8mm movies on iPhone !!!!!!!!!

[carllooper]

That's great.

So I wonder what we can now say about these two excellent examples. Now one's critical (or not so critical) approach to these things need not be in relation to some notion of use value (in some envisaged project) but in relation to what effects are being created here.

These effects are based on theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is rule based, or otherwise known as the "Laws of Physics". Once a rule (or "Law") has been derived it can be implemented as an algorithm in software. An algorithm is a rule. Or a law.

But while a rule might be of interest, on it's own terms, to a mathematician, we're probably more interested in the relationship between the rule and what it purports to describe: what we otherwise see or perceive in experimental setups.

Lets have a look at the colour one first, called "Oui Oui" provided by Mana:

http://vimeo.com/84698887

Here we see the effect appears to be aiming at what we would get from a lens in which chromatic distortion occured: where the colours refract at different angles with respect to a glass interface (as Newton explored with prisms) and the lens has not taken this into account.

One thing that struck me as odd is that there's no variation in the displacement of the colours between the centre of the image and the perimeter. In an experimental setup you would see less distortion towards the centre of the image (colours more integrated) and towards the perimeter of the image the colours would get progressively more displaced from each other.

An alternative might be that the effect aims at describing some other form of chromatic distortion, perhaps misalligned chips in a 3 chip camera?

Of course, without knowing what the effect is trying to describe we're in a somewhat handicapped position.

Perhaps it's not trying to describe some physical effect at all. It might be inspired by effects such as chromatic distortion but goes forward with it's own version of such a thing. We recognise it's inspiration rather than the result - we see it is inspired by the effects produced by certain lenses (or misallignments in offset printing?), but develops a chromatic distortion algorithm at a tangent to those produced by it's inspiration, whether for economic reasons or some other reason.

We can also read it as representing such effects, if not in terms of the ideal algorithm, in terms of the idea of such - that such an ideal algorithm, if only in principle, is entirely feasible. Indeed such algorithms do exist - they are used by lens manufacturers to design lenses in which chromatic distortion is suppressed.


This one is interesting, by jpolzfuss, called "Berlin 2014".

https://vimeo.com/84584129

This one is more disturbing because the algorithms used are much closer to physical ones. There does not appear to be anyway of distinguishing between this and an actual film transfer. We know from the context that it's done on an iphone app (unless jpolzfuss is fooling us of course).

What is disturbing is that if this effect is an intention (whichever way you create it) then why not use a digital camera and the app rather than a film and transfer? That seems to be the implicit logical outcome. However it presupposes the effect as the intention. But sometimes it can be the intention.

When using the app it is the content of the image that is usually the more important component and the effect is more like a particular polish applied to the content. It will be the subject matter of the image, rather than the polish, which is of more import to the user of the app (and the addressee). For example, the mother of my daughter uses effects like this all the time, but the subject matter is our daughter. She wouldn't be browsing the net for arbitrary images to which to apply the effect, and posting that to facebook. She is posting pictures of our daughter.

On the other hand if the content of the image was the only concern why use the app? There must be an actual interest in the effect and I know that interest is not along the lines of the physical processes the algorithms describe. But this is where it's most interesting (if only to me). The difference between these two things. Between physical effects and digital effects describing physical effects.

For my daughter its another story - the effect is more interesting than the subject matter - there's a delight in distorting the subject matter whatever it is, although the subject matter does tend to remain familiar. Her humour is often in maintaining knowledge of who is being distorted: "Hey Dad, have a look at Mum".

And when I look I'm subsequently thrown into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

Carl

[Tscan]

I've been playing with this app as well as Vision3 in the last week. Trust me they're not all that comparable. It does a good job emulating a lot of things we have all seen on film at one point or another, but to me it all still look like videoish effects filters. A lot more so when recording with it. The best thing about real S8 or film in general, is that any camera effect, happy accident or aesthetic, never looks fake, ever. As for the app, the recordings don't enlarge well at all. And between trying to record with a tablet/phone and jello shutter, I don't see making any real use of it personally.

