Week 3 - Brakhage Article Blog

I read the Stan Brakhage article, “A moving picture giving and taking book” and in all honesty it really didn’t interest me that much. I rather disliked his writing style. I felt like He made everything he said sound like he was talking down to you. It felt like I was being taught something in kindergarten class. He also constantly went onto tangents which bothered me because I had trouble keeping track of what he was saying trying to become interested and grasp it but, I couldn’t. It felt like he was being interview and someone was writing down everything he said. He wrote repeated phrases as if he was trying to think of what to write next. I found it hard to learn anything when I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about half the time. The parts of the article that I did catch were relatively interesting. The ones being about projectors and film splices, I am the manager of Lumina Theatre on campus so I work with 35mm prints all the time so it was interesting to hear someone talk about the 16mm world, I just found it hard to stay focused. It also seems like times have changed a lot since 1966 because the way splices and projection works now is totally different. He listed some common problem with certain types of splices and I was constantly thinking, that never happens but this article being that old it makes sense. It would be interesting to read a similar article about the same subject matter from someone in our time for the 21st century talking about writing and scratching and splicing film. Part of the reason I think for me having trouble getting into this article is partly because I really don’t like Stan Brakhage. I know that saying that makes every filmmaker roll over a die because its blasphemy, apparently. But, I think that is the reason I really don’t like his work because everyone calls them these amazing works of art, which don’t get me wrong I think its cool all the neat stuff you can do with film and I enjoy playing around with it, but I don’t plan on winning any awards for it. Sometimes it seems people say they like it just because its artsy. I’m sorry but all I see is blurry color for several minutes or moth wings for even more minutes. Again I think it neat the way we manipulate film with paint and exposure and the magazine transfers but I really think it should not be revered as art. It almost seems like I could barf up a rainbow on film and people would think I was a genius. Well enough of me ranting, because I have almost gone off topic. Like I said if the article was better written I would have been more involved with it and I could have related too it on a closer level. But, between his weird kindergarten language and random tangents I found it hard to engage myself in this article. Overall I would never read this again unless my life depended on it, then I would think about it.