Zemni Moving Image

Author: Linda Mayoux

  • Principles 2

    figure drawing
    Animation principles
    animation process

    Animation is a process and the malleability of time is its primary material.

    ‘Time is what prevents everything from being present all at once’ Henri Bergson. The animator seeks to control at what pace, rhythm and direction things appear.

    “What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame” Norman McLaren, Computer Animation
    It is not the image, drawing or shape of each frame that matters in animation, rather it is the difference between the frames that generates the illusion of movement in animation.

    It is the animator’s ability to control and play with these intervals between frames that matters. It is important to think in terms of intervals, rates of change and flux, rather than thinking in terms of still images or compositions.

    Key Resources
    • You Tube
    • OCA Moving Image 1: Animation
    • Howard Wimshurst YouTube channel and tutored courses on Animator Guild
    • Proko – A channel which specializes in teaching observational figure drawing.
    • FilmMaker IQ – So much of Animation is linked to Film Making. This channel is a fantastic resource for film makers of all kinds.
    • Striving for animation – for those who are specifically focused at working in the Japanese Anime industry, this channel gives excellent advice and training.

    BOOKS

    • Animator’s survival kit – Widely considered to be the cornerstone book for animators
    • The Illusion of Life – This covers the principles of animation in a lot of depth as well as being a valuable insight into classic Disney-style animation and drawing.
    • Drawn to Life – Another good book for learning animation and drawing
    •  Framed Ink – A fantastic book on dynamic composition
    • Framed Perspective – A lot of people get hung up on perspective. If you are one of them, this book explains it very well and gets pretty advanced in book 2.
    •  Force: Dynamic life drawing for animators – This book helps you to understand gesture – getting energy into your drawings!
    • Directing the Story – Highly recommended. Explains very simply how to tell a story with drawings – it shows you that you don’t need to have mad drawing skills to be able to convey a compelling story.
    • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – For breaking bad drawing habits and learning to draw what you see.
    • Atlas of the Human Anatomy – contains good pictures and diagrams if you want a deep dive into anatomy and proportions.
    • Color and Light – an inspiring book which teaches all about colour and lighting for artists.

    Animation techniques

    Boil

    In traditional animation when an object, character or scene is at rest it is not still or motionless, it ‘boils’. Boiling is the term used to describe an animated effect in which the outlines or surface of an otherwise still character or object are made to wiggle or quiver in drawn animation. This is achieved by the looping together of several tracings of the same image (usually between 3 to 8 drawings). Boiling movement is used to sustain the illusion of movement in the animation overall and provide the impression of life or liveliness.

    Questions about boil

    • What ‘boil’ technique is used? Why do the lines move and what elements, if any are allowed to be still?
    • Does the pace of the boil emanate throughout?
    • What emotional or narrative purpose does the use of boiling serve? Does it make for a more lifelike effect or is the boil deployed humorously?
    Frame rate

    It is most common in animation to draw on twos, this is both because drawing on ones is double the amount of work and because working with twos lends a smoother appearance to slower actions, avoiding unnecessary jitter that can accompany shooting on ones. It is generally thought that working on twos adds a particular liveliness to a fast action rather than working on ones, which can make an action appear more leaden.

    Cycle, loops and layers

    Cycles can loop, oscillate, or even appear to be stationary. The use of cycles is often motivated by economy because it saves on drawing time. But the type of cycle that you use also make up the meaning of your film.

    Looped cycles are most commonly employed on particular layers within a frame. Sergei Eisenstein described this layered looping within a frame as ‘vertical montage’:
    “The simultaneous movement of a number of motifs advances through a succession of sequences, each motif having its own rate of compositional progressions, while being at the same time inseparable from the overall compositional progression as a whole” Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein Volume 2: Towards a Theory of Montage (London: BFI Publishing, 1991)

    • ‘Dumbland’ (2000), David Lynch purposely used cycles of animation to represent the breakdown of social structures depicted in his film.
    • Francis Alÿs, Jordan Wolfson and Owen Land work extensively using loops to communicate meaning.
    • Katie Dove’s Luna, 2013 https://vimeo.com/81492504
    Eye trace

    All animation is an exercise in applying the principle of ‘eye trace’. This is a principle of film- making in general but one that is essential for the illusion of animated movement to work. ‘In The Blink of an Eye’ by Walter Murch, (1995) sets out the principle that the viewer’s eyes will focus on a particular position on the screen and editors exploit this to allow less jarring edit when one shot follows another by ensuring that the action or image is located in the same part of the screen.This is also known as ‘registration’ in animation. A keen awareness of eye-trace allows the animator to play with the audience’s expectations and surprise them. The registration protocol was developed for hand-drawn animation to ensure that each subsequent drawing uses the same co-ordinates so that the illusion of movement between frames is not interrupted. In other animation the registration is looser and is intended as such to draw attention to the variation that ‘eye trace’ allows.

