Category: film

Power of Dog Story

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, film, overnight notes

A western film set in Montana, filmed in New Zealand. A re-westernized examination, so the meta goes, about machismo — destructive mannerisms of maleness.

The movie unrolls like a silent era film. Every plot point made in pantomime deliberateness. So much so, you know by the middle of the movie what the ending will be. Unless, as my gang said, you sit in the back of the bus.

Wyoming in New Zealand. Coming to terms with changes of an age. A movie I’d hoped to rewatch. Instead, it is a movie I watched, will consider, probably not watch again. I’ve too many other films, books, tasks to do. I don’t think I will get more from another watching than from some other film a first time.

The movie in one scene: the rabbit in the pile of timbers. By now the masculine and the feminine are coming together to stick a post into the hole. A rabbit runs under a pile of timbers. A game begins: toss timbers aside until the rabbit runs. 

He can’t. He is injured. The female man lifts the rabbit to comfort it — seeing it is injured, snaps its neck. 

The clear morality point: men kill the weak . These two men are gay. One clearly, the other remaining hidden, like a dog in the distant hill— only some can see.

Not an easy point for the larger audience: the dangerous persons in this film are gay. perhaps that is just the contrarian me. The widower’s son is the killer. 

Toxic masculinity – come upance, originally told in 1967 by Thomas Savage. The movie is composed with simplified symbolism. References to the dead, the posers, the educated seer. It is of its time, the fading sixties, and the looking back to a baby-boomer whistle vision of the 20s.

Those who liked the film:

>> On April 6, 2023, it ranked number 15 on The Hollywood Reporter‘s list of the “50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far),” calling it a “brilliantly uncomfortable chamber piece about corrosive masculinity fed by sexual repression” and a “psychodrama whose epic scope is echoed in its majestic landscapes.”

>>August 24, 2023, it ranked number 8 on Collider‘s list of “The 20 Best Drama Movies of the 2020s So Far,” saying that Campion “unravels an understated love story in the heart of the American west, and shows how forcing someone to conform can lead to tragic circumstances.”

>> The March 2022 issue of New York magazine included the film as one of “The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars”.

techday: Fog isn’t

Posted on Posted in diy filmsc, film, overnight notes

crossover.

Knowledge stays in the fog of the past. Terminology that changes isn’t written in dictionaries of the future. Since those who use the term have left the field, those who were never in the field, those who weren’t trained or apprenticed, the story of original meaning, that of direct relationship, those people no longer enforce the meaning.

A crossover was a place, a part in a machine. Just as film machines at a place where the racks could be pulled out or pushed back into the line for additional processing. Pulling or processing from the soup.

Upon the diminution of film as primary image former, commercial labs ceased. Small labs can survive in small markets, erratic markets; dead cat bounces feed a starvation diet.

What (who) remains: people who could have worked in the big time but chose to take a hobby land approach. They learned from the magazines… those who don’t understand the process, those who look for why it won’t work; like a poorly trained law-clerk.

These people hear a word, and cling to the new found term, in hunger for a position of knowledge among others in the darkening room. They apply it widely. To almost every approximation, the word can be fit, it will be chived into use.

Kodak filters for flashing

FilterColorPurpose
47 or 47Bbluereduce yellow density in print
44Acyanreduce red density
58greenreduce magenta density
32magentareduce green density
25 or 29redreduce cyan density
32yellowreduce blue density in print
effect of color flashing

Darkroom lab exposure have 3 stages of exposure possible. Think of them as being in relation to sequence of exposure to the unprocessed emulsion. An exposure before the image exposure, the image forming exposure, and the last being after the image has been exposed. These exposures combined are used to shape the curve shape of the finished image. This method was a key skill in pre-press labs. It was also used by commercial dye-transfer labs to a lesser degree, mainly because few labs had staff skilled in both commercial processes. Industry divided the knowledge into market segments, not the schools.

  • bump [HL] exposure is short exposure without mask or screen
  • flash [S] exposure is short exposure prior to copy, mask, or screen.. also a Raw, or Blank exposure
  • main exposure controls location of midpoint as well as mid-tone scale. Developing is used to provide range of these scales.

In practice, this required multiple (2, or 3) light sources. One was the enlarger, the other(s) were lamps, likely modified to hold filters. In the typical shop, with such a setup, we routinely altered the crossover points of a characteristic curve.

It wasn’t a bad thing, it was routine, controlled, essential…

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