"Decasia": The Beauty of Film Decay 149
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But what about the copyright holders?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:But what about the copyright holders?! (Score:5, Informative)
If you are about the average age for a Slashdot reader I may well be older than your parents. Much of the material used had already passed into the public domain before *my* parents were born.
The film is *old.* There are no copyright holders.
KFG
Sonny Bono owns you (Score:1)
rest peacefully in their graves.
Copyright can be transferred in a will.
The film is *old.* There are no copyright holders.
Any film first published on or after January 1, 1923, is still under copyright. You can thank the late Sonny Bono for that [pineight.com].
I am aware of that (Score:1)
KFG
Ha.... at least its still viewable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Analog fails gracefully, digital fails catastrophically.
Re:Ha.... at least its still viewable. (Score:2)
Ummm...
One or Zero - your choice?
Soko
Re:Ha.... at least its still viewable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting thought- now randomize them. Or make them
One or Zero indeed.
Re:Ha.... at least its still viewable. (Score:2)
If the ones and zeros are uncompressed then I would suggest digital storage rather than analogue, but that is incredibly prohibitive given the bandwidth invovled.
I store important things in analog (Score:2)
I also know how long term untrustworthy digital storage is. In fact, I'm thinking of digitizing my SVHS wedding video and putting in on film stock as a "I'm sure it's okay" backup. I'd also make it into a DVD, but who knows how long that will last.
Re:I store important things in analog (Score:2)
That having, been said: the sooner, the better. The longer you wait, the more it will degrade.
As for the lifetime of film: I have some black and whites of my parents back in the fourties. and some nice stereo pictures of my dad with an unidentified girlfrend from before he met my mom (sometime in the 50's).
My 5.25" floppies form 1980, however are getting less and less likely to be readable. I don't think I have anything interesting on 8" floppies -- but if I do, I have no idea where to find a drive to read it.
p.s. letting your cat piss on your negatives is a bad idea (but even worse for floppy disks).
Speed and Fog (Score:2)
I can dig up the link if ur really interested..
Re:Ha.... at least its still viewable. (Score:1)
Decasia? (Score:2)
I don't know... (Score:1)
Re:I don't know... (Score:2)
Watching styrofoam packing peanuts degrade in acetone is also fun. You'd be surprised how many styrofoam peanuts can be crammed into a cup of acetone. If you have a large quantity of peanuts, it's a good way to shrink them down to a manageable size, even if the resulting glop smells evil, strips the oil off your fingers, and can't be flushed down the toilet. Actually I wish more people would do this instead of leaving them outside in loose trash bags where the wind can blow them all over the neighborhood.
Re:I don't know... (Score:2, Offtopic)
One day I was trying to get some paperwork finished so I could leave early, so I skipped lunch. About 2:00, I got kinda hungry. So I pulled a power supply out of a box by my desk and started munching down on the packing pellets. They're good; they taste kinda like rice cakes. Probably not the cleanest things in the world, but neither is that burger you got from McDoonald's for lunch.
One of the secretaries came into the cubicle farm looking for somebody, and she saw me sitting at my desk, typing away, calmly eating packing pellets. The poor woman was so nice, she thought I was having a nervous breakdown.
Digital too (Score:5, Funny)
NO CARRIER
Re:Digital too (Score:2)
(Our porn had 16 colors and took an hour to download! And we liked it! We'd all sit around and say to each other "At least it's not CGA!" or "At least it wasn't over xterm!" And don't even ask how long it took to find and download a GIF viewer!)
At any rate, this is an example of a different kind of deterioration. When was the last time any of you talked to your modem through a terminal emulator? Heck, when was the last time your modem connections didn't involve PPP?
Re:Digital too (Score:1)
Re:Digital too (Score:1)
EGA "prOn" (Score:1)
No, ASCII pr0n rocked! (Score:1)
deteriorating analog footage (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, that's not to say you can't make a film entirely from deteriorating digital footage [imdb.com].
--
Cool and all, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cool and all, but (Score:2)
There's hope. Beavis and Butthead's decaying animation style still lives on.
Re:Cool and all, but (Score:1)
Re:Cool and all, but (Score:2)
For some reason they didn't include the soundtrack music, a shame because it worked really well.
It's already been on at least once. I got sucked into it while channel flipping the other night.
Making something like this interesting is all about editing choices, and they made theirs brilliantly.
All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Yeah, but on DVD... (Score:2)
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (2+2!=2) (Score:2)
I'd be inclined to say "yes". This isn't just a random selection of decayed images (rtfa) [nytimes.com]. Bill Morrison went through hundred (thousands?) of hours of film to find stuff that had an evocative combination of image and decay. Adding random decay on top of that is only going to mask some of the beauty of the original collection.
It's rather like the difference between the mastery of Picasso (who did some very good realist painting in his early days) and the worst of the neo-impressionists who's work could honestly be one-upped by good quality fourth-graders.