    Do more research on using photographs

    Technical note: resize and don’t overload software, particularly on iPad.

    Animation Steps and Principles

    Animation Steps
    12 cel animation principles

    from Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson:
    1)squash/stretch
    2) anticipation and leading attention, can have multiple levels
    3) Staging/exaggeration/sequencing to make things clear
    4) straightahead/pose to pose drawing
    5) Follow through and overlapping action
    6) slow in slow out
    7) arcs
    8) secondary action
    9) timing
    10) exaggeration
    11) solid drawing
    12) appeal

    Timing

    Norman McClaren

    Smooth versus flow

    Difference between fluid animation and smooth animation:

    • Smooth is about the frame rate – how many new frames occur per second of animation.
    • Flow is about the gesture of the drawings, the arcs, the drag and follow through of a movement.

    To get smooth animation, you just need to draw plenty of in-betweens until all of your animation is on 1s
    Flow is more complex to get right than smooth.

    Keyframing
    Stick animation
    https://youtu.be/ilrJVUn0QTw

    See also Ross Bollinger: pencilmation

    Howard Wimshurst

    Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

    https://youtu.be/ecoGkqpeq8w?list=PLwEV9MxoDbJz_aSQ_AQknpJhxO7KDBbxP

    Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

    https://youtu.be/ecoGkqpeq8w?list=PLwEV9MxoDbJz_aSQ_AQknpJhxO7KDBbxP

    issuu.com/laramoon/docs/f._thomas___o._johnston_-_the_illus

  • Animation Principles

    figure drawing
    Animation principles
    animation process

    Distorted movement
    The above systems of observing and capturing movement are useful for
    animators but only in so far as they inform the animation process rather than
    dictate it. If followed too closely these techniques severely limit the possibilities
    of animation. As noted above, it is not possible to transcribe the whole of the real
    world in an image. Choices must be made, things must be left out and short-cuts
    taken. The questions of what to leave out and what short-cuts to take are the key
    creative decisions in animation. The
    Consider two basic principles of animation: instability of line and
    exaggeration .
    As a general rule, to add life to a drawing, the identity of line should be unstable.
    The unstable line implies movement, breath, what we know to be life-like (see
    exercise 1 of Part 1). It follows from this that lines and shapes in animation
    should be expressive and dynamic. In addition, the ability to read movement
    works best if the movement is exaggerated. The most common form of this
    exaggeration is known as ‘squash and stretch’. This is where a shape is distorted
    to indicate the impact of gravity and energy. It is very important to remember
    that when distorting a shape or form, the volume should be maintained in order
    to maintain the illusion (continuity of volume). For example, if a round shape is to
    be elongated or stretched, as in the image below, it must also become thinner. If
    it is to be squashed then it must become wider.

    A particular application of ‘squash and stretch’ is known as ‘anticipation and
    overshoot’. When a movement is about to begin and the shape or object has
    been stationary prior to this, it is a convention of animated movement that the
    first frame of the movement actually moves in the opposite direction of the
    movement as a whole (the ball above is about to reach upwards but the first
    frame will have the ball compress downwards a little in anticipation of the
    upwards movement). Including a frame or two of anticipated movement adds to
    the illusion that the movement is ‘self-motivated’, it also allows the viewer’s eye
    to momentarily register that a movement is about to take place – so that it can
    be the point of focus and viewed without being missed.

    Animation is a process and the malleability of time is its primary material.

    ‘Time is what prevents everything from being present all at once’ Henri Bergson. The animator seeks to control at what pace, rhythm and direction things appear.

    “What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame” Norman McLaren, Computer Animation
    It is not the image, drawing or shape of each frame that matters in animation, rather it is the difference between the frames that generates the illusion of movement in animation.

    It is the animator’s ability to control and play with these intervals between frames that matters. It is important to think in terms of intervals, rates of change and flux, rather than thinking in terms of still images or compositions.

