I finally got the chance to transfer some of my old experimental music video's onto digital format this week!
I've been meaning to do it for ages but like everything else it got put off.Anyway,I've uploaded one of them to my page to check out for anyone who wants to do so.
I probably should explain a bit about it (and them).
Around 1997-1999 I was bored and wanting to try fresh things with my art and music. I managed to get hold of the cheapest 8mm camcorder you've ever seen (and I still have it today!). It was useless for doing anything remotely professional of course but it worked and I went pretty wild with it to begin with, filming anything and everything I could. When I realised my dreams of making something approaching a coherent and watchable short feature using this piece of equipment(your always nieve when you start out) were going to be very short lived, I started to think of other ways of using the footage I had shot. Now not having any real editing equipment to work with, I resorted to using my Betamax video recorder (which I still have in working order) and a scrappy VHS to do cut and paste edits with.The edits between shots were always a bit scrappy because they are when you have to use a pause button. The amount of times that the pause unfroze after 5 minutes or so and wound the tape back 4 seconds and I didn't realise and cut off the shot with the next edit were countless. In a desperate attempt to cover over these dodgy pause button edits (you could always see the jump and line) I started to refilm the footage, after it had been edited and then transfered that back. I realised it made it look a lot smoother but it also had the major side effect of reducing image quality and looking pretty poor in general.
It was at this point that I suddenly realised I didn't even care about the subject matter I had been including in these video's anyway and was about to give up until I started to watch the tapes I had done so far. I realised that the generation loss and degredation of video was inducing some pretty interesting effects on the screen that I hadn't intended and I thought maybe I could use them to my advantage with some really dark or ambient music that I was doing at the time.
That's when it all started really. I started to film,refilm and refilm the footage I had, sometimes up to 9 times over, all the time fucking with the contrast and brightness on my humble Tv set and zooming in further until people became unidenfiable shapes and colours bled and textures exploded. I relished the fact that when you filmed the tv you would get refresh rate scan lines appearing that weren't noticable when watching the Tv normally.Bits where things jumped and looked like the VCR had broken were all the better! I was trying stop motion animation using just a pause button and then intentionally ruining it in such a crude fashion that Ray Harry must have been turning in his grave, just in an attempt to create new textures and video disintegration. I really just wanted to try something that didn't rely on story, acting or special effects of any kind and was more to do with atmosphere, how people react to the unfamiliar and how music changes how you see certain visuals.
If I think about it now, it must have been in my head from somewhere and I think I can pretty much pinpoint the influence to
A:The camcorder footage James Cameron used in "Aliens", especially when they are just arriving at the Colony on LV426 for the first time.
B:A facination I've held with the effects of bleach and how it destroys 35mm film and fabric..
So,there you go,I'm sure I haven't really explained it properly at all.The video I've put up is to a track called "anomalies of gen 84" and it's taken from a video tape I thought I had lost.The only digital effects I've now added are simple intro/outro fades and at one point,some text. I didn't want to change what I had originally set out to do at the time.And it's 2 fingers up to George lucas too hehe,I don't like changing old work.
If your the kind of filmmaker who hates anything remotely unusual or abstract and must have everything acted and framed just so,then forget it. If however you didn't realise there was a genre of film making that went past Z-grade film making and didn't look back then you might be interested.
Here are a couple of grabs from the Video.
They don't really give an idea of what it looks like in motion but I thought I'd include them anyway.
If you check it out,I hope you enjoy the music and film.
It's at the link below if you want it. (Although it's a fairly hefty file 30mb)
Here
Oh,if you do check it can I recommend that you turn off the lights,watch it full screen and turn up the volume!
It's a little more immersive that way.
I've been meaning to do it for ages but like everything else it got put off.Anyway,I've uploaded one of them to my page to check out for anyone who wants to do so.
I probably should explain a bit about it (and them).