PS- my 3yr old daughter got a real kick out of recording herself with the app and flipping through all of the filters. Her favorite was the "pink" filter.

[Mana]

Honestly seeing my video on the computer full screen, I thought it was quite distracting. But I will use it for what it's probably best for, social media! I posted it to my surfboard Facebook page and the first comment was, "Who made this video?!" I guess the Hipstermatic effect is still in.

[carllooper]

I've been playing with this app as well as Vision3 in the last week. Trust me they're not all that comparable. It does a good job emulating a lot of things we have all seen on film at one point or another, but to me it all still look like videoish effects filters. A lot more so when recording with it. The best thing about real S8 or film in general, is that any camera effect, happy accident or aesthetic, never looks fake, ever. As for the app, the recordings don't enlarge well at all. And between trying to record with a tablet/phone and jello shutter, I don't see making any real use of it personally.

PS- my 3yr old daughter got a real kick out of recording herself with the app and flipping through all of the filters. Her favorite was the "pink" filter.

Yes, but we don't need to approach it from the point of view of whether we'd ever use it or not. We can ask ourselves, even if we had a perfect digital filter, with accurate controls for all of the conceivable parameters - would we use it?

I suspect for many the answer won't change. And I think that's because there is more to what we're doing in film than just how it looks (or how it looks when transferred to video). For example, there is also how it looks when projected on a film projector! The apps don't help us in anyway there!

If we apply the criteria of "look" to the digital filter it's because that's all the filter seems to be interested in.

A loaded question is this: if we had two different ways of doing something, that produced exactly the same look, might we be persuaded to select one method over the other, be it on economic and/or philosophical grounds?

It depends on what we mean by look. By "look" do we mean that look we might otherwise isolate, in a black box, with a particular effect on the screen, about which we pretend we know nothing more, and also require our audiences to occupy?

For it is only in this context we can speak of indistinguishable effects. Indeed the entire concept of indistinguishable effects relies on such a deliberately blinded context.

If by "look" we mean that look capable of being appreciating were the effect in terms of a bigger picture: a bigger "look" beyond the boundaries of the screen in a box, the indistinguishability or "sameness" of the two effects breaks down. We see the difference between the effects and we're attracted to one or the other, or both, in different ways, for different reasons.

C

[carllooper]

I recall this image on the front cover of a magazine in 1984, with the provocative title: This Photo Is Fake



But it's not fake. It's real: it's is a real computer generated image. It looks like a photograph (more so back in 1984 than now). The philosophical question posed by idealists such as Lev Manovich, is to suggest that there is no difference between a photograph (the art of the footprint as he puts it) and a computer generated image. That once two images are in the digital domain, whether originating photographically or algorithmically, they are both made of pixels - they are both the same thing.

But with this I would disagree. The images are not created from pixels. It is the pixels which are created from an image. In the case of photography the image is that mediated by a camera. In the case of computer generated images, the image is created through the imagination of a graphic artist using particular software and algorithms. The images, in either case, end up pixels. They don't start out as pixels. They start out as images (whether a possible image or an actual one). And we can see that image. We don't see the pixels (unless we zoom in on such of course).

Once we know this difference we can appreciate each image in different ways. Indeed the only way to properly appreciate the computer generated image is to know it was computer generated. Were it actually a photograph there'd be nothing there to sing and dance about. Yet to appreciate the intent of the image, as photographic-like, we would have to suspend knowledge that it was computer generated. For how can we ask ourselves if it looks like a photograph if we already know it isn't a photograph? We can pretend - we can pretend we don't know how it was created. We create a what-if scenario. What if we didn't know. And we're capable of doing that. But only so far. If we were capable of going all the way (using some technique of willful amnesia) we'd just end up seeing an otherwise unremarkable photograph of billiard balls. And any appreciation of the fact that it's not a photograph would vanish.

Any effort to put blinders on perception is ultimately a dead end.