    Key Resources
    • You Tube
    • OCA Moving Image 1: Animation
    • Howard Wimshurst YouTube channel and tutored courses on Animator Guild
    • Proko – A channel which specializes in teaching observational figure drawing.
    • FilmMaker IQ – So much of Animation is linked to Film Making. This channel is a fantastic resource for film makers of all kinds.
    • Striving for animation – for those who are specifically focused at working in the Japanese Anime industry, this channel gives excellent advice and training.

    BOOKS

    • Animator’s survival kit – Widely considered to be the cornerstone book for animators
    • The Illusion of Life – This covers the principles of animation in a lot of depth as well as being a valuable insight into classic Disney-style animation and drawing.
    • Drawn to Life – Another good book for learning animation and drawing
    •  Framed Ink – A fantastic book on dynamic composition
    • Framed Perspective – A lot of people get hung up on perspective. If you are one of them, this book explains it very well and gets pretty advanced in book 2.
    •  Force: Dynamic life drawing for animators – This book helps you to understand gesture – getting energy into your drawings!
    • Directing the Story – Highly recommended. Explains very simply how to tell a story with drawings – it shows you that you don’t need to have mad drawing skills to be able to convey a compelling story.
    • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – For breaking bad drawing habits and learning to draw what you see.
    • Atlas of the Human Anatomy – contains good pictures and diagrams if you want a deep dive into anatomy and proportions.
    • Color and Light – an inspiring book which teaches all about colour and lighting for artists.

    Animation techniques

    Boil

    In traditional animation when an object, character or scene is at rest it is not still or motionless, it ‘boils’. Boiling is the term used to describe an animated effect in which the outlines or surface of an otherwise still character or object are made to wiggle or quiver in drawn animation. This is achieved by the looping together of several tracings of the same image (usually between 3 to 8 drawings). Boiling movement is used to sustain the illusion of movement in the animation overall and provide the impression of life or liveliness.

    Questions about boil

    • What ‘boil’ technique is used? Why do the lines move and what elements, if any are allowed to be still?
    • Does the pace of the boil emanate throughout?
    • What emotional or narrative purpose does the use of boiling serve? Does it make for a more lifelike effect or is the boil deployed humorously?
    Frame rate

    It is most common in animation to draw on twos, this is both because drawing on ones is double the amount of work and because working with twos lends a smoother appearance to slower actions, avoiding unnecessary jitter that can accompany shooting on ones. It is generally thought that working on twos adds a particular liveliness to a fast action rather than working on ones, which can make an action appear more leaden.

    Cycle, loops and layers

    Cycles can loop, oscillate, or even appear to be stationary. The use of cycles is often motivated by economy because it saves on drawing time. But the type of cycle that you use also make up the meaning of your film.

    Looped cycles are most commonly employed on particular layers within a frame. Sergei Eisenstein described this layered looping within a frame as ‘vertical montage’:
    “The simultaneous movement of a number of motifs advances through a succession of sequences, each motif having its own rate of compositional progressions, while being at the same time inseparable from the overall compositional progression as a whole” Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein Volume 2: Towards a Theory of Montage (London: BFI Publishing, 1991)

    • ‘Dumbland’ (2000), David Lynch purposely used cycles of animation to represent the breakdown of social structures depicted in his film.
    • Francis Alÿs, Jordan Wolfson and Owen Land work extensively using loops to communicate meaning.
    • Katie Dove’s Luna, 2013 https://vimeo.com/81492504
    Eye trace

    All animation is an exercise in applying the principle of ‘eye trace’. This is a principle of film- making in general but one that is essential for the illusion of animated movement to work. ‘In The Blink of an Eye’ by Walter Murch, (1995) sets out the principle that the viewer’s eyes will focus on a particular position on the screen and editors exploit this to allow less jarring edit when one shot follows another by ensuring that the action or image is located in the same part of the screen.This is also known as ‘registration’ in animation. A keen awareness of eye-trace allows the animator to play with the audience’s expectations and surprise them. The registration protocol was developed for hand-drawn animation to ensure that each subsequent drawing uses the same co-ordinates so that the illusion of movement between frames is not interrupted. In other animation the registration is looser and is intended as such to draw attention to the variation that ‘eye trace’ allows.

    Do more research on using photographs

    Technical note: resize and don’t overload software, particularly on iPad.