Around 1997-1999 I was bored and wanting to try fresh things with my art and music. I managed to get hold of the cheapest 8mm camcorder you've ever seen (and I still have it today!). It was useless for doing anything remotely professional of course but it worked and I went pretty wild with it to begin with, filming anything and everything I could. When I realised my dreams of making something approaching a coherent and watchable short feature using this piece of equipment(your always nieve when you start out) were going to be very short lived, I started to think of other ways of using the footage I had shot. Now not having any real editing equipment to work with, I resorted to using my Betamax video recorder (which I still have in working order) and a scrappy VHS to do cut and paste edits with.The edits between shots were always a bit scrappy because they are when you have to use a pause button. The amount of times that the pause unfroze after 5 minutes or so and wound the tape back 4 seconds and I didn't realise and cut off the shot with the next edit were countless. In a desperate attempt to cover over these dodgy pause button edits (you could always see the jump and line) I started to refilm the footage, after it had been edited and then transfered that back. I realised it made it look a lot smoother but it also had the major side effect of reducing image quality and looking pretty poor in general.
It was at this point that I suddenly realised I didn't even care about the subject matter I had been including in these video's anyway and was about to give up until I started to watch the tapes I had done so far. I realised that the generation loss and degredation of video was inducing some pretty interesting effects on the screen that I hadn't intended and I thought maybe I could use them to my advantage with some really dark or ambient music that I was doing at the time.
That's when it all started really. I started to film,refilm and refilm the footage I had, sometimes up to 9 times over, all the time fucking with the contrast and brightness on my humble Tv set and zooming in further until people became unidenfiable shapes and colours bled and textures exploded. I relished the fact that when you filmed the tv you would get refresh rate scan lines appearing that weren't noticable when watching the Tv normally.Bits where things jumped and looked like the VCR had broken were all the better! I was trying stop motion animation using just a pause button and then intentionally ruining it in such a crude fashion that Ray Harry must have been turning in his grave, just in an attempt to create new textures and video disintegration. I really just wanted to try something that didn't rely on story, acting or special effects of any kind and was more to do with atmosphere, how people react to the unfamiliar and how music changes how you see certain visuals.
If I think about it now, it must have been in my head from somewhere and I think I can pretty much pinpoint the influence to
A:The camcorder footage James Cameron used in "Aliens", especially when they are just arriving at the Colony on LV426 for the first time.
B:A facination I've held with the effects of bleach and how it destroys 35mm film and fabric..
So,there you go,I'm sure I haven't really explained it properly at all.The video I've put up is to a track called "anomalies of gen 84" and it's taken from a video tape I thought I had lost.The only digital effects I've now added are simple intro/outro fades and at one point,some text. I didn't want to change what I had originally set out to do at the time.And it's 2 fingers up to George lucas too hehe,I don't like changing old work.
If your the kind of filmmaker who hates anything remotely unusual or abstract and must have everything acted and framed just so,then forget it. If however you didn't realise there was a genre of film making that went past Z-grade film making and didn't look back then you might be interested.
Here are a couple of grabs from the Video.
They don't really give an idea of what it looks like in motion but I thought I'd include them anyway.
If you check it out,I hope you enjoy the music and film.
It's at the link below if you want it. (Although it's a fairly hefty file 30mb)
Here
Oh,if you do check it can I recommend that you turn off the lights,watch it full screen and turn up the volume!
It's a little more immersive that way.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
nice journal entry, interesting stuff.
Loved the vid - very dark, trippy, colourful. I'm pretty sure I saw it before on that VHS you sent me that went AWOL. You uploading any more?
Glad you like the first half of the script. To be honest I'm not entirely happy with it - too slow and talky - but it'll be fixed and overhauled very soon.
Just bought a JVC DV cam with AV input. woo! Now I can finally transfer VHS tapes and get my spycams and pixelvision cam working...
Also just bought a cool fish-eye lens, and two VHS tapes of ultra-rare underground short films... one of which contains that infra-red horror porn flick I keep raving about - 'The Operation'! Will get these recorded out as soon as I get em.
Oh, the joys (and crippling debts) of Ebay...