On DVD... (Score:1)
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:2)
In that case, I'd get a film version. I have far more hope of my analog film archives outlasting me than I do of my CDs and DVDs of beeing readable in 20 years. I may not have an 8mm movie player, but I can at least view my dad's 1950's carnival movies frame by frame.
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:2)
And if you ever did want to see those films as films, it's not hard to find a player. And even if one day there are none to be found, it would take nothing more than a little mechanical skill and some trial and error to build one yourself. Now, to find or build a device to read digital media that hasn't been used in twenty years is a far more complicated task...
DennyK
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:2)
No one really has any idea how long optical media lasts, but how are 20 year old CDs holding up? The format is nearing a little over that old now. I've never really had a CD deteriorate on me, but my oldest ones are about ten years old now.
LDs hold up pretty well, provided they are well manufactured and aren't stored in a hot, humid place, but I think the same holds true for film.
Degrading art (Score:1)
Sure. With experimental stuff, sometimes that's the whole idea.
Case in point: Turntablist Christian Marclay once released a record with the inside sleeve lined with coarse sandpaper. Every time you pull it out, you get a "new" record.
The band Caroliner did one better - the outside cover had bits of gravel stuck to it.
Marclay: http://www.wnur.org/jazz/artists/marclay.christian /discog.html [wnur.org] / cliner_lp02.html [geocities.com]
Caroliner - I'm Armed With Quarts of Blood LP: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Paradise/1366
DVD in the works (Score:2)
I just wrote to Morrison's address on the contact page asking for a DVD release, and got this reply:
Re:All they offer is a VHS copy (Score:1)
But how could you tell?
What about AOTC? (Score:5, Funny)
Ya can't beat analog for interesting disintegration.
Oh, I don't know. This year's all-digitial Attack of the Clones provided for an interesting example of the distintegration of George Lucas' writing, directing and overall creativity...
Re:What about AOTC? (Score:1)
Besides, that bit where they went into the cloning machine was just like the funny bit from Galaxy Quest with the machinery and traps.
Re:What about AOTC? (Score:1)
Just further proof (Score:2)
Re:Just further proof (Score:2)
Re:Just further proof (Score:2)
The text (Score:3, Funny)
small versions of their images on Google cache (Score:3, Informative)
I don't get it... (Score:1)
But isn't this just spliced old film? i mean, don't get me wrong, or anything, i just don't see the art in this.
If it was just the defects, then i could see it - that would be something, "did i just see a ship, or was that the way the film degenerated?"
Oh well, back to staring at fractals in the dark.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Informative)
Like Peter Delpeut's Dutch "Lyrical Nitrate" a decade ago, Bill Morrison's U.S. experimental feature "Decasia" finds poetry in the abstract psychedelia created by deteriorating archival film stock. Lacking any obvious thematic or emotional arc, compilation pic succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score. Logical destinations are fest avant-garde sidebars and cinematheque schedules.
Project began as the film component to a multimedia stage extravaganza that premiered in Switzerland two years ago (for which the score, played by 55-piece Basel Sinfonietta, was commissioned). While it demands a suspension of normal narrative/human-interest expectations, "Decasia" can stand alone as a hallucinatory canvas of images -- most from the presound era, and all streaked, misted, darkened, speckled or tornado-disrupted by chemical decay. Much footage (Sufi dancers, far-flung landscapes, WW1 parachutists) has an ancient-ethnographic feel; midsection's silent slapstick and melodrama clips feel like they're from another planet. Pulsing din of Gordon's Glenn Branca-style soundtrack adds a curiously ominous dimension to parade of time-imperiled moving pictures. Biggest minus is outrageously overlong final credit scroll, which kills much good will at nearly seven slug-slow minutes.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it... (Score:2)
The decasia site disintegrated (Score:2)
+1 Redundant
eeewwww (Score:2, Funny)
Re:eeewwww (Score:2)
Well, if someone had eaten their eggs a few decades ago, the resulting film couldn't have been taken, right?
So what are you waiting for, go eat your eggs already!
Deteriorating Web Servers (Score:2)
Hey cool! (Score:5, Funny)
Weird, but oddly appealing (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, in the same way everyone (go on, admit it) slows down to take a look at a major road accident you just can't resist seeing how bad it really is.
I, for one will be tuning into Sundance when it airs - just for the pure morbid curiousity.
Re:Weird, but oddly appealing (Score:3, Insightful)
People attempt to do something interesting and experimental and observe the results. Most of the time the results aren't great, but sometimes they are. You don't know until you try.