    Animation Steps and Principles

    Animation Steps
    12 cel animation principles

    from Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson:
    1)squash/stretch
    2) anticipation and leading attention, can have multiple levels
    3) Staging/exaggeration/sequencing to make things clear
    4) straightahead/pose to pose drawing
    5) Follow through and overlapping action
    6) slow in slow out
    7) arcs
    8) secondary action
    9) timing
    10) exaggeration
    11) solid drawing
    12) appeal

    Timing

    Norman McClaren

    Smooth versus flow

    Difference between fluid animation and smooth animation:

    • Smooth is about the frame rate – how many new frames occur per second of animation.
    • Flow is about the gesture of the drawings, the arcs, the drag and follow through of a movement.

    To get smooth animation, you just need to draw plenty of in-betweens until all of your animation is on 1s
    Flow is more complex to get right than smooth.

    Keyframing
    Stick animation
    https://youtu.be/ilrJVUn0QTw

    See also Ross Bollinger: pencilmation

    Howard Wimshurst

    Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

    https://youtu.be/ecoGkqpeq8w?list=PLwEV9MxoDbJz_aSQ_AQknpJhxO7KDBbxP

    Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

    https://youtu.be/ecoGkqpeq8w?list=PLwEV9MxoDbJz_aSQ_AQknpJhxO7KDBbxP

    issuu.com/laramoon/docs/f._thomas___o._johnston_-_the_illus

  • Len Lye

    Leonard Charles Huia Lye (1901 – 1980) was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture.
    see you tube comments on kaleidoscope.

    Animation mixing abstraction with manipulated video.
    Like an electric storm. Scratching on film.
    Uses video of a figure cutout on a background. This 9ne does littlevfor me.
    Beautiful abstract animation.4400 drawings. With music added later by another musician see You Tube commehts.
    With original music
    Very energetic Maori-influenced abstract video. See extensive comments on You Tube.

  • Peter Millard

    https://vimeo.com/petermillard

    https://lectureinprogress.com/journal/peter-millard

    Peter Millard is a London-based animator. He creates his absurdist animations on paper (all recycled) with oil bar and paint. Then he scans the large images in with a large scanner, sizes them up in After Effects before using Premiere Pro to edit. 

  • Mary Ellen Bute

    https://youtu.be/ySUtIgZU9uU

    Mary Ellen Bute (1906 – 1983) was a pioneer American film animator, producer, and director. Her specialty was visual music. While working in New York City between 1934 and 1953, Bute made fourteen short abstract musical films. Many of these were seen in regular movie theaters usually preceding a prestigious film.

    Filmography from Wikipedia

  • Norman McLaren

    An artist may be like someone who just hears music and then starts to dance

    Norman McLaren (1914 – 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound.

    Experiments in Motion

    Tempo: The basics of perception of linear movement: Shows the animator’s table with camera, switch and frame counter. Calibration marks and muscle memory. And shows the difference in perceptions of movement through increasing the number of equal spaced moves of a cut-out circle going from A to B. The greater the number of moves, the slower the movement. We interprete this differently depending on our understanding of context eg whether we think the circle is a large sun moving fast or a small golf ball moving slowly. Ends with interesting abacus type comparison of movements at 1-1000 moves between A and B.

    Synaesthesia and experiments in sound

    Experimental animation

    In this animation McLaren created the sounds through drawing on film. The tall vertical geometric shapes make it seem like a film about speed and impersonality of city life. Reminiscent of Mondrian paintings.

    Short films

    Cold war allegory. Story of two neighbours who kill each other in a fight about a flower that starts to grow along the fence between them.
    A Chairy Story: Amusing story of a man trying to sit on a chair. The chair refuses to be sat on until the chair has sat on the man. metaphor for the importance of equality and politeness and not taking power for granted.

  • Maya Deren

    https://youtu.be/98hchvAS0VY
    https://youtu.be/_o3jq73hv0s

    https://youtu.be/bRLJaueDWFI

    Meshes of the afternoon is a short experimental film directed by wife-and-husband team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. The film’s narrative is circular and repeats several motifs, including a flower on a long driveway, a key falling, a door unlocked, a knife in a loaf of bread, a mysterious Grim Reaper–like cloaked figure with a mirror for a face, a phone off the hook and an ocean. Through creative editing, distinct camera angles, and slow motion, the surrealist film depicts a world in which it is more and more difficult to catch reality.

