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

