Cameraless Filmmaking

Cameraless filmmaking is, like almost all of the projects from these classes, something very new to me. Only this time, for real guys, it’s like SUPER new to me. I can’t say I’ve ever really thought that much about cameraless filmmaking, and the first time I did was probably when I saw Mothlight in 201. My initial reaction to Brakhage? “What the FUCK. A little child could make this film.” Little did I know, I was the child. Because. You know. Naive. 

So when it finally came time for me to make my own cameraless film I ended up learning a lot. Magazine transfer was particularly interesting because it led me to the source of all those extreme close-ups of comic books and magazines and newspapers that looked like a design of colored dots. It was also really cool to create the animation with a printer and template. My only gripe is that the template pdf file online was bigger than the printed template on which the 16mm film stock lay. It wasn’t a big hassle, but I did have to finagle the scale of the online template by a trial and error “eyeballin’ it” system. But in the end it was really cool to create an animation on the computer and print it directly to the film stock. Lastly, transferring the films to video was a neat experience. I had no idea that simply setting up a camera directly next to the projector would result in such a flawless transfer.