Most art is just visual hacking. Once you realize this it's easy to judge something on its merits and see through any pretense or bullshit that the artist has of himself. You'll also become less patient of prima donnas and have more respect for a modest, yet talented, artist.
music (Score:1)
lots of music today not only samples from old tracks and leaves the imperfections and degenerations intact (hissing, popping), but goes one step further and purposefully gives a track this sound.
it's no more or less valid, it's just an aesthetic. it has nothing to do with the actual disintegration of the clip (re your accident remark), but rather with the feelings that the aesthetic can evoke: nostalgia, amoung others. of course the danger is in it becoming cliche (which, imho, it has), and you end up with a track or film trying so damn hard to be meaningful that it comes off phony. ie, peter jackson's desperate attempts to prove LOTR's epic nature with prolonged scenery shots in the face of a story that's epic and meaningful enough.
Re:Weird, but oddly appealing (Score:1)
In the 60's you just took LSD instead to see such. His supply must have run out.
DVD Desintegration? (Score:2)
I seriously doubt that a lasting disc will be adopted so long as the MPAA controls the standard, and they do "0\/\/N$ j0."
Re:DVD Desintegration? (Score:1)
Rentals....? (Score:2)
Rentels are worse.
But worst of has to be the /. audience spelling mistakes.
Re:Rentals....? (Score:2)
I can live with the spelling mistakes. It's the damn omitted words that drive me insane!
UGH! Who was the camera man? (Score:2)
So the question is.. (Score:4, Funny)
'analog', bleh... (Score:2)
To me, analog means something like a non-discrete signal, like in a VCR or radio or electric guitar. Not anything non-computerized
Re:'analog', bleh... (Score:1)
Main Entry: an*a*log
Pronunciation: 'a-n&l-"og, -"äg
Function: adjective
Date: 1948
1 : of, relating to, or being an analogue
2 a : of, relating to, or being a mechanism in which data is represented by continuously variable physical quantities
b : of or relating to an analog computer
c : being a timepiece having hour and minute hands
Re:'analog', bleh... (Score:1)
Well, yes, in one strict sense you can say that light is a quantum, and hence is discreet. But really, its also a wave (is a wave discreet? nah...) as well. And, for example, the image in the emulsion of the film is indeed made of discrete silver halide crystals, but those cystals however aren't created in exact sizes to zero tolerance in variation. So strictly its non-conclusive.
I think that non-analog can be defined as a logic-based state, and in that sense then projecting images from film created by the traditional chemical processes would be defined analog.
-XRe:'analog', bleh... (Score:1)
The music is amazing too (Score:3, Informative)
The composer of the score, Michael Gordon, is one of my favorite living American composers, and this film is the perfect vehicle for his fascinating, gritty music.
For more info on him and his new music organization Bang On A Can, see their site here [bangonacan.com].
The soundtrack to the film is available from Cantaloupe [cantaloupemusic.com], a very interesting label for contemporary music.
I saw this years ago.. (Score:1)
Decomposing nitrates (Score:4, Funny)
-psy
haiku (Score:1)
One of analog's biggest
advantages: No!
Motive... (Score:1)
I have some of that stuff :) (Score:2, Interesting)
I think I have about 100 feet of it left. It's safely (?) stored in my Michigan basement (no, not a dirt floor) which is ~68 deg.F. 24/7/365.
My father was a professional photographer; it's left over from his days of filming Generals and Celebrities in the LA area in the 40s. I was in a band when I found it - it provided the best promo shots we ever got when used with proper flash and a remote shutter switch with a winder.
With the dangers involved, it's not stored near anything flammable, and I will put some back into service soon (new darkroom in the next six months) - it beats the crap outta the Kodak offerings for B/W, IMHO.
Caveat: I'd guess it's fastest (pushed) speed is ASA 20 :(
Forgot to say what brand... (Score:1)
Wait a moment... (Score:1)
-Jason
Yes you can't beat me (Score:1)
Ignorance of copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it offensive how casual industry "insiders" tend to be about copyright violations, while they simultaneously condemn audience members for time- or space-shifting their own works.
Hopefully reality will catch up to them soon enough - the only available subject for the next "Decasia" will be the white noise of encrypted video streams, their keys long lost in obsolete trusted playback hardware...
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Many films are no longer copywrited. Even more are totally lost. There are great film archives, several stories high, with rows upon rows of film canisters, mostly unmarked. If you open one up you can find a reel of flim, or you can find half a reel of film, the rest eaten away by insects living in the canister. Sometimes you open a film canister and find nothing but dust, the film deteriorated into a powdery and flammable substance.
Many of these old films are on silver nitrate film. Silver Nitrate isn't used anymore because of it's tendancy to burn down theaters when it catches fire when run through a hot projector.
Most of these films have no owners claiming them, no identifying pieces of information. The bits of film the bill morrison restored and edited into "decasia" are not sequences from old hollywood films. They are from documentaries, they are from personal films. And some of them look like nothing more than weird splotchy flashing covers.
I know this is slashdot, but not everything equates to copyrights.
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:1)
BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!
