Another Look at Scratch Film Junkies

After having worked in cameraless filmmaking for the past six weeks or so, I certainly have a new found respect for those who choose this style as a medium.  My partner and I put a lot of time, thought, and effort into our Elements project, and that was only one minute long.  Also, our film had a theme, a coherent idea, and two very short animation sequences, but there wasn't a real story involved.  Some of the other cameraless films we saw in class had a story of sorts.  What comes to mind was a film we watched where in a part of it it just looked like scratching on black leader, a few lines, but they seemed to move, to interact, and to live.  I can't really even fathom how long something like that would take, with the planning, and the execution.  Not to mention the mistakes that come with the territory and cannot be erased but simply re-done.

By knowing what goes into something a person develops a closer relationship with it, and a greater understanding and appreciation.  I felt really close to my project when it was projected.  I had never seen it in that form before.  I had seen it so many times as simply a strip of film with paint, magazine clippings, and scratches all over it, but to see it projected for that first time, and to see what all of those elements looked like projected at 18 frames per second was truly amazing.  As the film flew through the projector certain things looked familiar, but were in a different form.  I remember thinking, "Wow, I didn't know it would quite look like that, but I think I like it!"

Whether or not thinking about the process of how a film was made while watching it is a good idea, or intended by the filmmaker, it is something as film students we have learned to do.  The processes of creating the images that I see on these Scratch Film Junkies clips are burned into my brain, and I find myself wondering "what types of paint did they use to get that affect?" or "I wish I had thought of that technique, it would have worked perfectly in my project!"

Another thing I find interesting about these Scratch Film Junkies clips online is that once the film is imported into the computer, the filmmaker has the ability to slow things down and take a look at things more carefully.  This is something I would certainly like to do with my own film.  In class we were able to view our film twice, but I simply could not get enough of it.  It went by too quickly, and I had worked so long and hard on it, I wanted it to last longer.  Now that we have recorded it on video, I can't wait to import it and slow it down, and see what the film looks like slowed down so I, and hopefully another audience, can look more closely at the painstaking details on individual frames.

As a whole, I don't think the general public knows the amount of time, effort, and manpower that goes into making movies, let them be feature length or a one minute experimental done in a film school class.