Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

screen, as is often the case, the effectively
greater image dispersion can
increase perceived graininess.
10. A striking case is the Song series by
Stan Brakhage, which was made in
8mm for a variety of aesthetic, personal,
and practical reasons. While 16mm
copies exist, many feel the only true
way to appreciate the Songs is in their
original 8mm prints.
11. One option consisted of doing a
preservation 16mm interneg, and a
Super-8 reduction print for viewing.
Logistics prevented us from pursuing
this path further.
12. One of two major independent film
distributors in the U.S., Canyon
Cinema, is located in San Francisco;
the Filmmakers’ Cooperative is in New
York.
13. Lenny Lipton, Independent
Filmmaking, San Francisco, Straight
Arrow Books, 1973, p. 82.
14. It could, and should, be argued that
notions of visual verisimilitude to “reality”
are not only subjective, but to a
large extent also socially determined.
Today’s standard is often tomorrow’s
obsolescence, or charming artifact.
15. In conventional dramaturgy, the
shift of direction when a character
leaves or enters the stage is called a
“French scene”. The comparison seems
quite relevant in the case of All My Life.
16. A similar example within the independent
film tradition would be Harry
Smith’s Early Abstractions. Smith essentially
made the ornate visual rhythms of
these works unviewable when he
slapped on an overpowering “needle
drop” soundtrack of (otherwise excellent)
Beatles recordings, in some ill-conceived
alchemical strategy.
17. Other possibilities, though slightly
less likely, also existed at that time,
including Ansco 2470.
18. The occasional print may also have
been made on Kodachrome print stock
7387.
19. Until a few years ago, inferior but
just about passable silver tracks were
printable on 7399. When environmental
regulations made the already difficult
application nearly impossible, no new
techniques were pursued, and the
printing of 7399 sound prints ceased.
Technically, a dye track could still be
made on the film, but as these silverless
tracks would pass infrared radiation,
they would yield a low
signal-to-noise ratio on standard 16mm
the form of say, a flower, brush, or sky, it takes on the dramatic weight of
the entrance of a new character in a narrative work. (15) In the new print,
however, the slightly muted colors reduced perceived color contrast;
thereby creating a more monotonous sensation of horizontal movement
in a single direction; without articulation or emphasis. More “accurate”,
maybe, but entirely less evocative of mood and expression.
Is that not conceivably exactly what Baillie sought to achieve with the
film? Perhaps. But I find it equally possible that Baillie’s views now are
something different than they were thirty years ago. Regardless, the older
prints’ historical associations have generated an authority of their own,
which merits consideration. There are numerous examples in the history
of art wherein works exist in multiple version, and many of the preferred
versions are not the creator’s final draft. To cite just one well-known
example, no less than three editions of Wordsworth’s “Prelude” are considered
distinct works; with the middle draft, presented to Coleridge
forty years before completion of the final draft (published posthumously)
being the version of choice for many – precisely because readers find the
revised draft to have diffused the earlier’s most radical poetic and metaphysical
statements. Perhaps an even better example comes from film
history itself, with Teinosuke Kinugasa’s legendary rediscovery of A Page
of Madness in a barley barrel. No sooner had he recovered this masterwork,
than he destroyed it by authorizing a vulgar modern soundtrack in
what was perhaps an attempt to make it palatable to contemporary audiences.
(16) The older artist’s vision, while entitled in name, did not retain
hold over the work’s qualitative essence, which, in arising, had acquired
a force of its own.
If one then took the new “authorized” answer print of All My Life as one
version, it remained to find a way to salvage the other, older one. I had
recalled seeing an unusual print through Canyon Cinema, which still distributes
Baillie’s work, several years previously. As part of my research, I
visited Canyon to look at their copy and review printing records. I had
imagined the print to be a 7399 reversal print, because my memory of it
had strong saturation but a substantial difference in hue from original
prints, which were likely to have been on 7388 or 7389, 7399’s predecessors.
(17) I was surprised to find that the print had been struck from an
internegative, also made at Palmer’s, and graded by Mr. Motisher! I called
Palmer’s to inquire as to the difference between the two internegs.
Apparently, the distinction was actually just a result of grading and the
different positive stock batches. Yet this difference, which gave the
Canyon copy a slightly surreal cyanic cast, was enough to make this less
naturalist rendition more appealing to my eye.
What was even more interesting were the facts Mr. Motisher revealed on
the original prints of All My Life, which he himself had graded. It seems
that rather than using the aforementioned gamma-1 stocks, he had opted
to have the projection-contrast Anscochrome printed onto the more contrasty
print stock Ektachrome 7390. (18) Thus the unique color for which
All My Life was renowned was in fact the result of a variant printing technique
which in fact boosted contrast. For the preservation internegative,
54 Journal of Film Preservation / 53 / 1996