History of the London Filmmakers Co-op (in French)

In the early 1990s I was rooting round in the the LFMC cupboard and came across a somewhat unloved wind-up Kodak Standard 8 camera. Unlike Super 8, Standard 8 can be passed through the camera several times to create superimpositions. If you underexpose the first layer you get a degree of what is know as latensification, a process which enhances the shadow areas in subsequent layers/exposures. In practice with the Standard 8 camera I was using it was all a little hit and miss but the process does work as can be seen in the deep blue water ripples half way through the film. 

The footage was shot mostly in and around the Gloucester Avenue LFMC building and on the Regent Canal next door. There were also some shots from my then home in Forest Hill and even a touch of Whitewall Creek down in Strood. The footage was transferred unedited to Umatic video, and then to digital in the late 90s. I still have the reel of film somewhere so should get a decent transfer done sometime. The tongue in cheek soundtrack and music are contemporary.  
       

I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet

In narrative film, synchronised sound is linked causally to onscreen action or dialogue. Even when the source of the sound is not immediately visible such as approaching footsteps behind a door, the dynamic is such that the short term absence of the visual is designed to create anticipation that is then dramatically and visually resolved on screen by the sound source becoming visible. The addition of wild track sound, such as say birdsong on a country scene helps to further cement the hermetically sealed narrative construct, papering over edits and providing continuity between disparate shots. Add in music and one has a self- contained story world.

Outside of this narrative go round filmmakers such as Guy Sherwin in his optical film series including Railings (1977) and Musical Stairs (1977) use the footage itself transferred onto the optical track as a sound source. It becomes literally the manipulated image of the railings and the stairs that produces the sound rather than the representation of onscreen action. This process helps to break open the hermetically sealed sound and image film world.

I have been experimenting for sometime, across a number of pieces with using digital techniques that mirror and extend these optical sound experiments. In the case of I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet (2017) an image taken back in the early 80s when visiting my parents in Kent is manipulated in various ways. The image flips from side to side and twists in a crude and humorous approximation of dancing. Unlike optical sound here it is the data from the digital manipulations of the image that are then numerically turned into audio. So when the image flips from side to side a steady rhythm is created but then as the image is stretched one gets a sound similar to that from a scratched record. Humour aside all of this helps the viewer question audio-visual causality. Is the man dancing to the music or being danced by it? In practice it is somewhere between the two.