Wednesday, May 28, 2008

332

Today I cracked open those expensive rolls of 35mm motion picture film and did some tests for my photograms. A while back, I build a folding board with guides and groves to put 8 feet of either 16mm or 35mm film into that would allow you to put stuff on top of the film without it rolling off. I used this to cover the film with grain and nails and noodles then trigger a flash to expose the film, leaving the shadows of the objects on top of them. Don Hall lent me his flash meter so I could test my flash brightness. It ends up that I needed to move the flash pretty far back then filter it for two more stops before shooting with it. I could have used a third person as I needed to leave Eric by the flash (17 feet away in complete darkness but for the flashing lights of the motion detector, and don't ask me why there is a motion detector in our classroom). That left me to lay out the film, place stuff on top of it, then remove all the stuff, advance the film, make sure both sides are still well cover, and let it get exposed again. I repeated this process six times, it took nearly an hour. Worked at home all afternoon so the film is not yet developed.

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