In some ways, this film is a stand-in for other films by Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren and in a larger sense for Los Angeles filmmakers in general. In yet another sense, it’s a stand-in for a very specific film by Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren: Bertha’s Children (1976). But although Bertha’s Children was a major catalyst for me in 2006-07, its preservation wasn’t necessarily an immediate part of the ensuing path my work took, whereas Future Perfect (1978) — the first film of Roberta’s and Grahame’s that I worked on — most definitely was.
By 2006, I had brought a handful of filmmakers’ collections into the film archive, including Robert Nelson, Stan Brakhage, Richard Myers, Will Hindle, Phil Solomon, and Pat O’Neill. I had been speaking to a few other artists who would eventually do so as well (Chick Strand, Su Friedrich, Barbara Hammer, and others), but the process was gradual and a little bit scattered.
I had seen at least a few of visionary animator Adam Beckett’s films when I worked at Canyon Cinema. The iotaCenter put out an extensive DVD of his work a few years ago, and I should say very clearly up front that I was able to work on Adam’s incredible films thanks to iota, as they had negotiated with Adam’s family to move the films to the Academy and also applied for funding from NFPF so the films could be restored, so thanks much to them for that. Additionally, iota founder Larry Cuba, who had known Adam at CalArts in the ‘70s, is a big fan and even owned a couple of prints of Adam’s films, both of which ended up being quite helpful in the restoration of his films (more on that below).
So much could be said about Adam Beckett as an artist, as a person, as a near-mythological figure, but though I’ve learned a lot about him from his films (and working on them), and from numerous friends of his, I’m not really the one to say it (Pam Turner is), and plus that’s not really what this website is about! But let it just be said that he genuinely pioneered some visionary techniques in animation and image manipulation that are still being used today by special effects artists and independent animators. Although his drawing style and animation thinking was utterly virtuosic, his particularly visionary innovation was to use the optical printer in combination with his animation to extrapolate his images and forms into incredibly elaborate, kaleidoscopic, psychedelic phantasmagorias. His memory and legacy are still very strong with effects whizzes like Richard Edlund, Richard Taylor, and Robbie Blalack; esteemed friends and mentors like Pat O’Neill, Roberta Friedman, Beth Block, Sky David, David and Diana Wilson, and Chris Casady; and younger animators who’ve been inspired by Adam’s utterly unique and boundary pushing work, like Jim Trainor, Henry Selick, Jodie Mack, and Helder Sun. (These are just a paltry few of the names in each category – Adam Beckett’s memory and legacy are pretty large in the world of experimental animation.)
Picture/track synchronization is usually pretty important. Even when a film doesn’t have actual recorded lip-sync dialogue, most films have a correct sync in their finished form, and obviously it’s an important thing for a preservationist to maintain and be observant of. There’s a ton I could write about synching and sync problems, individual examples of weird or variable synchronization, or just the different ways we deal with sound sync in general, but for the time being, I’ll give this example, which is slightly atypical (at least in the world of experimental film – I have a feeling some TV archivists have seen this plenty of times!).
Many of you reading this probably know that usually, in film, sound and image are not only recorded separately, but also usually printed from separate picture and sound elements – these days, typically a picture negative and a track negative. In the printing process, the picture element and the soundtrack element will usually have sync marks and/or hole punches at one or both ends of each which are used to match the separate picture and track rolls to the same printer start point, thus resulting in a new print with correct sound synchronization.
The initial instigation for this blog was my desire (in November 2007) to share a photo I’d taken of filmmaker Standish Lawder’s coffee can contact printer with whomever might find that interesting, which turned out, much to my surprise, to be a decent amount of people. Over the years, as I’ve irregularly kept this blog, I’ve been amazed and quite happy to learn that people actually read it, and that the photo of Standish’s printer remains a favorite search/discovery for people.
Standish passed away in June of this year. I hadn’t been much in touch with him over the past couple of years, during which time he had departed from his Denver Darkroom and moved to the Bay Area, though I would occasionally receive news. We’ve been able to restore a few of his films, including Necrology (1970), Raindance (1972), and the little-known but quite lovely Catfilm for Katy & Cynnie (1973). Many others are in the works. Some present quite unusual challenges, and may someday be the subject of another post here.
Homemade contact printer built by Standish Lawder, and used in the making of his films Runaway (1969) and Corridor (1970), and possibly part of Roadfilm (1970).
The coffee can contains a regular incandescent light bulb hooked to a dimmer control. The camera is an old 16mm that belonged to Lawder’s dad. He made the tension adjustable on its inner workings in order to put several pieces of film multipacked through the film path and the gate.
In the dark, he would bi- or tri-pack raw stock (b/w reversal usually) with existing footage (the running dogs cartoon in the case of Runaway, the corridor footage he shot himself in Corridor). He would then contact print the footage in various ways using different brightness settings on the lightbulb in the coffee can, which would shine its beam through the old flashlight tube into the gate of the camera.
In the case of Corridor, the resulting footage was sometimes further processed, or printed to negative, or hi-con, or whatever. The A/B rolls were then edited from this pile of footage.
Standish also says the coffee can was originally a Chock Full O’ Nuts can, but had to be replaced, I think because it got damaged at some point.
PRESERVATION INSANITY 