Fields and Frames : Workshop 1

We learnt that a 16mm projector can bring cinema down to it's raw instruments of light and darkness and can allow audiences to be interactive such as with shadow puppets. Directly after the briefing, Vicky provided us with various different rolls of film, some negative, colour, clear and black, and encouraged us to manipulate it.

The images on the film - from a Barbara Streisand film Funny Girl

Firstly I experimented with splicing two pieces of film together to create an edit. I found this easier than I thought, as I imagined the process to be a lot harder. However it is very lengthy if you were to be editing an entire film like this rather than just a simple click with a mouse in the digital way I'm used to! I created several more edits throughout. 

My first edit

I also tried dipping a clear strip that I had edited on, in various different food colourings to make it colourful. The colours mixed like I intended, some places show clear pink, some clear blue and then there are areas where the two have merged together. At the time Josh was colouring his clear strip in using a black marker and while ours where both wet we merged them together to transfer the colours. This resulted in mine containing splotches of black from his marker and his containing more colour from mine. We called this a collaboration! The effect reminded me of a nebula, space pattern which I really liked. This was probably my favourite manipulation I made.

Colour on clear film

I then edited on some black film and using a compass, scratched various shapes into it. This became like an animation. 

Scratches on black film

The entire classes individual creations where then edited together to make one long strip. 

Tom demonstrating an edit

Here was the result :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbfBCk3xYVU&feature=youtu.be  (insert video later)

We were all very pleased with the final outcome and it was nice seeing the entire class (or at least the ones that showed up!) collaborate to make something together. I had so much fun in this part of the lesson and felt so creatively free to experiment.