celluloid
The other side
This past summer, while the rest of us fumbled around trying to
scrounge up the price of another ticket, several dedicated University
film freaks went out and changed their relationships with the medium.
They became producers rather than consumers, artists rather than
audience. The problems they faced gave them a new awareness of
what movies involve, just as Nicholas Ray told us when he appeared
on campus last spring.
As a matter of fact, it was Ray’s statement that everyone in
terested in watching movies should try making them that first
determined Norm Hale to step behind a camera. He came up with a
basic story idea, then got Tom Hyde to join him in creating a 16mm
silent black-and-white film. The two English grad students borrowed
camera, tripod and light meter from an obliging faculty member,
figured out which end of the camera was the eyepiece and which was
the lens, and shot their first roll of film as a test. The quality was good
enough that they went out on the next available weekend and snot uieir
entire film in one exhausting day.
The film tentatively titled The Soft Pedaller, revolves around a
man, a woman and a tandem bicycle. The two actors are friends of the
directors, but the bicycle had to be rented. The first problem Hyde and
Hale faced was one of logistics—how to move all the people and
equipment (two regular bicycles were also needed) from one location
to another as quickly as possible. They also discovered that as they
worked they followed the script less and less closely. They shared
camera duties so that each could get on film the shots he could not
explain verbally to the other.
Asked how they’d change their approach to the next film, Hyde
and Hale said they’d use a looser script, take more time planning
camera set-ups and angles and shots, and take more cut-away shots
for use in editing. The experience made them both more conscious of
composition and the cameraman’s contribution to films they see, and
far more respectful of camera work which manages to remain unob
trusive.
Jerry Higley was using 8mm color indoors for his venture into
film-making, but his experiences brought him to a similar new ap
preciation of films he sees. He now feels film-making is more creative
in many ways than poetry writing, which was one of his central in
terests just a few years ago. And he has come to this conclusion
despite participating in a highly democratic filming process, in which
he ended up as just one of six people working together—actors,
writers, crew. Higley came up with the original conception, based on a
short story published in an anthology of American fiction, but a friend
whose area of interest is still photography ended up adapting the
script. Another friend became the drama coach, and Higley found
himself in the classic directorial role of coordinator and resolver of
problems.
Where Hyde and Hale found their first big problem was getting
everything in one place for shooting, Higley’s first problem was to
realize that although his action takes place in one house, he could split
the shooting up into several houses, in order to get the right rooms. He
also discovered mobility in his camera work—at first he depended on a
tripod, then he switched to a hand-held camera for flexibility, and he
finally ended up with all three legs of his tripod held together to form a
kind of “unipod,” which gave both more stability than the hand-held
approach, and more flexibility than the tripod used in the standard
fashidn.
Higley was fortunate also in having more than one camera
available, in having the basic photographic and lighting knowledge of
his friend, Jon Peterson, and in having the time to spend to get his
scenes right—he spent a whole half day shooting a two-minute scene.
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Sunday, Oct. 21, 7:00 pm
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But like Hyde and Hale, he found careful scripting hampered nun
more than helped, and it took him a while to develop the flexibility and
the crew rapport that he has learned to appreciate in professional
work.
From his experience editing, shooting and writing, Vahe’ Man
sourian could have told both these groups of film-makers that they
needed responsive scripts. As a matter of fact, he and Eric Bellman
spent last spring concentrating on just that—now they have a script
for a half-hour film, designed to be adapted to the locations Man
sourian eventually decides to use for the filming. But he, too, came up
with problems this summer—the lack of $5,000 to rent equipment, buy
film, and have lab work done. Unfortunately, Mansourian has no past
financial successes to show a potential backer, but only a certain
amount of experience, a script, and the possibility of getting help from
film-making friends like Steven Hall of the now-defunct Film House.
The film-to-be is titled Alien-Nation, and is a fantasy along
science-fiction lines which Mansourian says cannot really be related
to any other film he’s seen in any general way. It will be shirt in 16mm
color and sound, will need three major actors and about 35 extras, as
well as a crew of six besides Mansourian himself.
