A hallucinogenic look at clips from several old Science-Fiction film from the 1950s. I find that rendering the visuals to an unintelligible degree enhances the weirdness of the dialog.
Category Archives: art
pr. cl. (a CalArts optical printer film circa 1975-77)
I was a a student T.A. at Cal Arts 1975-1976, and I was tasked with instructing fellow students on the operation of the Optical Printer and the Oxberry Animation Stand (skills I acquired from the great Pat O’Neill, a mentor). In the course of teaching Optical Printer techniques, the class did little film experiments (which I used to keep in film cans that I labeled “pr. cl.”, my abbreviation for “printer class”). I left CalArts before the end of the 1976 academic year to work at Industrial Light & Magic on a film called Star Wars, and the classes were ably taken over by David Wilson. One of the students in the class, Rick Blanchard, ended up with the “little experiments” and created this film. Crazy, but I have no memory of how I ended up with a print of the film, which I had digitized a number of years ago, along with other films, and promptly forgot about.
CalArts optical printer, circa 1973:
CORONA MIX – cloud abstractions
Thanks to Covid-19, I haven’t been able to get out much and add to my time-lapse library. So, I stayed home and pointed my camera at the sky. Rather than present them straight, I added some simple blending effects and created this film, a memento of sheltering in place. Find beauty where you can.
exponential zoom loops
These loops were created from still photographs (there’s 12 in each loop), which are layered on top of each other with soft round mattes (you can perceive a donut shape to the mattes if you look hard enough). Then an “exponential scale” effect is applied. The result is an “infinite zoom” effect which never ends. Most confusing explanation ever.
QUAD-o-RAMA: Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956)
Ray Harryhausen’s least favorite film? I edited the film down to less than 1/2 of its original length and gave it the QUAD-o-RAMA treatment, now you can absorb the essence of the film in 10 minutes of cacophonous glory.
Displaced Clouds
Standard time lapse clouds with a simple displacement map effect applied. The displacement map is a blurred version of the same clouds with a horizontal and/or vertical shift. More of these experiments can be found in my opArt loop collection on Vimeo.
QUAD-o-RAMA: The Land Unknown (1957)
As an exercise, I re-edited this Lost World wannabe mini-epic film from my childhood. I was able to truncate the running time to about 25 minutes (from 78 minutes). Then I decided to divide the film into 4 equal parts and display them simultaneously: the miracle of QUAD-o-RAMA !! Now, you can absorb the essence of the film in about 6 minutes. You’re welcome !
My autobiographical collage film.
In My Head is a sort of autobiographical rumination, constructed of ephemera I have collected throughout my life (photographs, home movies, letters, writings, clips from favorite movies growing up, etc, whatever & whatnot … you know, stuff). It began with my postcard collection, then my movie poster collection, then it got sentimental & nostalgic. Although deeply personal, I must warn viewers that I am a very unreliable narrator.
Pretty abstract cloud loop
This is made up of 2 sunsets, looped and mirror imaged. The music excerpt “Alight Spiral Tap” is borrowed from “REWORK” an album of music by Philip Glass (mixed by Beck & others).
Hill 88, revisited
PHOTO ESSAY !! Hill 88, located in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, in Marin County just north of San Francisco, an old abandoned military radar monitoring base, stunning views on a stunning day: March 3rd, 2018.
Lapsed Time Images 