    With the original soundtrack – no music.

    https://youtu.be/RuA9TPlwA7M
    Maya Deren , Marcel Duchamp – 1943
    https://youtu.be/KKvlzBY7vOI
    https://youtu.be/vUCgHIrFnqw
    Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) is a short, silent experimental film directed by Maya Deren. Like Deren’s previous work, A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), she explores the use of dance on film through the lens of commentary of societal norms, metamorphosis, and anthropomorphism. The film is notable for its disjointed storytelling and use of slow motion, freeze framing, and unique blend of stage dance and film.

  • Research 2.3 Visual Music

    Abstract Animation or Visual Music

    Abstract animation of music originated in early experiments to develop machines
    to link the musical scale with a corresponding scale of colour and light. The first of such machines was developed long before the advent of film, in 1730 by French mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel. His Ocular Harpsichord replaced the pitches of a harpsichord with projected coloured light.

    In the twentieth century abstract animation, also known as “Visual Music” and “Absolute Film” was pioneered by the animators Mary Ellen Bute, Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger. These artists developed methods and devices to translate visual imagery into and alongside sound.

    From the 1960s onwards, artists such as John Whitney (the father of computer
    animation) used computer technology to enable the creation of sound and
    complex, abstract moving images. Contemporary artists code and connect via
    midi and software programs such as Max MSP, Processing and Isadora to
    perform in real-time or to compose.

    Music and forms for Sequential structuring

    Abstract animators work on the basis that all processes when removed from their concrete context, become inherently universal and repeatable: ‘pure movement’. There can be said to be three key ‘movement strategies’ that govern the creation and structuring of abstract animation:
    evolution, deconstruction and patterned movement.

    When watching abstract animation work, expectations connected with viewing narrative work should be suspended. As no story arc is present and the structure is more like music than literature, the mind is able to wander. The viewer enters a different type of experience; perhaps more like that of watching clouds. Thoughts emerge and disappear.

    Len Lye for example recalled being enthralled with their fast, scurrying motion of clouds after a rain storm.

    “All of a sudden it hit me – if there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can’t there be figures of motion?”

    Len Lye, edited by Roger Horrocks and Wystan Curnow, Figures of Motion (1984)
    Auckland University Press, Oxford University Press.

    Mary Ellen Bute: Rhythm in Light

    Rhythm in Light (1934) was Mary Ellen Bute’s first completed film, appearing the same year as Schillinger’s discussion of synchronization in Experimental Cinema. It had been preceded by several studies and an earlier attempt to film
    Schillinger’s ideas using standard animation techniques that was abandoned because the imagery was too complex for standard production with hand animation. Rhythm in Light reflects this shift from the painterly and cel animation
    techniques employed by the absolute filmmakers (Ruttmann, Eggeling, Richter) in the 1920s in favour of the same procedures of abstracting from reality by using already abstract subjects employed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Running just under three minutes long, following the opening credits it proclaims itself a “A Pictorial Accompaniment in abstract forms” followed by the explanation that “It is a
    pioneer effort in a new art form – It is a modern artist’s impression of what goes on it the mind while listening to music.” The explanatory element in Bute’s film is
    a common feature of American abstract films of the 1930s produced for commercial distribution—an element also shared by Fischinger’s An Optical Poem (1936).

    https://youtu.be/ySUtIgZU9uU
    Harry Smith
    Oskar Fischinger, Wax Experiments (1921-1926)

    Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger (1900 – 1967) was a German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter, notable for creating abstract musical animation many decades before the appearance of computer graphics and music videos. He created special effects for Fritz Lang’s 1929 Woman in the Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket movies, and influenced Disney’s Fantasia. He made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases, many of which are in museums, galleries, and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which is now listed on the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress.

    https://vimeo.com/54587174

    Viking Eggeling
    Hans Richter
    https://youtu.be/FYPb8uIQENs
    https://youtu.be/bgFZKU6Xtz0
    https://youtu.be/E_s2szMVAr0
    https://youtu.be/lBsW6PRYyDg
    Walter Ruttman

    Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German cinematographer and film director, and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was the most important German representative of abstract experimental film. He is best known for directing the semi-documentary ‘city symphony’ silent film Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. His audio montage Wochenende (1930) is considered a major contribution in the development of audio plays.

