I
came to the University of Michigan because film
students here actually get to shoot on film. At most
other institutions, the only cameras available are
digital. So much of what’s important to me about my stud-
ies and this art form is linked to shooting physical film.
Film’s hallmark is the physical grain it leaves on an im-
age. What is between those particles? What does it mean
to say “We’re shooting this on film,” or using any analog
technology for that matter? To better understand these
questions, I spoke with two former teachers and asked
them to go more in depth about why they teach and use
analog technology and what it means to them artistically
and philosophically.
Terri Sarris is a Film, Television, and Media (FTVM)
professor at the University. She was the first person to put
a working, 16mm movie camera
in my hands — a Canon Scoopic.
Standing there in the basement of
North Quad Residence Hall, about
five students to one camera, I
thought about the scraps of 35mm
negatives and little Kodak slides
littered around my family home
and in every drawer.
When I was little, I’d hold them
up to the light and see my parents
looking so young and cool, wear-
ing sunglasses in their cream-col-
ored apartment. In the basement,
we had huge, sealed flat metal can-
isters where reels of footage, my
dad’s film, lived. My friends and I
would peek over my fuzzy orange
couch while our parents watched
the film after dinner. When I got
older, my dad let me see them for
real. They were so unlike anything
else that existed — yellow and in-
viting and alive.
Back in the North Quad base-
ment, Terri instructed us on how
to focus the cameras and make
sure they were at the right set-
tings for the lighting. I knew I had
to listen to every word she said
because she was finally explaining
how to make something yellow,
and inviting, and alive.
Terri explained how special the
first day using film cameras with a
new class is special to her, too.
“Usually students have had lit-
tle or no exposure to it and so it’s
actually, for a lot of people, really
exciting,” she said in our Zoom
call. “It also can be sort of mysti-
fying ... it’s such an amazing piece
of equipment.”
Terri chooses to teach 16mm
film not just because it is a prac-
tical skill for the industry, but
because she sees an artistic, me-
thodic value in the physicality of
shooting, cutting and splicing. In
fact, the intentionality is twofold: in terms of film theory
and historical context.
“The idea of film as a physical medium really gives stu-
dents, I hope, an appreciation for the decades of people
who worked on film before digital was developed,” she
said. “You think about from the very earliest days of the
Soviet filmmakers shooting those amazing films on film.
And then all the editors — a lot of women, by the way.”
There is a sense of purpose with film. No matter what
you make, you’re making it with the same tools that very
serious, talented people have been using since the start.
It makes me feel like they’re with me while I am filming
— as if I’m making something not just for, but also with,
the Soviets and women. It makes me feel like my eyes get
to see through the same machine and glass lenses as the
people from the past.
Along with the historical intention behind analog tech-
nology, there is a specific effect from using it too, Terri
explained.
“I think it makes you really consider an edit and timing
and pacing … it really is part of the palette of filmmaking,”
she said. “(Shooting on only digital) would be like taking
some colors away from an artist.” Listening to her, I start-
ed to understand. Yes, film is a kind of communion or time
travel, but it’s also a choice at the present moment, like
any other variable a filmmaker can manipulate.
She explained how in her own work, the choice of film
stock is part of the way her projects relate to the past. Dif-
ferent film stocks have different dimensions, sensitivities
to light, and color balances. For her films, where she uses
toys to act out short stories, she uses 16mm.
“I shoot them on 16 partly because it’s a legacy tech-
nology, and then I always make the credits with a type-
writer,” Terri said. “The idea is to use the old stories in
these old formats very deliberately in conversation with
each other.”
For other films that are portraits of her friends and
family, she uses Super 8 in the same camera she’s had
since grad school. A Super 8 camera is a small film camera
designed for home use that has a cartridge system for the
film instead of a system one has to thread in the dark.
“I use my Super 8 camera to make films ... that might be
nostalgic because often it’s about something that’s disap-
pearing from the world,” Terri said. “So they’re like ele-
gies for friends who are passing or family who are passing
or who I know are passing ... it’s almost religious to me.”
As Terri explained, I saw her understand and use film
as both history and present choice. I can’t imagine my
studies without her or her work without film.
The next day I talked to Fritz Swanson, a lecturer in
the English department who runs Wolverine Press; he
also has a background in film photography. I went into our
conversation with the practical details from Terri, look-
ing for someone to explain more about how some of these
concepts like nostalgia or history relate to the visual sig-
natures we discussed. I now understood the importance of
the practice and the choices of artists looking to say some-
thing, but I was still unclear on what we’re all saying.
Fritz framed the issue philosophically with a discus-
sion of the author Virginia Woolf and her printing press.
“She hates being edited by
men, on some level, she prob-
ably hates being edited by upper-
middle class men, when she’s
clearly better than them,” Fritz
said. “And so she just goes out
and buys the press and that’s the
thing. For her, owning a press
and being able to start her own
publishing company was a pre-
requisite for really fulfilling her
own ambitions as a writer.”
So the choice then is who —
meaning what technology — an
artist wants to be their co-author.
And the implication of having the
choice is that you own some kind
of means of production.
Isn’t this true of all technol-
ogy, any medium?
“Analog mediums are so in-
teresting, because they resist in-
trusion from the author in inter-
esting and unpredictable ways,”
Fritz said.
Digital technologies are a co-
author designed to help in their
own way and be easy and ap-
pealing to a mass market. Ana-
log technologies are transparent
and selectable and can hurt more
than they help — they are not de-
signed to be a helping hand, but a
tool in a kit. Nothing is stopping
you from using the wrong stock.
In describing how sensitive
to light a certain film emulsion
is, filmmakers use the adjec-
tives “fast” and “slow.” You can
see in the finished product that
the grain on a fast stock, for low
light, literally moves around
faster. If you look for it, you’ll
see it change throughout a mov-
ie depending on if the location
is brightly or dimly lit. When I
notice it, a film becomes much
more dimensional. I can actually
observe it like one would a sculp-
ture and walk behind, or maybe inside, the camera.
I don’t know if I’m nostalgic or determined to master
the signature of film. Maybe both. But after exploring
more, I think those are both good words holding the place
of another concept. The completely random, consequen-
tial movement of film grain that is chosen by an artist is
the aesthetic that makes each of us feel our specific way
about images shot on film. The choice of a type of move-
ment to make a type of image, but what each particle
does to produce that whole is up to chance. Grain. It’s a
somewhat ineffable aesthetic that, after examination, says
I chose this and I know how and why to use this and my
means of production worked on this WITH me. And that is
what looked yellow and inviting and alive to me all those
years ago.
The Michigan D
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
statement
On analog
technology
BY KATE GLAD, STATEMENT DESIGN EDITOR
PHOTO BY KATE GLAD