Cameraless Filmmaking Experience Thus Far

This has been the funnest class I think I've taken in college. It's been kind of like arts and crafts. I mean I was literally fingerpainting the film in class last week. Not that I wasn't expecting direct film manipulation to be an intricate process I am finding it a little taxing. It takes some intense concentration to make deliberate alteration to the 16mm frames. It's hard to tell what this film is going to look like exactly when it gets projected, but I'm excited in anticipation for when that day comes. I constructed something at home that would allow me to view single frames. Its basically a light inside a box with a frame sized square cut into it and a picture frame glass on top of it. This has helped me the most with the analyzing and manipulating the print film stock and will likely come in handy with the rayograms once it has developed. The magazine transfer class was my favorite workshop. I found this article on Willie nelson that I used to make my transfers. There was a picture of a wall that had all of Willie's albums on it and they were the perfect size for the frames. I chopped them all up and threw them on the tape to transfer thinking that it would turn out to be a nice little montage of Willie Nelson memorabilia. It didn't even come across. I think I might have seen a subliminal blip of Willie nelson's face. That experience showed me just how quickly the frames are going to go by and is a good lesson to learn before moving to my animation and the rest of this project. I had never used film for any projects before this, so I feel like this is an very valuable experience for me. I also think that this may be the best way for me to learn about the material of film. In the future, whenever I shoot and develop film I feel like I will be more confident in myself.