    https://youtu.be/FYJnZ946L1c
    1921. This piece has soft modulated bold but flowing shapes that often evoke simple landscapes. The paper-like shapes, often with torn edges, are sometimes semi-lucent and sometimes merge into each other or divide. The dreamlike effect is enhanced by the flickering boil of the background.
    A much darker ‘night’ piece in blues, blacks and reds. Similar flowing shapes, but often jabbed and ivershadowed from the top by sharp triangles and oppressive ‘city’ squares and rectangles.
    https://youtu.be/pQC8V_LBGqk
    1925. A very rhythmic piece around danving black andcwhite lines – African in reference. With a sensuous blue section, and more violeht red and black.
    1924. A more geometric piece in blue/black, black/white and red. Mysterious shapes evocative of ancient pyramids and temples flow in and out superimposed, sometimes showing power, sometimes sensuously. Much of the effect js achieved by very subtle differences in colour, sharp/soft/ragges/translucent edge lines.
    1922 ‘the champion’ advertisement for Excelsior Reifen tyre company using abstract shapes with cartoon narrative.

  • Sound Design

    Foley sound

    Sound libraries

  • Stan Brakhage

    Stan Brakhage, (1933-2003) was an American non-narrative filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film.

    Brakhage’s films seek to reveal the universal, in particular exploring themes of birth, mortality, sexuality, and innocence. Influenced by German and Abstract Expressionism and his own visual impairment, he explores the nature of the ‘untutored eye’ where perception is freed from preconceptions of language. His work explores abstraction of communication between vision and neural responses ‘if I close my eyes I continue to see explosions of light’ that evoke memories and symbols of emotion.

    Brakhage’s work is experimental, producing many accidents of chance, most of which are rejected. Then creatively responding to selected discoveries of chance that ‘seem to respond to his soul’ to create a world where ‘nothing is let in that does not have life’. He explored a wide variety of formats, approaches and techniques that included handheld camerawork, painting directly onto celluloid film, fast cutting, in-camera editing, scratching on film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures. Inspired by art like the ‘unpainted paintings’ by snow on watercolour of Emile Nolde, he often worked directly on film in such a way that the outcome was not planned for example in Garden Path (2001).

    His films are for the most part silent except for the rhythmic whirring of the film projector.

    Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word.’

    How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heatwaves can that eye be?

    Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception.

    “Now let me say to you – simply as I can: the search for art is the most terrifying adventure imaginable: it is a search always into unexplored regions … all real adventures are purposeless… beyond any purposeful definition…”

    Stan Brakhage, The Brakhage Lectures (1972) Chicago: Good Lion

    https://walkerart.org/magazine/stan-brakhage-1999

    1950s

    Interim (1952)The Boy and the Sea (1953)Unglassed Windows Cast a Terrible Reflection (1953)Desistfilm (1954)The Extroadinary Child (1954)The Way to Shadow Garden (1954)In Between (1955)Reflections on Black (1955)Untitled film of Geoffrey Holder’s Wedding (1955)The Wonder Ring (1955)Gnir Rednow (1955-56)Centuries of June (1955-56)Flesh of Morning (1956)Nightcats (1956)Zone Moment (1956)Daybreak and White Eye (1957)Loving (1957)Anticipation of the Night (1958) Cat’s Cradle (1959)Sirius Remembered (1959)Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959)Window Water Baby Moving (1959)

    Interim (1952)
    The Wonder Ring (1955)
    Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959)
    Cat’s Cradle 1959

    An enigmatic video in red an black of a bedroom scene. Sequential video clips of:

    • a cat
    • a woman
    • a man (sometimes helping, sometimes sitting smoking.
    • illustration of what seems to be a flea
    • bottle of perfume and other ‘boudoir’ objects, curtains etc

    Ends in a sex scene. What does it all mean?

    https://youtu.be/VI41boFneqE
    Window Water Baby Moving (1959)

    Short film of the birth of Brakhage’s first child. This film is both graphic and beautiful while effecting each viewer a little differently. The colours in the film are especially striking. (Warning this film is not for the queazy).