The Stanford Theatre [swixo.com] still shows nitrate films. Of course, they had to get a specially designed projection booth and a fire permit.
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
(I dislike strong copyright as much as anyone else, I just think so much of the conduct the RIAA/MPAA/FCC are pounding on is just as harmless as gathering these old film clips...)
I'm sure if movie studios had thought of selling rights to post-decay film prints, they would all have gone to the highest bidder already
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:2)
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:2, Informative)
I was shocked that the New York Times Mangzine article about this film neglected to mention any of the copyright issues. Very few (no?) motion pictures have yet entered the public domain.
Prior to 1978, copyrights didn't last nearly as long as they do now. Without renewals, copyright protection only lasted 28 years [copyright.gov]. Surely, there's plenty of films in the public domain from the 1910's and 1920's.
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:2)
Re:Ignorance of copyright (Score:2)
Bill Morrison showed this at my school. (Score:2, Interesting)
For what it's worth, here's what I wrote about it:
Film Today
Decasia
Decay to many people is a sad thing. Bill Morrison's film shows it as more of a thing of beauty. It is kind of an odd viewpoint, mixing the horror of films lost with the beauty of the method that destroys them. In the past I've heard stories of people opening film canisters to find nothing but dust, or of films being harvested for the silver. It's almost painful to think of. But Morrison was on a hunt to find these decayed films. It must be an odd conflict to feel the loss of the old imagery but to be happier because of that that destroyed it. There is certainly a beauty in decay, similar to that which is demonstrated in fractals and other "chaos theory" art. Decasia simply more related to film itself.
Some of the images carried strange moods. The near introductory footage of the machines processing the film was very much like someone telling the story of film. And it was followed closely by the most decayed footage in Decasia, as previously mentioned in class; the scene with the nuns was most unsettling. Aside from the mood created by the music, the rotation of the contrast and the flashing of the light made the whole scene look like nuns chasing children through an apocalyptic war zone. I think also that anytime you have a nun moving in slow motion that you can scare people.
I think Decasia was an unusual film in that Morrison intended to create a hypnotic state. A state that isn't entirely uncommon in experimental films, but often unwanted. I did like the way he made the "story" rather ambiguous, as many artistic films use rather vague methods to convey a more specific storyline, and then usually fail to do so. Decasia is able to succeed without doing anything specific.
and if you love this... (Score:2)
Don't go for the sequels or the DVD interview w/ the director, though -- you've been warned.
i don't see the point (Score:1)
Re:i don't see the point (Score:2, Insightful)
To translate it to a level of geek understanding, know anything about chaos theory? fractals? the art of a natural process? There is beauty in the way a chemically built image dies. The film is quite hypnotic. And anyone who says it can be done digitally has never seen truly decayed film.
It's like saying, Film a waterfall? can't they just use special effects to make fake water? I know they just want to test nature, and see if water actually falls.
The only drawback... (Score:2)
Mini Review and Commentary (Score:2)
One of the main responses from the
My own response was that this was a love affair with a medium. It was perhaps a little self-indulgent and a larger effort than the kernel of inspiration afforded, but one worth experiencing nonetheless. I found the soundtrack to only complement the images about half the time; otherwise, it was a little oppressive and took attention away from the images. This is most likely a result of film following music.
While the execution of the vision may have been a little repetitive, the breadth of the source material saves the concept. Many of the images are of what we would consider mundane activities from our highly-stimulated postmodern sensibilities, but I think that was in part, "the point".
When film was new, people took record of everyday things because the whole process was fascinating and those everyday images were all people knew at the time. They hadn't had their perspectives bombarded with excessive post-processing yet; they hadn't lost the specialness of the moment. Amidst the quotidian scenes, we have birth, illness, death and other bigger events. Life can be comprised by the occasional exciting events, but there is a lot of mundanity in-between.
So, with "images as life" as a possible theme, the decay of image is a useful visual metaphor for the inevitable decay of life. You can almost see the people in the scenes as trying to reach out from the past, from the midst of their loss with a message. Call it "Carpe Diem", call it "Appreciate the Now". Implicit in the choice of medium (and I believe the marketing decision to provide only VHS copies backs this up) is the final reminder that how you view things (read life) has consequences.
Some facts for a change... (Score:3, Informative)
Last Post! (Score:1)
This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need.
A special circuit in the machine called "critical detector" senses the
operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he/she is to use the
machine. The "critical detector" then creates a malfunction proportional
to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence
only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine
may cause it to malfunction. They belong to the same union. Keep cool
and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.
See also: flog(1), tm(1)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Re:Fight Entropy!!! (Score:1)
Re:Fight Entropy!!! (Score:2)
iFgth Etnrop!y ! giFth tErno!py ! giFt htrEno!p y!
--- Well maybe not...
(my karma-whore hacker method of modding up a funny AC post)