Film Clutter has always been one of Artbeats' most popular products. All those dust, scratches and light leaks add a trendy look to almost any project. As one of our first titles, it was released 7 years ago! It's hard to imagine this kind of material getting old ("Ted, I swear I've seen those scratches before, have you been overusing FC106?"). But seriously, with the advent of HD and customer requests for new material in this genre, we decided to produce another version of this product: Film Clutter 2, with all new footage. So, for a short while this summer, the Artbeats production department took on a strange dual personality. Half was feverishly working on one project, removing every tiny dust and scratch from the Cloud Chamber HD footage, the other half was in the studio scheming new ways to add as much damage to film as possible.
This was actually a therapeutic experience. We scratched 35mm film with chisels, knives, sandpaper, and steel wool. We took it outside, put it on the sidewalk and walked on it. I tied a 50-foot piece to the back of my van and drug it through town for 2 miles. I was watching through my rear-view mirror and noticed the end start shredding so I figured it was time to stop. The next day, I had a conversation with the film lab: "...yeah, these rolls are in really bad shape, but don't worry about it... oh, and you might want to make mine the last job of your chemical batch, it's a bit dirty..." They were OK with it.
We also experimented with light leaks. We directed light into a camera gate with the film rolling. We tangled film into a big wad and flashed it with lasers, flashlights and camera flashes. We laid unexposed film out in the dark, sprinkled steel wool, salt and other substances on it and then exposed it with a flashlight. Would you like some coffee with your negative?
One of the biggest requests we have had lately is for the "frame burn". You know, when the movie projector malfunctions, the film rolls to a stop and the still frame bubbles and burns away? How do you get a shot like that? People have simulated it digitally, but we wanted the real McCoy.
The only way I knew to do this was to set up a 35mm film camera in a local theater, get the projector rolling and actually stop the film in a projector gate, while all the time filming the image on the screen. It made for another memorable phone conversation: "Yes, I would like to rent your theater......no, it's not a party, there's only four of us......what?, no let me explain, I want to stop the film in the projector gate to get that film burn effect... yes, I'm serious... no, I'll bring my own film... you're worried about the emulsion melting itself to the lens? No problem, I'll pay for any damage... yes, I have insurance... who am I?..." etc, etc.
Amazingly, they agreed to help us out. It turned out that none of the projectionists wanted any part of this job, so the only one left was a district manager who happened to know me. Today's cinema projectors have built-in safety features that don't allow this kind of accident so we had to disable the fire-safety switch. On our first try, the film burned in the gate beautifully, but there was panic in the eyes of the technician at the sight of the cloud of smoke. Still, he allowed us to continue and I stopped after 5 shots, not wanting to push my luck.
It may be difficult to think of damaged film as a beautiful thing, but when you work as hard as we did, you become an expert at what kind of scratches and dust look best. The telecine session is where we could finally see the fruits of our labors. The scratches are particularly cool, because different film emulsion layers yield different colors, almost like vertical pieces of stained glass. Also, we got some interesting "film threading" kind of shots. Little did the colorist know that we were "capturing" the HD feed when he was loading and shuttling the film.
I remember being a little bummed at our first telecine session because I still hadn't gotten the classic "hair-in-the-gate" shot. I had given up because I didn't know how to film it. What do you do, tape a piece of lint to the inside of a camera shutter? Anyway, as the colorist started rolling a particularly dirty flat of film, a BIG hair got caught in the telecine gate!! The colorist said, "Don't worry, I can get rid of that." I almost shouted, "No, leave it!!".
Such was a few of the experiences we had putting this product together. I have rarely been as excited about a title as this one; it is so packed with cool stuff. We have provided mattes to get the most out of the dust and scratches, and many of the shots are seamless looping. I hope you have as much fun compositing with it as we had working on it this summer.
