My one counter to David's comments (if I'm reading you right) would be that the vast majority of artists working in 16mm from the '40s through the '60s did in fact use Kodachrome and Ektachrome, among other stocks. Color negative didn't even exist in 16mm until 1964, and very few "experimental filmmakers" used it much until the later '70s or even early '80s. And throughout some of this period, you could get your stocks edge numbered if you wanted, and plenty of people did. Even Gimme Shelter was shot on Ektachrome. Plenty of other filmmakers didn't bother workprinting, or did so without using edge numbers for matching (Brakhage never workprinted, for instance).
The basically forgotten Anscochrome was a popular stock in the '50s and '60s too. Brakhage shot Window Water Baby Moving and several of his other early color films on it. Kodak introduced a lower contrast stock called Kodachrome Commercial in 1946 specifically to target people wanting to shoot color more professionally. Curtis Harrington shot The Assignation on it. It was replaced by Ektachrome Commercial (ECO) in 1958, which was a lower-contrast, slow Ektachrome designed to be printed rather than direct-projected. ECO was absurdly widely used until the early '80s. Mark T On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 12:58 PM, Dave Tetzlaff <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm writing about the use of 16mm in experimental filmmaking of the > 1970s and am looking for texts that deal with the history of film > technology, scholarly sources that look, for example, at the emergence of > 16mm as an amateur/documentary/artists' medium. > > Hmm. If we distinguish 'amateurs' from 'artists' 16mm emerged as an > amateur medium decades before the 70s, and was all but submerged for > amateurs by the 70s, in favor of Super-8. You'd be hard pressed to find any > artists who worked with the 'amateur' 16mm cameras that were made at least > through the 1950s: Kodak K100, B+H 240, Reveres… and only spare use of > 'amateur' Kodachrome and Ektachrome stocks that didn't come back from the > lab with edge numbers. > > The history of documentary tech is a whole 'nother creature -- all 16mm up > to the 70s -- but marked by advances in blipping, sound sync, battery > power, coaxial magazines, reflex finders, etc. etc. (I have an AC-power > only Yoder-style chop-top in my closet, if anyone wants one…). Only in the > 70s did portable video emerge as a documentary medium, e.g. in the ½" > open-reel 'Four More Years' by TVTV. > > Experimental filmmaking was not articulated to 'amateur' filmmaking as > much as industrial/educational filmmaking. Experimental filmmaking was > dependent on the wide availability of cameras, projectors, stocks, labs > etc. primarily used by the 'A/V' market. Once that market moved to video, > those sources began to dry up, posing ever-increasing difficulties to > photo-chemical experimental work. A tech history of experimental film in > the 70s should also look at it's intersections/oppositions to technologies > used in 'video art', e.g. in Scott Bartlett's 'Off/On', and computer > graphics, e.g. John Whitney. > > All that said, for the history of 'amateur' film, it would be remiss not > to mention the work of FRAMEWORKER Patti Zimmerman, noted on the CHM site > Buck linked. > > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks >
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