    1960s

    Mr. Tompkins Inside Himself (1960)The Dead (1960)Thigh Line Lyre Triangular (1961)Films by Stan Brakhage: An Avant-Garde Home Movie (1961)Blue Moses (1962)Silent Sound Sense Stars Subotnick and Sender (1962)Sartre’s Nausea (1962-63)Mothlight (1963)Oh Life, A Woe Story, The A-Test News (1963) Dog Star Man and The Art of Vision (1961-5)Black Vision (1965)Fire of Waters (1965)Pasht (1965)Three Films: Blue White, Blood’s Tone, Vein (1965)Two: Creeley/McClure (1965)The Female Mystique and Spare Leaves (For Gordon) (1965)23rd Psalm Beach (1966-67)Eye Myth (1967)The Horseman, the Woman and the Moth (1968)Love Making (1968) Scenes from Under Childhood 1 1967 and 2 1970.

    https://youtu.be/jJl-Gpx6mAk
    Dog Star Man (1961-1964)

    Dog Star Man consists of four short silent films and a prelude, all directed by Stan Brakhage and featuring Jane Wodening. Brakhage began filming Dog Star Man after editing and completing Cat’s Cradle and as he also worked on The Dead. He started without a clear idea of what the project would be about at a time when he was questioning his distant relationship with his wife Jane at the time and experiencing visions, and contemplations of death and decay. The series was released during 1961 to 1964 and comprises a prelude and four parts. They were later re-edited into a much longer film, The Art of Vision 1965.

    Dog Star Man is considered a key moment in development of experimental film. Shot in 16mm, the film uses abstract imagery shot with variable exposure times and physical manipulation techniques such as painting directly on the film, scratching and punching holes into the film to produce specific visual effects.

    Described as a “cosmological epic” and “creation myth” Dog Star Man illustrates the odyssey of a bearded woodsman (Brakhage) climbing through a snow-covered mountain with his dog to chop down a tree. While doing so, he witnesses various mystical visions with various recurring imagery such as a woman, child, nature, and the cosmos while making his ascent. Dog Star Man There is a general structure to the narrative of the film cycle that comprises the prelude and four parts:

    • Prelude (1961, 26 minutes): Described by Brakhage as a “created dream”. It broadly presents a visualisation of the creation of the universe and contains many of the images, symbols and concepts that recur throughout the rest of the film series. Many instances of superimposed abstract images and what Brakhage calls “close-eyed vision”.
    • Part I (1962, 30 minutes) a more impressionistic film presenting the main narrative of the series: the woodsman struggling with his journey up the mountain along with his dog. One of the most important images is the mountain that Brakhage attempts to climb. Major parts of the film are in slow-motion; others, in time-lapse photography, speeding up motion.
    • Part II (1963, 5-7 minutes) Its central focus is on the birth of a child which was filmed on black and white film stock as a part of Brakhage’s home videos that he shot during the time; stylistically, the filming of childbirth in an almost documentary-like way. Two layers of imagery are imposed over one another, suggesting that the woodsman’s life is passing right before his eyes.
    • Part III (1964) Part IV (1964)
    Mothlight (1963)

    “Brakhage made Mothlight without a camera. He just pasted moth wings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through the printing machine.”

    Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971 (2016) Columbia University Press.

    In ‘Mothlight’ Brakhage invented his own technique of ‘collage animation’. The objects chosen were required to be thin and translucent, to permit the passage of light. He collected moth wings, flower petals and blades of grass and pressed them between two strips of 16mm splicing tape. The resulting assemblage was then contact printed at a lab to allow projection in a cinema.

    Eye Myth (1967)

    http://www.arteidolia.com/stan-brakhage-eye-myth-jim-leftwich/

    Scenes from Under Childhood is an attempt to imagine fetal seeing and hearing. “What we call ‘closed-eye vision’ is for me the template in the mind upon which all further formative envisionment is to occur” “The color red that dominates those early moments of the film has always struck me as the same color I see when I look at the sun with my eyes closed”. The film needed three thousand light changes in 40 minutes of filming and was pushing the edge of technological possibilities at a time when light was changing constantly across one, two, three, four rolls.

    Scenes from Under Childhood 1 1967
    Scenes from Under Childhood II 1970

    1970s

    The Weir-Falcon Saga (1970)The Machine of Eden (1970)Animals of Eden and After (1970)Wecht (1971)Angels (1971)Fox Fire Child Watch (1971)The Peaceable Kingdom (1971)Western History (1971)The Trip to Door (1971)The Presence (1972)Eye Myth Educational (1972)The Process (1972)The Riddle of Lumen (1972)The Shores of Phos: A Fable (1972)The Wold Shadow (1972)Gift (1973)The Women (1973)Aquarien (1974)Clancy (1974)Dominion (1974)Flight (1974)“He was born, he suffered, he died.” (1974)Hymn to Her (1974)Skein (1974)Sol (1974)Star Garden (1974)The Text of Light (1974)The Stars are Beautiful (1974)Short Films: 1975 (1975)Gadflies (1976)Sketches (1976)Window (1976)Trio (1976)Rembrandt, Etc., and Jane (1976)Desert (1976)Highs (1976)Airs (1976)Absence (1976)Short Films: 1976 (1976)The Dream, NYC, The Return, The Flower (1976)Tragoedia (1976)The Domain of the Moment (1977)The Governor (1977)Soldiers and Other Cosmic Objects (1977)Bird (1978)Burial Path (1978)Centre (1978)Nightmare Series (1978)Purity and After (1978)Sluice (1978)Thot-Fal’N (1978)@ (1979)Creation (1979)

