Assignment 3

In this assignment we were to create film without the use of a camera. Using 16mm black film we were to scratch, paint and bleach the film to create a projectable movie. This type of film production is called homemade film, scratch film, camera less film, or direct film. The worked film had to be 50-60 feet long with 3-5 feet of black on both ends.

Having missed class the day we received our film, I went to our Lab room to get a roll. The 16mm film as I found had two sides. One side was shiny and plastic, known as the base. The other side felt chalky. This was the workable side with the black emulsion on it. Emulsion is made up of silver compounds and silver halides in gelatin. These are extremely light sensitive, allowing pictures to be produced on them through the use of a camera. The film we used was already exposed before it was used and therefore was completely black.

The roll of film we received was very long and a wave of apprehension set on me since I initially thought the whole roll (about 2 inches thick!) was 60 ft of film. As it turned out, there was much more than 60 ft of film on the roll. This was relief, however, working just 50 ft of film was extremely difficult. The emulsion was not so easily removable as I anticipated. This is because the emulsion is secured to the base with a very strong substratum (cellulose triacetate). When I tried scratching the emulsion off with a quarter it would not come off. Then I tried using the edge of nail clippers, which had no success as well. First of all the nail clippers were difficult to hold and maneuver because of their small size and also the sharp edge of the clippers could not reach the film because of its angle. Next I decided to try an x-acto knife. The x-acto knife actually worked very well, but I had to be careful because if you put just a little to much pressure with it you would bust a hole in the film. What became really exciting for me was when I visited my boyfriend’s house and got to experiment with all of his Dad’s hardware tools. Most of the tools would not scratch the emulsion off either! However, I found a great rusty screwdriver that worked great in making tiny random scratches. It gave great texture since it created both dots and scratches when run back and forth over the film. When creating the film I tried to keep in mind how it would look running through a projector. For this reason I treated the textures like a story line where thin wavy lines would gradually develop into an angry mass of cross hatched line work that would then fade into dots and back to wavy lines. It quickly became the rise and fall of line aggression. Since I could not very well vary the thickness of my scratches, the density and direction of the scratches was the only way to create differences.

The idea of using color really excited me. I thought that in order for the color to truly be seen that I would have to take off a large portion of emulsion. This would be a very tedious job if I were scratching off the emulsion with my x-acto knife so I decided to try bleach, which is supposed to take the emulsion off quite easily. As it turns out, this emulsion just does not want to come off, with a lot of rubbing and pressure however the emulsion would come off with bleach on a cotton ball or Q tip. Using the Q-tip I created many circles with no emulsion. I created these circles for close to ten feet because I thought their movement through the projector, which would probably look like flashing, would be very interesting. This was very time consuming since the emulsion was hard to remove. I worked 3 hours with the bleach. Even though I had the bottle closed and was working from a small Petri dish filled with bleach, I began to feel sick by the end. It became hard to breath and my throat was burning. In one of the more embarrassing events of my life I had to be rushed to the hospital. Such inhalation of bleach is apparently extremely unhealthy and can give you permanent lung damage. Nearly 12 medics came to help me from the dorm, and everyone came out of their dorm rooms to see what was going on. Of course, with everyone peering out I was taken out of my dorm on a stretcher (as is procedure) with oxygen tubes sticking out of my nose to help me breathe. I was wheeled down to the ambulance and taken to the hospital where they checked for fluid in the lungs. To end this tangent, I was discharged from the hospital at 1:30 AM and fortunately did not have any long-term lung damage from the bleach exposure. I do want everyone reading to know, however, that it was very painful experience and that you should not be around bleach for prolonged time periods like myself. Masks are a good idea.

After this trip to the hospital I was unwilling to use anymore bleach in my project but I already had enough areas without emulsion to be able to use paint. I debated which type of paint to use, watercolor which is see through, acrylic which dries quickly or sharpies which works very well but has limited (and for what I was imagining, undesirable) colors. I decided to try acrylic since I find the colors in the paint set I own to be absolutely gorgeous. I was not sure if acrylic would not be transparent enough and I was afraid that it would not show though the projector. For that reason I chose the more staining colors, pthallo green and magenta which are more transparent. I also ended up using some dark blue that I added to the green and magenta to gain a range in values.

I used the color on the circles and also some of the larger scratched out areas. I was dismayed when my work went through the projector because the colors were barely visible. I could have gone much thicker with my application of the paint. Other students in the class who did so ended up with really intense, vibrant colors on the screen. I think it would be worthy of experimentation; to find how thick the paint can be applied before it is no longer projectable.

Overall this project was very tedious, the scratching, bleaching, layering of texture, fade in and out of each texture, use of many tools, and painting took many laborious hours. And even with 50 feet of film created, when projected this lasts no longer than a minute! Completing this project has really allowed me to appreciate the video camera.