bitdepth

Stop Motion Animation Workshop

Struts Gallery sign Last weekend I facilitated a stop motion animation workshop at Faucet, the media arts part of the artist-run centre Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick. It’s the second workshop that I’ve given there and I had a great time. The participants were a talented, motivated group who produced a bunch of animations in two days mainly using digital still cameras. It’s part of what I like to think of as the inappropriate use of technology. What was cool about the workshop is that I just started things off and they went off in various directions. There was plenty of technology to go round… almost everyone had an iBook or PowerBook and digital still cameras. The animations ranged from cut-outs to pixilation to drawing on a wall. It’s great to see people doing cool stuff with relatively cheap tools. I made up a site with links for the Faucet Animation Workshop which is over at my mac.com site.

July 16, 2004 animation, faucet, struts, teaching, workshop

Hand Processing Workshop Photos

I put some of the photos that I took during the recent hand processing film workshop at the NB Filmmakers Co-op up on my Mac.com site. They are in the Hand Processing Workshop Gallery. I had a great time and the images give a bit of a glimpse of things that I noticed during the workshop.

June 11, 2004 film, nbfilmmakerscoop, photos, video, workshop

Hand Processing Workshop

A couple of weeks ago I took a great hand-processing 16mm and 8mm film workshop at the New Brunswick Filmmakers’ Co-operative. It was two weeks after another coop workshop where I got to load and shoot my own film. The hand processing (and Bolex) workshops were taught by the talented photographer and filmmaker Chris Giles, who uses the Russian tank method of processing film. Using black and white reversal film you can shoot and process your own film. For the workshop we covered all of the information, then loaded up a Bolex and went out to shoot. Then it was into the darkroom and the images magically appeared. After the film dried we watched what was shot. All together it was less than an hour from the time we had shot. Those really are “rushes”. It was a great experience and it made me fall in love with film again.
Shooting film is a completely different experience from shooting video. It’s amazing how your perception of time changes and smaller increments of time seem to become more precious. Shooting black and white film changes things even more as the level of abstraction of not knowing exactly how the image will appear on the emulsion is compounded by the loss of colour. When you see film that you have shot projected it is magic. It’s truly a different way to see the world.

June 8, 2004 film, nbfilmmakerscoop, workshop

Bolex Workshop

Bolex Last weekend I went up to Fredericton for a two-day workshop at the NB Filmmakers’ Coop. It was the Bolex: 2 Day Filmmaking Boot Camp workshop taught by Chris Giles. It was a lot of fun and I learned things that I should have known a decade or two ago. The Bolex is a 16mm motion picture film camera that was first introduced in the 1920s and it is still being manufactured! The coolest part of most Bolex cameras is that they operate using a spring-powered motor, which means that you never have to worry about batteries. In the two days we went through all of the aspects of the camera and lenses, came up with films to shoot, and then loaded the camera and shot the films! The Bolex takes 100 foot rolls of film, which translate into 2 1/2 minutes or 4000 frames. We shot black & white reversal film, which means that there is no workprint and what you get back can be projected. The film is off to the lab now and so I don’t know if it came out or not, but that’s part of the excitement of shooting film. I shot a hybrid stop-motion walk around the block with Cathie LeBlanc as my partner and soon I’ll find out if the exposure and focus was sharp or not. The difference between shooting film and video is quite striking. I haven’t shot film in a long time and I’m always pleasantly surprised at the different perception of time when you shoot film. Shooting film makes you think more carefully about what you are rolling on as with the Bolex you only have 2 1/2 minutes total footage (if you shoot at 24 fps) and can’t run that long on a wind… so you have to have a good idea of what you will have before you shoot. But it frees you up in other ways as you start and then feel the rush of adrenaline as the film runs through the camera.

May 18, 2004 16mm, bolex, filmmaking, nbfilmmakerscoop, workshop

The Magical Workshop of Ann Marie Fleming

On Monday I attended a great workshop with Ann Marie Fleming, the creative force behind The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. The workshop was a combination of the personal and the work, which is what she does in her films. Of particular interest to me is her approach to documentary and the use of humour. It disarms you and makes it easier to deal with sometimes difficult issues. I had a great time and there were gifts as well! She showed lots of work and contextualized, analyzed, and philosophized about it. It hit me right in the heart and reinforced my belief that things will work out well and important stories will be told because they have to be told. Some quotes from my notes from Ann Marie’s workshop: filmmaking: “so much heart and so much fussiness”, “we all have stories”, “the very specific is most compelling”, “all film is documentary film”, “standup is like experimental film”, and “you just have to want to do it.” She confirms my theory that filmmaking can be characterized as a recessive gene… you don’t really have a choice, you just have to tell these stories. I’m glad that Ann Marie is out there sharing her stories.

September 17, 2003 aff2003, annmariefleming, filmmaking, themagicallifeoflongtacksam, workshop

John Greyson Master Class

I’m so glad that I saw Proteus and then was able to take John Greyson‘s Directing Master Class. It was a lot of fun and was packed with clips and great stories from the soft-spoken and genuinely nice guy that he is. I don’t know what I expected, but it was an engaging way to spend my Sunday afternoon. His background is in video art and while many try to categorize him, I think that he embodies the spirit of the independent filmmaker. All of his work is challenging and crams a dizzying range of ideas into beautiful structures. Seeing clips from his body of work along with his commentary revealed patterns, concerns and a wealth of information about telling a story through the media of film and video. A highlight for me was a short produced by Greyson as part of the 25th Anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival that encapsulated the love that we have for film and festivals.

There were fascinating glimpses into the process that he has followed and the challenges that he has overcome. He is one of the many filmmakers who grew out of the coop scene which is the backbone of media arts production in Canada. His diverse experience was shared as he talked about his video art, feature filmmaking and episodic tv (“Made in Canada”, and “Queer as Folk”). I took pages of notes and here are some gems that I took from the session: “three is so nice”, Movies of the Week – “interesting ways to talk about our lives”, “lunches are good”, documentary – “an immersion in ideas and not emotions”, and directing is “finding what feels right.”

September 16, 2003 aff2003, johngreyson, proteus, workshop