showing now - concentric circles

      Mr. Middendorf came to St. John's Lutheran School to our English class to introduce Super 8 filmmaking. My teacher Mrs. Ohlman told me later that it was really an experiment on his part. It was the BEST thing that happened to me in eighth grade. Mr. Middendorf ran the Audio Visual department across the street in the basement offices of Link Library. He worked at Concordia Teachers College.
     In front of the classroom, he held up a hand-sized plastic cartridge made by the Kodak company. He said each of us would get one roll to shoot a film. One roll would hold about 3 minutes of action.  After the whole cartridge was used, it would be mailed off to the company in New York to be developed, which took one week. When it came back then our class would check out a film projector, and we would view the film in English class. He had us get in groups to discuss the story for the film.

     I decided to shoot a stop-action animation by myself. Using a camera tripod and a super 8 camera and a clamp spot light, the set up took place at home on our basement floor. The camera was pointed down to the floor, where I had a big sheet of paper for the background. By looking through the camera viewfinder you could see where the edges of the frames were. The story you told needed to be in that framed space. The camera would not move. The tripod kept it steady.
     There were shapes I drew with magic marker on paper. I cut them out with a scissors and laid them down on that background sheet. To make it look like a shape was moving, I needed to shoot three still frames of that shape with the camera, then move the shape by hand just a bit, and then shoot three more still frames, then move the shape by hand just a bit again, and shoot three more still frames. Over and over. The film ran at 18 frames per second. That is when it ran through the film projector. All the little movements happened quickly and made shapes look like they were moving by themselves. There was a shutter cord that you attached to the camera that you pushed in at the end, and that made the camera shoot one picture frame of film.
    So I came up with a story idea first. There was a lot of being on my hands and knees, working around the tripod, careful not to bump it, and carefully positioning cutout shapes with my hands. Then, standing to my feet, going to look through the camera viewfinder, then pushing the shutter cord click click click. Up and down. Back and forth. It took many many movements to shoot stop-action animation.
    It took time one afternoon. Then turn off the spotlight. Tell my brother and mom and dad to stay away from the set up. Go and do other things. And come back and shoot some more on another afternoon when I was free to do it.

    The first animation was named "Out To Lunch." I have more to say about that one. But right now I want to show you the film I just finished. It is named "Concentric Circles."
I got a certificate about it, below. The film was given an Honorable Mention at the Kodak Teenage Movie Awards. Cool, right? Mr. Middendorf thought so. He had me show the movie
to a room full of people.

So, I put the Super 8 film on Youtube with the help of my brother Paul. The film did not have any music or sound to it, so I used a track that Youtube had available for me to add. (http://youtu.be/JpoJhhC68-0)
The film is almost two minutes long. Click on triangle button below.



When you are done seeing it, please get back to me on your thoughts. There is a place below the post where you can tell me your thoughts. Tell me what film you are doing now.
Thanks.