While he searches for backing, Mansourian is hoping to work out
some of his visual ideas in Dave Foster’s cinemagraphics class (a
campus hotbed of visual excitement), and is also keeping his eye on
the American Film Institute. The AFI gives awards of about $200,000 a
year to film-makers whose projects they find worthwhile, and though
the competition is terrific, Mansourian refuses to give up hope.
Some of what Mansourian is trying to do has already been ac
complished by Bob Willig, who got East Coast backing to put together
a 16mm sound black-and-white film, in what was truly a learning
experience. He shot 4200 feet of film, which has since been edited to a
rough cut of 1000 feet, but Willig hopes to shorten it still further, to
about 600 feet. He decided to go the sophisticated route, in order to get
the best quality he could, and he discovered that the attempt led to the
same kinds of problems that Hyde, Hale and Higley faced, with one
difference—his problems were more sophisticated.
Willig’s major problem was having too small a crew. He found
himself doing camera, sound and direction on some shots, which was
too much even for someone as energetic as he is. His schedule in
corporated two and a half hours of shooting spread Over a full week of
moving from location to location, solving set-up problem after lighting
problem after angle problem. He even discovered casting problems he
didn’t anticipate when one of his three actors decided to go camping
instead. All of this was on top of dealing with a rip-off rental agency
which charged him over $800 for a week’s rental of his equipment, nice
as it was.
In other words, despite his avid reading of the best how-to books,
and his daily attendance at some of the world’s best movies, he was
not as prepared as he thought he was. He ended up being more con
cerned with questions of continuity than with the different technical
factors he had studied. Like so many other film freaks before him, he
has come down to the basic question that plagues us all—just exactly
what are the movies? Hyde, Hale, Higley, Mansourian and Willig can
all agree on one thing after their summer struggles—the more you
learn about the movies, the more you discover you don’t know.
Coming Soon
So now you’ve seen Last Tango in Palis, and you found it quite
interesting, and you can talk about it with everyone else, because
everyone else has seenit, too. You may have seen The Conformist, too.
But were you aware that professional film-makers all over the world
find Bertolucci’s earlier work, The Spider’s Stratagem, to be superior
to both of these as a film? Genius is at work on the screen! See it,
absorb its psycho-emotional visual impact, this Friday at 7 p.m. or
9:15 p.m. in 150 Science, or on Sunday at 8 p.m. in the University
Theater.
Pierre G. Dunn
★★★★★★
folk
concert
THE WICKHAMS
and
Caster’s Last Band
friday oct 19 emu ballroom
8 pm $1 adult 50* children
sponsors: cultural forum & u. o. folk music club
THE
°°*N
BEAT
Featured Band All Week
Gin
Jenny
959 Pearl, Eugene doted Mondays
Ode to fay
M Opens 7 Morin 7 JO-9 JO
SIDDIIAKTHA
is an exquisite
movie.
—REX REED,
Syndicated Columnist
A NOVEL BY
HERMANN
HESSE (
A FILM BY -
CONRAD
ROOKS
m
HELD OVER!
Open 7 Movie 7; 30-9.-30
DAILY
MATINEE
Thru Tuesday
The film makers who brought
you A TASTE OF HONEY
and TOM JONES now take
pride in presenting...
PETER FINCH
RITA TUSHINGHAM «,
GIRL WITH
GREEN EYES
A WOODFALL FILM
distributed by LOPERT PICTURES CORPORATION
Doors open: 1:00 p.m.
Show: 1:30
All seats: $1
MATINEES-COMING
Oct. 24-30
DASSIN'S
“Phaedra”
Oct. 31-Nov.6
SCHLESINGER'S
“Sunday, Bloody Sunday”
VALLEY RIVER TWIN
686-6633
Now Showing
THE NAKED APE
phis
LOVE A OTHER STRANGERS
Phone for show time
VALLEY RIVER TWIN
686-8633
Now Showing
AMERICAN
GRAFFITI
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EUGENE DRIVE-IN
776-7412
CHARLES BRONSON
THE STONE KILLER
PLUS
THE LOVE MACHINE
free car heaters
WEST 11th TWIN
DRIVE-IN 342-4142
THE HARRAD
EXPERIMENT
plus
BOB. CAROL, TED, A ALICE
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