of course,
and are often open to the willingness or awareness of the individual writing
the book to actually list all their influences. Because this book is over two
decades in the making, my list will be long. Because I tend to think of things
in a very global fashion, I will digress. But as radical as this text is in terms of
personal expression and free will, I also believe very strongly inasmuch as I’m
capable in recognizing and giving credit where it is due.
This list begins with my parents and grandparents. Oh sure you say, everybody
thanks them. But seriously, my grandparents on both sides were manual laborers
who worked tirelessly all day and then came home and worked all night and
weekend growing vegetables, canning food, fixing things, making things. My
father too. He took apart the carburetor on our car when I was a kid and I got
to help. Both he and his mom were crazy shutterbugs taking tens of thousands
of slides and many rolls of Regular-8 film. They both were outdoor adventure
nuts, climbing mountains with us and hiking and skiing, and were hardcore
DIYers and composters and recyclers long before it was cool. They made me
a handy, stubborn, image-loving fool. So for that, I thank them.
Then there were my faculty, friends and people I was totally impressed by but
terrified of at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. I went there
from 1987 to 1991 and, yes, I knew Kathleen Hanna and Tammy Rae Carland
and Calvin Johnson but they didn’t know me. I watched all of the riot grrrls
from afar. They were so crazy and so brave and so loud and I just wasn’t. But
the lessons they taught, that you can be anything you want, do anything that
you want, write a BOOK if you want stayed with me. I guess I just wasn’t as
ready then as I am now. Some of us are late bloomers.
I did have two really good friends there who started me on this path towards
experimenting with film. One was Robin Cline. We are still friends though I
haven’t seen her in years, but the first time I hand-processed motion picture
viii Acknowledgments
film (Super-8 Ektachrome) was in the kitchen of her little house in Olympia.
She shot film that ended up in my first truly experimental film Story of Sarah
(1992 and 1998), distributed by Filmmakers Cooperative if you’re interested
(www.film-makerscoop.com).
The other influential person from this period was Jason Boughton, who was
passionate about all kinds of alternative film practice from ethnographic film
to art cinema and everything in between. Together with another friend, Rex
Ritter, we started a film exhibition series called Pinhole Cinema Project at 911
Media Arts Center in Seattle, Washington, after graduating from Evergreen. This
was where my real education in experimental film began as we programmed
work that we wanted to see in a very eclectic fashion. This is how I met Su
Friedrich, Peggy Ahwesh, Mike Hoolboom and Craig Baldwin, and where I first
saw the short films of Peter Greenaway and works by Hollis Frampton, Abby
Child, Carolee Schneemann and Leslie Thornton.
After a while I moved to New York. I worked on a film by Yvonne Rainer,
MURDER and Murder, and one by Su Friedrich, Hide and Seek. Each of them
wrote a letter of recommendation for my application to Temple University to
study Film in its MFA program. So I owe them a hearty thanks as well. At that
time Temple was predominantly a narrative and documentary program, and I
always felt like some strange flower they had found growing in their backyard.
They didn’t plant it, but they watered it just the same, nurturing me as a
filmmaker and encouraging me even though my work was dramatically different
than what most students were making. In particular Rita Kosen (the department
secretary) and Frank Sauerwald (the department equipment repairman) were
hugely encouraging to me. The former because she just believedin me uncritically
and the latter because he lent me whatever weird equipment I needed that
couldn’t be found in the cage (a matte box, strange lenses and filters) and
allowed me to take home the broken JK optical printer and tinker with it until
I got it working. This was how my love affair with optical printing really got
off the ground and it would never have happened if he hadn’t given me the
tools (against cries of protest and favoritism by my peers, I’ll admit).
During my time there I studied with Lynne Sachs, who was a visiting scholar,
and took classes from Coco Fusco, who taught Art History. I also took classes
with anthropologist Jay Ruby and somehow managed to go on to get a PhD
in Anthropology after my MFA in filmmaking, with him serving as my mentor.
He encouraged me to write about the community of experimental filmmakers
for my dissertation and supported me the whole way. In a way this book is a
not-very-well-disguised ethnography of the experimental film community as it
demonstrates the “research” I’ve been doing for over twenty years into its rituals,
practices and opinions.
Temple University is also where I met the person who would become my life
partner, Ken Winikur. He is also a filmmaker, though of a distinctly different
stripe. Check out his website, www.winikurproductions.com, if you want to
know more. But suffice it to say, he and his parents Ilene and Dave Winikur,
Acknowledgments ix
and now our children Amiel, Zev and Noam Ramey-Winikur, have supported,
cajoled and suffered (through) my growth as a filmmaker, scholar and educator.
Ken has endured film being hung to dry all around our house and helped
move more flatbeds and film gear than he’d have liked. The kids have been in
my movies, shot their own movies and hand-processed film with me. And they
have all put up with me as I wrote this book in fits and starts.
Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues, the administration
and my students at Emerson College where I am an associate professor in
Visual and Media Arts. In particular, my colleague Robert Patton-Spruill who
introduced me to the acquisition editors at Focal Press, who commissioned
this book and who have patiently waited the four years it has taken to come
to press. I would like to thank my colleagues Robert Todd and John Gianvito
for their support of my experiments in the classroom and in my own films,
and Jan Roberts-Breslin who, though she may not know it, has been a great
role model and encouraged me to keep working on this book even when I was
feeling low.
Finally I need to thank those people who continue to inspire, challenge and
amaze me, my students. In particular, Billy Palumbo, my research assistant and
copy editor, who went out filming with me in the bitter cold, put up with
reviewing multiple drafts of this text and other thankless tasks, and almost
never makes fun of my poor punctuation and convoluted writing. Matt Shanafelt,
who designed the first iteration of the cover of this book without being asked,
just because he felt like it, and Zoe Mylonas and Karen Gerofsky, both of who
worked with me at various times scanning images. And to all those riot kidsss
sitting in my classroom, who bravely swim upstream, fighting the rapids of
conformity to find their own individual expression. I will leave you with some
of their thoughts about what experimental/avant-garde media is. They say it
better than I could.
FROM VM305—EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA
HISTORY/THEORY, SPRING 2014
Mitch Ball, Emily Bateman, Katherine Blye, Sadie Bonang, Steve Cameron, Maisy
Clayton, Andy Cox, Kaare Erikson, Balise Gritsche, Tyler Gilbert, Ben Goldman,
Evan Gooden, Javier Jimenez, Adam Kaplan, Kristen Klein, Kevin McCarthy,
Matt Shanafelt, Zack Sharf, Jody Steel, Natalie Ware, Daniel Whooley, Mark
Woit.
What is experimental/avant-garde?
• INNOVATION—is psychological—it is innovative in how it makes you
think/feel.
• INNOVATION—is technological—new ways to use old tools, old ways to
use new tools, how do we think about tools?
• (Promotes) active viewership.