C

[Mana]

Another one... https://vimeo.com/84839074

[Tscan]

Another one... https://vimeo.com/84839074

And here's the real thing for some contrast... This was some V3 50D that was posted on Cinematography.com
http://vimeo.com/83774924

[Mana]

Yes, thats some amazing footage! I'm not trying to compare this app with the film we all love, but its fun to use it as a tool.

[brimrod]

I was blown away by Luis-Villar's fashion films shot in super 8.

I just got done watching Pro8mm's demo reel. The stuff they use looks positively amateurish in comparison.

[carllooper]

I was blown away by Luis-Villar's fashion films shot in super 8.

I just got done watching Pro8mm's demo reel. The stuff they use looks positively amateurish in comparison.

Yeah, Luis-Villar's work is excellent. Well, apart from the fact that it's fashion film ...

The use of the word "amateurish" to mean "badly done" is something we all take for granted these days but it actually has it's roots in a push by Hollywood, in the early days of cinema, to demonise independant film making. Before then the term "amateur" meant someone who worked for reasons other than money, rather than "bad filmmaker". By way of example, Einstein was an amateur physicist when he wrote his Theory of Relativity. It was out of curiosity that he came up with the theory. To put it another way the theory wasn't what his day job was paying him to do. Indeed much of the major work done in physics has been done by the amateur physicist - out of pure curiosity. The work of amateurs, once upon a time, was held in very high regard. Einstein was by no means an exception.

To put it another way, although it sounds completely wrong today, we can properly say that Einstein's Theory of Relativity is amateurish.

In the early twentieth century Hollywood was spooked by the idea of independant filmmakers possibly taking audiences away from their cinemas, and a concerted effort was made to frame the amateur filmmaker as making bad films. So effective was Hollywood's paranoic program at the time that the term "amateur" eventually came to mean what we today assume by that word. Hollywood was actually taking their cues from conflicts in the photographic industry where the professional photographer was up against the work being done by the amateur photographer. They were worried about losing business because of amateur photographers. A certain contempt arose. Their contempt for the amateur eventually transformed the word "amateur" to mean contemptable. Issues in the evolution of industrial arts have effectively transformed language.

This is somewhat unfortunate for the independant filmmaker. They'd be justifiably loathe to use the term "amateur" to describe themselves, given the current meaning of the word. Even though the term would be a perfectly correct one. And if they used the term "professional" they'd be doing exactly what the professionals did: abusing language. So they are caught between a rock and a hard place.

The term "independant filmmaker" has become a useful alternative.

Now if Hollywood were today, as paranoid as they were way back when, then we can imagine phrases like the following being used in contempt for an independant film (and I imagine in some circles today this will undoubtedly occur):

"That's so independantish"

It is similar to the use of terms such as "arty" which are effectively adopting the same historically determined contempt. It is a function of unresolved issues in industrialised societies. The industrial machine mass produces products for leisure activity (such as film and cameras, computers, the world wide web, etc) because there is money to be made in that, but for professionals who might use exactly the same products, a certain amount of contempt is maintained for those who otherwise use those products for leisure activities, or rather - for leisure activities that might start to impinge on the domain of the professional (whether apparently or actually). If a work remains, for example, a "home movie" or a "fan film" there is no conflict (although the latter sometimes rubs). Or if it remains a professional film, there is equally no conflict. But there is this ambiguous zone, between profession and leisure, that art (or independant filmmaking) occupies, for which both the professional and leisure activist have inherited a certain amount of misplaced dismissiveness, if not the originally fully charged contempt. And yet it is within this zone that some of the most interesting work can be found - where new ideas can flourish, where mistakes can be made (and from which something learned) without the threat of massive financial repercussions, where new businesses can be created, where new leisure activities can be created, where the future can be created - but also the past created: picking up on past ideas and practices that might have been historically short changed, or otherwise diverted, or uncompleted ...

As a concluding note, an interesting reciprical abuse of language can often occur, where "professional" is erroneously equated with "well made". So, for example, given a well made amateur film, we can imagine the following abuse of language:

"That looks so professional"

C

[camera8mm]

This app was free for a while.