Continued Update

While posts have been few and far between, the action continues. Since the last post, I have acquired six 100' rolls to be used in practice for mastering this sweet-looking film camera of mine. Glenn Shenk, the savior, has assisted me in whatever way he can, ranging from offering me a glass of ice water after traveling 100 miles in an unconditioned car to showing the simplicities of loading film into a camera. Suffice to say, it's been an experience.

I have shot an assortment of images on the Bolex ranging from very bright to very dark. I know that very bright images won't necessarily look good and vice versa. But I'll know how it will look, which is a lesson in and of itself. I am following the method of knowing the extremes in order to form a moderate, rational final result.

The next portion of this project will capture a particular image onto both film and video at the same time, which will then be observed by both Brett and myself. Hopefully, from this experiment, we can spot specific similarities and differences between the two mediums and also conclude which one looks "better" (although I don't particularly like this word, simply because it warrants a certain human bias). I have another appointment with Glenn early this week, where I will take my film over to the lab where it will be processed for free. He'll show me how it works, what can go wrong, etc. Pretty sweet.



Branching from this project and moving to broader concepts of this course, I found this article
that discusses an old concept applied to a new technology. Everyone knows of the 3-D movement of the 1950s in cinema theaters. Enticknap talks briefly about 3-D technology in film, stating, "...two cameras [in a cinema theater] are mounted with their lenses roughly the same distance apart as human eyes, in order to expose a 'left eye' and 'right eye' image. The resulting films are then projected simultaneously through polarising filters while viewers wear spectacles which enable the human brain to perceive the two images as originating separately through the left and right eyes, thus reproducing the illusion of a three-dimensional image" (58).

Yes yes, a very long and overly detailed description. I am sure that most of us reading this knew how 3-D works, but it never hurts to just throw it out there. So, anyway between the years of 1953-1954, 3-D was used in several films from major companies (Warner Bros. and MGM). The projects Enticknap mentions are Kiss Me Kate and Dial 'M' For Murder. But the new technology didn't work out for mostly technical difficulties (i.e. if one film projector broke, the entire film had to stop until repairs could be made). Well, now the technology is applied to digital technology. The articles says:

"Post-production remains the only part of the 3D movie chain that hasn’t improved...Quantel's beta software may help change that. The Quantel Pablo, a digital-intermediate platform, was designed with dual output so customers could want to output an HD and SD version of the same DI. The idea that that dual-output could also be used to handle the left eye and right eye of a 3D image got its start during conversations between Quantel senior product specialist Milton Adamou and Marty Sadoff, VP of 3D digital at Digital Jungle Post Production in Hollywood."

Anyone ready to put the 3-D glasses back on? They always hurt my nose.