Tonight I scanned the first batch of slides from a collection of HUNDREDS that I shot for a film that I began nearly 20 years ago. I finished shooting the film back in 1991 [in 1990 I wrote a proposal and in 1991 was awarded a grant to cover its filming costs] and over the years it has been copied and transferred through just about every film & video format that there is in my effort to finish it.

The bulk of the film was shot [and hand processed] on black and white 35mm slides. The slides were then arranged into a dissolving slide show which was in turn shot [off of the screen] onto Super 8mm film. The Super 8mm was then optically printed [by hand, by me on borrowed equipment] onto 16mm film. It was too expensive for me at the time to shoot entirely on 16mm. I had gotten a deal on a quantity of black and white 4x super 8 film [it was being discontinued by Kodak] so I decided to shoot and edit on super 8mm and transfer only the shots that I needed to 16mm.

It's crazy for me to think about it now, but the entire process was developed as a work around for making a 16mm film comprised mainly of dissolves without having access to real editing equipment or the money to pay for 16mm film processing or a lab to do the effects. I had an old pair of rewinds, a hand cranked 16mm viewer, a guillotine splicer, a super 8 camera and a case of expiring super 8 film to work with and that was just about it.

On account of my methods, it took me the better part of a year and a half to compile and process all of the footage for the film. The first cut was completed in 1993 on 16mm but a print of it has never been made. I was able to afford cutting the negative but not any of the sound work or the making of a print. Before I had the negative cut, I transfered all of the raw footage onto 3/4" video for safe keeping and potential future editing.

As the years passed [and the 16mm cut remained unprinted and the 3/4" tapes unedited] Beta was invented. I transferred all of the footage from 3/4" to Beta to keep it up with the times. As the years continued to pass [and the film still remained unfinished] digital video was born and so I moved all of the footage yet again from 3/4" [and Beta] on to mini DV and then eventually digitized it.

Now technology has come far enough along that the various obstacles I have been skirting for the past 20 years no longer apply. I have my footage [in every format], the equipment and the ability to do everything I need to finish my film. I have begun working towards what will [and must] be its final edit. I have now come full circle. I'v decided to return to the source and am working from the original black and white slides. The image posted above is of my first scanned slide.

I still love all of my original footage for the process it took to create it and for all of the mediums that it has traveled through to get from the 20th and into the 21st century. The original footage definitely has a look and feel all its own and a large amount of it will still remain in the final cut but I am excited to go back into its roots and reclaim some of what [due to the necessity of the times] had been long lost to the cutting room floor.