Fred, Re:Voir has released Rameau's Nephew, etc., on DVD. http://re-voir.com/shop/en/michael-snow/70-micheal-snow-rameau-s-nephew-by-diderot-thanx-to-dennis-young-by-wilma-schoen-3493551100393.html
Eric On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 4:49 PM, Fred Camper <f...@fredcamper.com> wrote: > Since I've been known as a rather arch defender of film on film, I have to > weigh in a bit on David's side here. > > As film projection becomes rarer an d rarer, various perhaps unexpected > but not unanticipatable problems occur. > > A few years back I went to a projection of Snow's *Rameau's Nephew* at a > generally well-run college film society, committed to showing films on > film. I had not seen this complex and impressive film since the mid-1970s, > when it was first released, and so was eager to see it again. It's over > four hours long, and doesn't exactly play often at the local Bijou. As most > likely know, Snow stands with Gehr and Kubelka as being unwilling to > release his work on video, the idea being that it was made for film and > should, or must, be seen on film. > > The film started. There was something seriously wrong with the sound. > Specifically, it sounded like the film was threaded loose around the sound > drum. Any experienced projectionist would recognize this sound, because > we've all misthreaded this way at least once. At the same time, I > remembered Snow played around with the sound quite a bit in this film -- I > just didn't remember what he did at each moment. After about 20 minutes, > though, I was sure the projection was wrong, and sent a friend sitting with > me who knew the student projectionists back to tell them to fix it. The > message came back that they had tested the film in advance, and that this > is the way the film was supposed to sound. > > They had mounted it on two huge reels, so after the first two or two and a > half hours there was a break. The whole first half had been shown with this > wobbly sound, and now I was 100 per cent certain that, however faulty my > memory of short sections might be, I would have remembered if the sound of > the whole first half had had that "loose loop" quality. I sent my friend > back again with the message that someone present had seen the film when it > was first shown forty years ago and was certain that the film was being > projected incorrectly. Three students huddled around the projector for > twenty minutes, investigating the situation. When they finally started the > second half, the sound was fine. > > Is anyone to blame here? Perhaps projectionists could be better trained, > but that is less and less likely to happen with fewer and fewer films being > shown on film. Perhaps others in the audience should have recognized the > telltale sound of film loose around the sound drum, but how rare it is to > see film on film anymore, and of course for an "experimental" film perhaps > some would feel that one can never quite be sure what it is "supposed" to > sound like. > > I left thinking how much better the screening would have been for me if > the film had it been shown on DVD, though of course it is not on DVD. But > still. The sound is just as important as the image in this film, if not > more so, and the damage done to the sound was the aesthetic equivalent of > showing the film severely out of focus, out of focus to the point of an > almost total blur, a blur that anyone would have loudly objected to, > whereas the damage done to the image in transfer to digital projection, > even on a sub-par projector, would have been far, far less. > > Those of us, such as myself, who might have at one time self-identified as > "film fundamentalists," have to awaken, however sadly, to the realities of > our current situation. I would guess that David made, from my point of > view, the best possible choice. > > At the same time,we should of course support those venues that continue to > show film on film. > Fred Camper > Chicago > > > On 2/28/2017 4:41 PM, Dave Tetzlaff wrote: > > I’m more techy-geeky than most. I once tried to get an old pageant arc > projector going in an effort to get a brighter image in our schoolo > auditorium, but gave up. The technology is not really suitable for infrequent > use sans tech support: there’s that massive old-school power supply driving a > short-lived arc-lamp, and it’s all ‘analog’ in the sense that if it’s not in > tip-top condition it still ‘works’ but in a substandard way. Thus, while I > did get the one we had going, the image was far too blue to be usable and not > much brighter than a regular Pageant either. I thought about getting a new > lamp (dude, it’s not a ‘bulb’) but after checking price, availability, life, > and the odds that would make it usable (too dicey), I scrapped the project. > Part of that was concluding the best I could get it would still leave any > prints I could readily get projected too far out of proper color balance for > reasonable aesthetics. I.e. Xenon lamp color balance is off for most > available prints, but tolerable most of the time, but the arc lamp seems > significantly more cool than a Xenon and intolerable with a tungsten balanced > print. > > My firsat conclusion was/is that these old Arc Pageants just aren’t worth the > time/effort/operating expense now. It’s a shame because they are ‘classic’, > and sort of film-artifacts in themselves. But if the idea is to get a nice > celluloid image on a screen, they’re just a ball of frustration, and there > are better ways to spend your budgets of money and (especially) labor. > > After I junked the Pageant Arc, we inherited a pristine Xexon lamp Elmo, and > I thought we were set for the extra brightness I was hoping to get. But even > that was hardly a no-brainer in terms of bightness v. color-shift tradeoff. > So my second conclusion was that the best 16mm projection option was getting > the brightest tungsten lamp and fastest lens. I found you can use a brighter > lamp than the one speced for the projector if you’re careful, assuming > there’s one that fits… > > The auditorium I was using didn’t have that big a house, but did have a > fairly good sized screen, so the throw was pretty short, requiring a fairly > wide angle to match the image from the video projector in the booth, around > 27mm IIRC. I never was able to obtain an ‘optimum’ combo of 1) bright lamp, > 2) fast/wide lens 3) reliable projector mechanism that would be kind to the > film. Lenses were hard to find in the mid-late ‘00s when I was searching, and > I can’t imagine it’s any better now. > > So my final conclusion was the then-Frameworks-heresy that video projection > from a three-chip DLP (we managed to get a nice, big Panasonic ‘professional’ > model) from a DVD source was the best solution to both represent the films I > was showing the students well and preserve what was left of my mental and > physical health. Since even the SD digital sources looked fine (upconverted > to 720P by the players), I can only imagine any native HD would be even > better. Sure, nothing beats good projection of a fresh celluloid print, but > you don’t get fresh prints from FMC or MoMA – you get shifted color, lots of > scrathes, and plenty of ineptly made or now-separating tape splices that look > like crtap at best, if they don’t send the print off the sprockets or > collapse the loop, or just come apart and dump the film on the floor or in > some other way add even more damage to the print - keeping in mind that your > old 16mm projector no one within 500 miles can service has seen better days, > too. So (yes, reluctantly) each time I taught my class I wound up using more > video sources, only using 16mm for the films I felt I absolutely HAD to have > on the syllabus and weren’t available in any electronic form — most notably > ‘Christmas On Earth’. > > Of course ‘A Roll For Peter” falls into the 16mm only territory, and the > ionstitutional situation is different for a cinemateque than for the sort of > small college where I worked, so YMMV. There’s no getting around the fact > that 16mm projection is a real challenge. So rather than tear your hair out > trying to make it ‘excellent’, my been-there/done-that advice is just do the > best you can with the resources you have, and save your stress and energy for > the non-technological aspects of keeping ‘experimental cinema’ culture alive > and well in the age of Trumpism. > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing > listFrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.comhttps://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks > > > > _______________________________________________ > FrameWorks mailing list > FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com > https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks > >
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