I certainly heard Brakhage say, more than once, that the inclusion of two frames of black started as an attempt to hide the splice. He had tried to work with the visible splice bar in "Dog Star Man"/"The Art of Vision" but didn't feel it appropriate to most of his films. I'm pretty sure he also said the different effect of the cut became part of it, but even if he didn't say so explicitly, he surely would have been aware of the difference. In fact I think that "softer" cutting in general, whether separated by black or not, was part of a the aesthetic of his later films, from "The Riddle of Lumen" on.
Looking at the strips of his films after the early 70s, you can often infer that some cuts were made in camera, when there is no visible splice mark and no black between two shots. You can infer that with even more certainty when the first frame of the second shot is a little brighter than the rest, as the camera hasn't gotten up to speed. With reference to Mark's post, it is my memory that 16mm color negative was somewhat of a special order item even in the late 60s; you had to get a minimum of a few rolls. But also, the negative stock in use at the time was a lot grainier than the professional standard for 16mm, ECO, or than its cousin Kodachrome, so professionals would not have used it much until finer grained stocks were released in the 1970s. Fred Camper Chicago _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