    The Machine of Eden (1970)
    The Process (1972)
    The Text of Light (1974)
    Burial Path (1978) about forgetfulness and death-at-work. The third part of a trilogy, with ‘Sirius Remembered’ and ‘The Dead’.

    1980s

    https://youtu.be/ucktAy6b1bk
    Murder Psalm (1980) is composed of found footage. principalmente da immagini di found footage, in particolare, da un film educativo circa un bambino epilettico. Come Brakhage, si muove attraverso una varietà di impostazioni, la violenza e l’orrore sembrano esplodere da ogni lato. Il potere di trasformazione della luce in questo caso è abbandonato, esiliato dalle terribili illusioni e mezze verità della cultura di massa. Il suo opposto trasforma Toronto in una dimora di illuminazione stessa. Brakhage ‘canta’ la città con campi di luce il cui solo significato risiede nella propria esistenza, e che non potrebbe esistere altrove. Uno splendidamente orchestrato insieme folle di film scientifici e didattici, tv e cartoni animati elaborati e rigenerati in negativo costituiscono un mito che è la versione dostoevskiano, oscura e feroce del film di collage. Brakhage continua ad esplorare gli strati frastagliati delle identità, la strutturazione della memoria e del mito, gli assedi combattuti da un asfissiante individualità contro la coscienza culturale dominante.


    SHOW LESS

    The Garden of Earthly Delights 1981

    Dante Quartet 1987

    Then comes a moment when suddenly I can’t handle the language anymore, like I can’t read one more translation of The Divine Comedy, and suddenly I realize it’s in my eyes all the time, that I have a vision of Hell, I have even more necessary kind of a way of getting out of Hell, kind of a springboard in my thinking, closing my eyes and thinking what I’m seeing […] and also purgation, that I can go through the stages of purging the self, of trying to become pure, free of these ghastly visions, and then there is something that’s as close to Heaven as I would hope to aspire to, which I call “existence is song.” And that all of that was in my eyes all the time, backfiring all these years […] It’s lovely that I can have the language, but I also have a visual corollary of it, but that is a story.

    Quoted Wikipedia article

    The Dante Quartet is divided into four parts, titled Hell Itself, Hell Spit Flexion, Purgation and existence is song, respectively. Brakhage described the sections as follows:

    I made Hell Itself during the breakup with Jane [Brakhage] and the collapse of my whole life, so I got to know quite well the streaming of the hypnagogic that’s hellish. Now the body can not only feed back its sense of being in hell but also its getting out of hell, and Hell Spit Flexion shows the way out – it’s there as crowbar to lift one out of hell toward the transformatory state – purgatory. And finally there’s a fourth state that’s fleeting. I’ve called the last part existence is song quoting Rilke, because I don’t want to presume upon the after-life and call it “Heaven.”

    Quoted Wikipedia article

    The Dante Quartet took six years to produce.The eight-minute silent film was created by painting images directly onto  IMAX and Cinemascope 70mm and 35mm the film. Sometimes over previously photographed material that was then scraped away or otherwise manipulated. The paint was applied very thickly onto the film, up to half an inch thick. 

    Across the Universe: Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet

    Added music and sound by Michael Surber 2011

    https://youtu.be/uy_xxsvaCJA
    https://youtu.be/lEt-ymk3Lrw
    Visions in Meditation 2 (1989)
    Visions in Meditation 3 (1990) Plato’s Cave
    Visions in Meditation 4 (1990) D H Lawrence

    1990s

    Glaze of Cathexis 1990
    Black Ice (1994)
    Stellar (1993)
    Persian Series 1999 painted directly on film.
    Comingled Containers (1997)
    Untitled (For Marilyn) (1992)

    2000s

    Water for Mata (2000) Short, hand painted abstract Animation by Stan Brakhage, a Homage to Maya Deren.

    https://youtu.be/ucYGIqiL418